Why we publish benchmarks with warnings attached
Outreach benchmarks are mostly self-reported, collected on different definitions, and skewed by who chose to share their numbers. That does not make them useless; it makes them directional. Used to sanity-check whether you are roughly on track, they are helpful. Used as a precise target you must hit, they mislead, because your industry, list quality, offer, and sending setup move the number more than any published average does. Every benchmark here comes with that context, so you can use it to think rather than to panic.