Digital PR and Social Media Marketing Benchmarks for Sustainability Brands

Last updated 1/8/2024

What's a good engagement rate on Instagram? Or your website?

How should I think about email open rates now?

To accelerate the adoption of essential products and services during a long decision process, the strategy is to maximize cost-effective positive interactions with your brand to build trust and awareness. 

When we evaluate outcomes for sustainability brands, we evaluate effectiveness in the context of benchmarks.

This is a guide we put together for internal use that we're now sharing publically with our clients and followers. We find it helpful to curate digital PR benchmarks from multiple sources in one handy resource when we're planning KPIs and reporting campaign outcomes. This will help you stay on top of changes in the digital landscape so that you can continue to succeed with your business goals.

Google Analytics 4 Website Engagement Rate

+++

LinkedIn Advertising Cost Per Click

+++

LinkedIn Engagement Rate

+++

LinkedIn Average Video View Rate

+++

LinkedIn Paid Click-Thru Rate

+++

Facebook/Instagram Paid Cost Per Click and Click Thru Rates

+++

Facebook Engagement Rate

+++

Instagram Engagement Rate

+++

Instagram Follower Growth Rate

+++

Email Marketing Benchmarks

+++

TikTok Trending Video Benchmarks

+++

Media Pitching Engagement Rate

Any resources we missed that you love? Let us know!

Google Analytics 4 Website Engagement Rate

Google Analytics 4 defines an engaged website session as lasting longer than 10 seconds, with either a conversion event or at least 2 pageviews. 

The website engagement rate is then calculated as the percent of engaged sessions/total sessions.

• A good B2C website engagement rate is anything 70% or higher.
• A good B2B website engagement is anything 60% or higher. 

LinkedIn Advertising Cost Per Click

• The average LinkedIn cost per click in 2023 ranged from $2-$6 CPC, based on Dialogue campaign outcomes for sustainability-related content. 

• Amounts can be higher for specific audiences: $8+ 

LinkedIn Engagement Rate

Average LinkedIn engagement rate for page posts is 2%, based on total post reactions (comments, shares, likes, etc.) divided by post impressions. 

• Smaller communities will have higher engagement rates. 

• Find your post data in the Analytics section of your LinkedIn page, viewable by page admins.

LinkedIn Average Video View Rate

LinkedIn defines a video view as at least 3 continuous seconds of playback. View rate is the percentage of people who viewed at least 3 seconds of the video compared to its reach. 20% is average.

LinkedIn Paid Click Thru Rate

The average CTR from LinkedIn advertising is between 0.40% and 0.6%.

Facebook/Instagram Advertising Cost Per Click and Click Thru Rates

Meta advertising network includes advertising for Facebook and Instagram platforms.

In December 2023, Wordstream reports an average Meta network cost per click of $0.83 and average click thru rate of 1.51%. Wordstream breaks down Facebook CPC and CTR by industry. 

Facebook Engagement Rate

Instagram Engagement Rate

Hootsuite cites a 1-5% engagement rate on Instagram as a good range, with healthy smaller accounts on the higher side. 

Instagram Follower Growth Rate

Flick keeps a good ongoing report of average Instagram follower growth rates.

• For Instagram accounts under 5,000 followers, follower growth rate is less than 1% per month.
• For large Instagram accounts with 10,000+ followers, follower growth rate is higher, reaching 2% per month for accounts with more than 200,000 followers.  

Email Marketing Benchmarks

Open rates have become trickier to measure, with increased privacy factors. A 25% open rate is a good benchmark for regular newsletters. 

Click through rates are a much stronger email KPI. Average email CTRs are between 4-7%.

TikTok Engagement Rates

Statista reports as of April 2023, the average engagement rate for large accounts (10 million followers) was 10.5%.

For accounts with 100,000 to 500,000 thousand followers the engagement rate was 9.74%.

Media Pitching Engagement Rate

Propel Media reports quarterly engagement rates between journalists and PR pros.

In Q3 2023, journalists opened an average of 49.14% of the pitches they received and responded to an average of 2.99% of the pitches they received.