Perhaps you’ve been poking around your email campaign reports in Remarkety and wanted to know how your email campaign performance compares to other eCommerce shops. 
There are quite a few questions to ask, such as what is a good open rate? What is a good click rate? What is a good email conversion rate?
We have crunched the numbers for you so you can see the average open, click and conversion rates by different campaign types.
How can we do this, you ask?
Well, Remarkety delivers millions upon millions of emails for thousands of eCommerce businesses.
Unlike other email marketing platforms, Remarkety was designed for eCommerce first.
Jump down here to see the types of eCommerce businesses included in the study.
Now, when it comes to the types of automated email campaigns we studied, it spans the gamut.
We studied more than just newsletters.
Other campaigns we looked at included order follow ups, inactive customer win-backs, abandoned carts and member follow ups AKA new user welcome emails.
The email campaigns we tracked needed to have at least 100 sends to normalize any wacky data.
This means that the data collected included results from small businesses managing their own email campaigns with just a few hundred contacts to much larger eCommerce shops with hundreds of thousands of contacts.
Inside This Article
– Stats by Type of Email
– How to Improve Email Campaigns
eCommerce Email Marketing Benchmarks
Before we get into the good stuff, let’s define some terms.
– Open Rate: Percentage of how many people open an email
– Click Rate: Percentage of how many people click on an email
– Conversion Rate: Percentage of how many people place an order within three days of opening or clicking an email
Newsletter Email Metrics
This includes email blasts sent to entire contact lists and segmented lists.
– Open Rate: 23.4%
– Click Rate: 17.8%
– Conversion Rate: 1%
Order Follow Up Email Metrics
This can include feedback campaigns, order replenishment campaigns, review requests and reward campaigns.
– Open Rate: 46.1%
– Click Rate: 16.7%
– Conversion Rate: 5%
Inactive Customer Email Metrics
This includes the inactive customer campaign and win-back occasional customer campaign.
– Open Rate: 38.9%
– Click Rate: 19.5%
– Conversion Rate: 2.6%
Abandoned Cart Email Metrics
This includes all abandoned cart campaigns and applicable follow up campaigns.
– Open Rate: 46.6%
– Click Rate: 28.7%
– Conversion Rate: 5%
Member Follow Up Email Metrics
This can include new user registration campaigns along with welcome series.
– Open Rate: 39.2%
– Click Rate: 22.4%
– Conversion Rate: 2.7%
How To Improve Opens, Clicks and Conversions
After taking a look at the average metrics you could be thinking one of two things.
My campaigns are looking pretty good!
Or this…
Something is very wrong, my numbers don’t even come close to those averages.
If you’re thinking the latter, don’t fret.
There are so many different ways to improve your email marketing performance.
Let’s start with the basics.
How to Improve Open Rate
This one is simple – write a good subject line, don’t spam your customers and deliver emails when they are most likely to open.
If you don’t spam your customers, you won’t end up in the spam folder.
And if you write a good subject line, your customers will open the email.
Sure, this is easier said than done, but here’s something that will help.
We published an in-depth article about how to never end up in the spam folder, along with ways to improve subject lines.
Here are the main things to keep in mind.
- Don’t send email from an address like no-reply@email.com
- Avoid these words in subject lines
- Test the best days and times to send emails to customers
We already published a study on the best days and times to send emails, but your results could vary.
Remember, every store and customer-base is different.
How to Improve Click and Conversion Rate
The easiest way to improve clicks and conversions is by offering an incentive.
Coupons. Effective they are.
So how effective are they? Well, they’re this effective…
Email campaigns with coupons have a higher open, click and conversion (purchase) rate.
The average purchase rate of an email campaign with a coupon is 10%, while email campaigns without have roughly a 2% conversion rate.
If you despise emails because it de-values your business, read about other ways to improve conversion without coupons.
Some ways include offering free shipping and returns or making highly-intelligent product recommendations.
Basically, it all comes down to this.
Give customers something they want to click.
If your subject line reeled them in, which is half the battle, you want the design of your email to draw a click.
Simplicity and relevance are they key words.
Adding a straight-forward call-to-action like ‘Shop Now’ or ‘Take 10% Off’ makes it clear what you want your customers to do with that email.
If the email is relevant to how that customer has shopped in the past, you’re also more likely to get a click.
It’s assumed that all of your emails are optimized for mobile screens because over 50% of your opens will come from a phone.
Did we really need to mention that?
If you’re not sure how your emails look on mobile, test that right now.
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
- Buttons are more likely to be clicked than just hyper-linked text
- Emails with large images are more likely to be clicked than text
- Coupons are hands-down the best way to increase conversion
- Read this article which covers the best practices for emails
At this point, you’re ready to kick your emails up a notch. Or heck, if your opens, clicks and conversions beat the average, keep doing you.
If you’re not using Remarkety and you’re interested in trying us free for 30-days, sign up here.
Or if you’re not ready to jump into a relationship, yet, go here to learn more about the what we can do for your store and the platforms we support.
For those of you wishing to take a deeper dive into email marketing, we have your suggested reading list below.
Additional Reading Materials
– 8 reasons why customers never open your emails
– 5 tricks for writing a marketing email
– Design reward emails that increase retention
Types of eCommerce Businesses Studied*
- Arts, crafts, and collectibles
- Baby
- Beauty and fragrances
- Books and magazines
- Business to business
- Clothing, accessories, and shoes
- Computers, accessories, and services
- Education
- Electronics and telecom
- Entertainment and media
- Financial services and products
- Food and beverage
- Gifts and flowers
- Government
- Health and personal care
- Home and garden
- Pets and animals
- Religion and spirituality
- Sports and outdoors
- Toys and hobbies
- Travel
- Vehicle accessories
- Adult shops
Based on data from 2015
Photo source: Gordy’s Photo 365 Journey
