My Suggestion Email Marketing Benchmarks For Ecommerce In 2016

Email marketing is the channel which refuses to give up. It clearly works as far as ecommerce is concerned. But it is hard to determine if email marketing is working out for you.

In this article, we are going to look into the ecommerce email marketing benchmarks for 2016. The figures have been put together from the study of millions of emails sent by thousands of ecommerce sites.

Newsletters



It's important to send newsletters out regularly. This is the best way of promoting specific content or products. It is also a good way to let your customers know about new promotions. But even though these newsletters may take lot of time to create, the truth remains that most people will ignore them.

Spam email newsletter

The average open rate for newsletters is just 23.4%. The conversion rate was a dismal 1%. These figures are a depressing read for marketers but if you are aware of them, you will at least know the ROI which can be expected. Here are email newsletter benchmark figures:

• Open rate: 23.4 %
• Click rate: 17.8 %
• Conversion rate: 1 %

Order follow up



Once someone has made a purchase, you would expect them to be more responsive to future mails. Open rate and click rates for emails after order is twice that of standard newsletters. What is most interesting is the jump in the conversion rate from 1% to 5%. People want to take action whether it involves signing up for loyalty programs or providing feedback. Once they have made a purchase, it is important to take advantage of their willingness. Benchmark figures are:

• Open rate: 46.1 %
• Click rate: 16.7 %
• Conversion rate: 5 %

Inactive customers

The figures are quite surprising. Even though newsletters have been sent to a number of inactive customers, the open rate was significantly higher as compared to regular newsletters. There is a simple explanation for this, if someone reads an email which does not appeal or isn't relevant to them, they are most probably going to ignore subsequent emails too. But if they see an email from a brand which they have not heard from recently or has a new format, they are more likely to open it. This also includes inactive customer campaigns as well as win back occasional customers campaigns. Here are the figures for these emails:

• Open rate: 38.9 %
• Click rate: 19.5 %
• Conversion rate: 2.6 %

Abandoned cart

If brands do not stay on top of this they may lose out on a lot of revenue. One effective way of bringing people back to your website once they have left halfway through a purchase is with the help of basket abandonment emails. The figures below show that people are receptive to this communication with an impressive click rate of 28.7%:

• Open rate: 46.6 %
• Click rate: 28.7 %
• Conversion rate: 5 %

Member follow up

The welcome email is very important for customers to feel valued once they have signed up for newsletters. It's also an opportunity for encouraging new members to take further action. Here are the figures:

• Open rate: 39.2 %
• Click rate: 22.4 %
• Conversion rate: 2.7 %

 

you mean they will be less likely to open mails once the promo / coupon etc has been used / ended? Then how do we keep them engaged?