2018’s Most Insightful Email Marketing Statistics For Ecommerce

At Omnisend, nothing quite signals the fast-approaching end of the year like our annual deep-dive into email marketing data to uncover the latest trends and the year’s biggest surprises.

We have just finished analysing more than 964 million emails (128,000 email campaigns and automated workflows sent by 7,200 brands using Omnisend’s ecommerce marketing automation tool) and put together a brand-new infographic on Ecommerce Email Marketing Statistics for 2018.

Read, learn and put it to practice!

7 biggest findings from Omnisend’s ecommerce email marketing statistics

Cart abandonment emails are losing its effect on Black Friday shoppers: while they’re still the best performing type of email during the Black Friday event (1.65% order rate), it’s a decrease of 31% compared to the rest of the year.
Customer reactivation emails are taking the centre stage. With a 106% increase in orders during the Back Friday compared to the rest of the year, winback emails are proving their worth.
The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work with email list-building. It’s more effective to use a variety of signup forms, such as Landing pages (23%) or Wheel of Fortune (10%), to achieve the best conversion rates.
Collecting data about customers is OK: asking for up to 3 pieces of information on your signup forms can generate 10% higher conversion rates on average.
There are three key months for email marketing activity: February has the best email open rates (17.9%), June the best click rates (3.6%) and November has the most campaigns sent.
When it comes to email automation, order confirmation emails lead with the best open rates (64.4%) and click rates (18.1%), while cart recovery emails enjoy the highest order rate (2.4%).
Automation workflows consistently outperform mass newsletter campaigns with up to 309% higher opens and 455% better click rates.

Are your email marketing campaigns up to scratch? Use our neatly organised infographic to get in-depth information on when and how often to email your customers, which signup forms generate the best results and how automation can improve your ROI.

Where did Omnisend take this data from?

Since Omnisend integrates with tools like Shopify, Bigcommerce and numerous other ecommerce platforms, we have the capability to monitor and source data on our clients’ email marketing activities as well as the campaigns’ financial performance.

This gives us an opportunity to tie an email’s performance to the bottom line and monitor all aspects that have an impact on the end result: which types convert better, when they’re sent, the difference in revenue generated between automated emails and manual campaigns, and much more.

Omnisend customers can easily track most of this data in their own dashboards by regularly reviewing performance reports.

How did Omnisend obtain average segmentation data?

We used the data collected by other marketing tools to benchmark our customers’ email marketing performance and get a 360-view on the email marketing landscape.

Klaviyo’s Email Segmentation Benchmark Report has come in particularly handy and we have used the following averages (with some approximations based on the graph):

segmented emails showed an open rate range of 14-16.17%
segmented emails showed a click rate of 1-1.99%
segmented emails showed a revenue rate of $0.10-$0.19

Our own data demonstrates that segmented emails deliver:

an open rate of 16.5%
a click rate of 3.23%
an average revenue rate of $0.24

What types of companies are included in this research?

As mentioned already, our research is based on the data collected from Omnisend’s customers – 7,200+ active online stores in 130 countries to be more precise. We’ve looked at the full year’s data from January 1 to December 31, 2017.

For more context, it’s worth mentioning that the majority of Omnisend clients are based in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and India. In terms of industries, our clients tend to sell clothing, accessories, small electronic devices and books.

How does Black Friday data compare to the rest of the year?

Looking at the Black Friday automated emails from 2017, we have spotted some interesting insights:

Brands send 3x more cart abandonment emails than customer reactivation emails
Although cart abandonment emails still have the best order rates for Black Friday (1.65%), it’s a 31% decrease compared to the rest of the year
Customer reactivation emails are picking up speed: with a 1.3% order rate, they have earned marketers 106% more orders compared to the rest of the year
The open rates in November are among the lowest of the year, but the click rate is decent

The general takeaway here is that ecommerce marketers should strive to diversify their workflows.

Rather than placing all their bets on one type of email (the cart abandonment workflow), marketers should expand their approach by adding other avenues, such as winback (customer reactivation) campaigns and welcome automated emails (delivered a 1.15% order rate for the Black Friday period in 2017).

Bulk email campaigns vs. automated workflows: how do they compare?

On average, the manual email campaigns without segmentation achieve a 15.73% open rate and a 3.26% click rate. But let’s dig deeper:

Welcome emails: when automated, welcome emails have 168% more opens and 222% higher click rates. The average open rate for automated welcome emails is 42.2% and the click rate is 10.5%.
Order confirmation: with a 64.4% open rate and 18.1% click rate, automated order confirmation emails have 309% more opens and 455% higher click rates.
Order follow-up emails. With the average open rate of 59.1% and the click rate of 9.1%, order follow-ups generate 275% more opens and 179% higher click rates.
Cart abandonment emails. This type of emails on average achieves a 40.1% open rate and a 9% click rate. Which means cart recovery automation has 154% more opens and 176% higher click rates.

Winback emails. with a 40.8% open rate and a 7.8% click rate, customer winback automation has 159% more opens and 139% higher click rates.

Where can I find more data from this research?

For the purpose of this infographic, we have extracted data for key metrics and the general overview only.

However, our data analysis has generated a lot more interesting insights that have been covered in separate articles on our blog.

In these blog posts, we go a step further by combining our research findings with recommended next steps and practical guidelines on how to make the best out of these newly discovered insights.

Our series on Omnisend’s Ecommerce Email Marketing Statistics for 2018 include:

We hope you can use this data to improve your email marketing campaigns and boost your brand’s visibility and profits!