E-commerce email marketing statistics that reveal exactly which strategies work

We dived into our data to discover the strategies and tactics MailerLite e-commerce customers are using to succeed. The report includes e-commerce email marketing statistics that show what generates engagement and plenty of case studies to highlight each point.

Use the report to see what other businesses are doing to generate results, so you can focus your time on the most impactful activities that lead to sales. 

Here are 6 of the key email marketing stats shown in the data. 

1. Email campaigns are the key to more orders: 93% of orders came from campaigns.

2. Targeted sending boosts email engagement: Targeted emails have average open and click-through rates (CTR) that are 36.69% and 267.21% higher than non-targeted campaigns.  

3. Triggered emails get sky-high engagement: The first email in an automation gets an average open rate of 64.03% and click rate of 21.32%.

4. Automated emails in general get high engagement: The average open and click rate of all emails in an automation is 47.82% and 16.88% respectively.

5. When subscriber joins group was the most used trigger: 9.24 times more emails were sent using this trigger than any other. 

6. Purchases a specific product is the trigger with the highest engagement: These emails have a 76.58% open rate and 28.43% click rate.

The data comes from over 22,000 MailerLite accounts with a connected e-commerce shop. The majority of the shops were built on either WooCommerce and Shopify. We also had shops using Wix, Squarespace, Prestashop, BigCommerce and 8 others tools.

For the data, we looked at the metrics for orders, open rate and click-through rate. These are the most relevant data points for most businesses, although you can check our article on email marketing metrics for more points to track. 

Campaigns generated 92.58% of sales tracked by MailerLite, meaning 12.48 times more sales came via campaigns than automations. 

This doesn’t mean automations are ineffective. Far more email marketing campaign emails are sent than automation emails. And as we’ll see later on, automations generate extremely high engagement. 

Takeaway: Campaigns are a powerful driver of email marketing revenue since they give you a direct connection to people who opted in to hear from you.

Make sure you’re regularly sending email newsletters promoting your products. Use e-commerce blocks to automatically add product data to your emails in just a few clicks.

E-commerce campaign ideas

• Promote new products

• Announce sales and offers

• Highlight top sellers

• Send recommended products based on interests

• Share case studies, reviews and testimonials

Campaigns in our data set received an average open rate of 41.73% and a click rate of 6.69%. These are good numbers. But targeted campaigns performed even better. 

Our data shows that campaigns filtered to specific subscribers get a 36.69% higher open rate and 267.21% higher click-through rate than those without any filtering. 

Takeaway: People respond to relevant campaigns. It’s easier to create email subject lines that generate engagement and email content that meets their needs when you target a specific group. 

There are almost endless ways to target campaigns, including:

• Groups: Create groups based on interests and send them relevant content

• Segments: Access automatically generated segments based on shopping behavior

• Signup source: Send targeted emails to people who sign up via different offers and channels

• Location: Send location-specific emails 

• Campaign engagement: Send special content to people who interact a lot with your brand, or re-engagement campaigns to those who don’t

• Custom fields: Use data in your customer profiles to send relevant campaigns

• Exclude the last email: Send a message to people who didn’t receive your last one

• Email address: Send campaigns to specific people by filtering by email

Across the board, automations generate higher engagement than campaigns. The average email open rate for an automated email is 47.82% and the average click rate for an automated email is 16.88%. 

Things get even better when you consider only the first email in an automated sequence. The average open rate of the first email is 64.03% and the average click rate is 21.32%.

This is unsurprising since email marketing automations are typically used to send people extremely relevant content at the exact moment they need it. 

By far the most popular type of automation trigger was When subscriber joins group. Almost 10 times more emails were sent using this trigger than any other. 

This makes sense because it’s typically the trigger used to send a welcome email—an email that pretty much any store or email marketer could benefit from. 

E-commerce businesses can also use this trigger to send emails when a subscriber:

• Chooses to hear about new product updates

• Signs up for an event, webinar, or resource

• Signals that they are interested in a particular product category

The next most popular trigger was When subscriber completes a form. This is used when someone fills out a form or a pop-up and you don’t want to add them to a dedicated group. 

It can have plenty of use cases such as:

• Delivering offers and lead magnets

• Letting people sign up for product alerts

• Providing information about online events

• Letting people register for preorders

The third most used trigger was The exact match of a date trigger, which sends an email either on a date in a user’s profile or on a specified time before or after. Use this to send purchase or subscription reminders. 

Takeaway: Every store can benefit from a welcome email and many have this set up. Some other types of triggers aren’t as widely used yet but, as the next section will show, can be even more effective. 

Adding some of these automations to your email marketing strategy could be a good source of campaign optimization. 

The trigger with the highest engagement was Purchased a specific product. This trigger gets such high engagement because it’s so targeted. 

You could use this trigger to:

• Thank customers for their purchases

• Remind them to rebuy a product after a certain period

• Recommend related products and upsells

• Provide information to help them get the most from their purchase

When subscriber clicks a link is the trigger that generates the second highest open and click rates. This is an underutilized type of automation since fewer emails were sent with this trigger than any other kind of automation. 

Part of the reason why it’s so effective is that someone clicking a link is a huge sign that they’re interested in the content you are promoting. 

If you can send a timely follow-up email, the data shows that people will interact with the content and buy. 

You could also use this trigger for:

• Preorders: Mention an upcoming product release and send a promotional email to everyone who clicks the link

• Product recommendations: Send recommended products in a particular category when someone clicks a category link

• Sending relevant information: Send more information about a product when someone clicks on a link to it

• Promoting discounts: If someone clicks on a product but doesn’t buy within a certain period, send them a discount coupon

• Sending sale reminders: If someone clicks on a link to a sale, send a reminder before the sale ends

The third most effective trigger was When subscriber completes a form. Again, this is often used to let people request a specific type of information, so it’s unsurprising that emails containing this information would have high interaction.

While we covered the 3 most interacted with automation types, all automation triggers have high engagement. Even abandoned cart emails, which have the lowest engagement of any automated emails, result in a high open rate of 53% and a click rate of 8%. 

Find out more about all the automation triggers in MailerLite and how to use them here. 

The majority of campaigns sent were regular campaigns. These were also high performers with average open rates of 40.83% and click rates of 5.28%. 

The highest-performing type of campaign in terms of engagement was RSS to email. These had an open rate of 47.86% and a click rate of 6.53%. 

RSS to email campaigns go out automatically when you publish a page on a predefined section of your website. It’s quite a niche use case, but if you can think of a reason to make it work, like KC Tool did in the example below, you can get high engagement. 

The campaign type with by far the lowest interaction is resend to unopens, which is when you resend a campaign to subscribers who didn’t open the initial email. 

While the open rate of these campaigns seems low at 27.52%, this is 27.52% of recipients who otherwise wouldn’t have seen your campaign since the messages are only sent to people who missed the initial email.

This type of campaign is a great way to get more eyes on your offers. Plus the 2.19% click-through rate is extra people who may buy your product

Use this feature sparingly so you don’t clog up people’s inboxes. If you send multiple emails a week, save it for your most impactful campaigns such as new product or sale announcements. 

Email is one of the most effective marketing channels for e-commerce stores. If you’re a small business it helps scale your marketing while freeing you up to focus on other tasks at hand. 

Start by connecting your store with MailerLite and then implement some of the strategies mentioned above. If you already have an email marketing strategy in place, look for tactics that you aren’t already using and consider adding them to your mix.