In the world of email marketing, it seems that less is more. Emails sent to a narrower slice of an e-Commerce retailer’s list (1% to 25% of the total) outperformed those sent to a larger segment (75% or more) on three key metrics: open rate, click-through rate and revenue per recipient (RPR).
Emails sent to the smaller list had an 18.29% open rate, compared to 12.93% for the larger list; a 2.17% click-through rate, compared to 1.33%; and $0.17 RPR, compared to $0.11 for the larger list.
The Ecommerce Industry Benchmark Report from Klaviyo analyzed more than 1.5 billion emails sent during Q4 2016. Key takeaways included:
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• Companies generating higher annual revenues reported a larger percentage of revenue from email than lower-revenue companies;
• Larger companies generate more revenue from each email sent, with higher RPR;
• The higher-revenue retailers divided their email list into more discrete segments compared to lower-revenue companies; and
• Automated emails (sent based on customer activity, such as abandoning an online shopping cart or purchasing an item from a certain product collection) generated more than $50 million in Q4 for the companies analyzed in the report.
According to the May 2017 report, email success comes down to two factors: segmentation and automation: “By segmentation, we mean being deliberate about who you email instead of relying on blasts that go to the entire list,” wrote the author’s report, Diana Ecker, Customer Marketing Manager at Klaviyo. “And by automation, we mean setting up emails that are automatically triggered by customer behavior to bring revenue into your store.”
The companies studied in the report, which have their e-Commerce sites integrated with Klaviyo, earned more than $230 million from purchases attributed to email in Q4. This figure represents 27% of these retailers’ overall average site revenue for the period. For the largest companies (those with annual 2016 revenue of $10 million or more), revenue attributed to emails accounted for nearly one-third of their per-storefront sales in Q4.
Narrower ‘Slices’ Create Better Email Results
Which factors contribute to email success for higher revenue retailers? For one, they divide their email lists into far more discrete segments than their lower-revenue counterparts. Those generating the highest revenue had more than 10 times as many segments as the lowest-revenue retailers: 13.36 segments for e-Commerce sites with 2016 revenue of less than $100,000, compared to 133.97 segments for sites with revenue of $10 million or more.
Abandoned Cart Emails Generate Impressive ROI
The study examined results from four of the most popular types of automated emails: welcome series; abandoned cart emails; browse abandonment emails; and winback emails, also known as re-engagement emails. Winback emails are sent to customers who made a purchase (typically three, six, or 12 months earlier) but have not done so since.
Results were segmented by four average order sizes: less than $50; $50 to $100; $100 to $200; and $200 or more.
In the $100 to $200 range, the four types of automated emails generated average RPRs of:
- $7.01 for Abandoned cart;
- $3.34 for Welcome series;
- $1.95 for Browse abandonment; and
- $0.84 for Winback emails.
For all but the less than $50 group, abandoned cart emails generated the most impressive average RPR. For example, in the more than $200 category, these emails generated an RPR of $14.14.
