Every year, ecommerce business owners have more options for customer outreach. But a successful marketing strategy isn’t just about showing up on the newest platforms—it’s also about understanding how your target audience and competitors are using existing outreach channels today.
These key email marketing statisticsprovide valuable insights into the most effective email marketing strategies for ecommerce businesses, which you can use to build brand loyalty, boost sales, maximize engagement and conversion rates, and more.
Here are 47 of the latest email marketing statistics to help you optimize your ecommerce email marketing efforts.
Email marketing statistics for ecommerce
- Email usage statistics
- Email marketing budget statistics
- Email ROI statistics
- Email engagement statistics
- Mobile email marketing statistics
- Email marketing strategy statistics
- Email subject line statistics
- Email marketing personalization statistics
- Email marketing performance statistics
These 47 email marketing statsprovide valuable insights into what works in email marketing today.
Email usage statistics
- There were 4.48 billion global email users in 2024, and analysts expected that number to reach 4.89 billion by 2027.
- 87% of marketing leaders say email marketing is critical to the success of their company.
- One out of every three marketers reports using email marketing.
- 44% of marketing professionals say email is their most effective marketing channel, a greater percentage than for any other channel. Social media and paid search are tied for second place at 16% each.
- 63% of email marketers say the volume of marketing emails they send is increasing.
Email marketing budget statistics
- The average email marketing budget is 7.8% of a business’s total marketing spend.
- 87% of marketers have plans to increase or maintain their email marketing spending in the future.
- 62% of email marketing professionals say it takes their team at least two weeks to create a marketing email.
Email ROI statistics
- 14% of marketers say that email campaigns provide the strongest return on investment (ROI) of any marketing strategy.
- Email marketing campaigns have an average ROI of 36 times, meaning that businesses earn an average of $36 in revenue for every dollar spent on email marketing.
- 52% of email marketing professionals reported that their email campaign ROI doubled between 2022 and 2023, and an additional 5.7% reported their 2023 ROI quadrupled over the same time period.
Email engagement statistics
- The average email engagement rate (measured by open rate) across all industries is 36.5%
- 43% of email recipients in the US say that they always or often delete emails from brands without reading them first, and only 29% report doing so seldom or never.
- Retail businesses have an average email engagement rate of 33.1%.
- Email campaigns see the highest open rates shortly after marketers send them: 21.2% of all email opens happen within the first hour.
- Email marketing newsletter click-through rates (CTR) and open rates depend on email frequency, and both metrics are highest for newsletters with a weekly cadence, which see a 48.31% open rate and a 5.71% CTR on average.
- Technology and transportation services have the highest CTR of all industries, tied at 2.6%. The average CTR for all industries is 1.4%.
Mobile email marketing statistics
- Mobile devices account for over half of all web traffic.
- Nearly half of global internet users with mobile devices say they prefer to receive communications from businesses by email.
- The number of mobile device users in the US is expected to grow by 15.6 million between 2024 and 2029. Analysts expect a total of 324.25 million mobile device users in the US by 2029.
- Due to changes in image caching technology, email marketing statsno longer contain the share of email opens on mobile devices—but in 2021, opens by mobile email users already made up 41.6% of all email opens.
- In July 2023, 56% of email marketing professionals reported plans to optimize email design for mobile devices.
- Users open more emails on mobile during the holiday season than during the rest of the year.
Email marketing strategy statistics
- The most popular objectives for email marketing strategies are product awareness and product promotions, with 16% of email marketing professionals naming each one as their top priority. Customer retention and newsletters tied as the second most popular email campaign type, with 14.6% of email marketers choosing each one.
- 26.5% of email marketing professionals measure conversion rate and 24% measure CTR, making these the two most popular email marketing metrics after open rate.
- 52% of email marketing professionals plan to use personalized email marketing campaigns, and 48% plan to incorporate email automation into their email marketing strategy.
- 55% of marketers use marketing emails to encourage sales, but only 44% use them for lifecycle marketing objectives like increasing customer loyalty, encouraging repeat business, and retaining existing customers.
- Only 9% of marketers describe their email marketing platform as well-integrated with other online systems.
- 34% of marketers who use generative AI report using it to write copy for marketing emails, making this the most common email marketing use case.
- 18% of email marketing professionals offer temporary email opt-outs, and 47% plan to introduce this option soon.
- 35% of marketers want to send more automated emails in the future.
Email subject line statistics
- 65% of email marketing professionals report using subject line personalization in more than half of email marketing campaigns in 2023, and only 9% report never using personalized subject lines.
- 77% of email marketing professionals say that subject linepersonalization improves performance.
- Email subject lines with fewer than 70 characters have the highest open rates, which analysts attribute to their optimization for mobile device display.
- 73% of email marketing professionals say that including emojis in an email’s subject line improves performance.
Email marketing personalization statistics
- 80% of email marketing professionals report that personalization tactics like dynamic message personalization, subject line personalization, and the addition of real-time content improve performance.
- Dynamic content in email marketing appears to be here to stay: 68% of email marketing professionals say that dynamic content personalization improves an email’s performance.
- 90% of email marketing professionals report that using subscriber segmentation to deliver targeted messages boosts performance for marketing emails.
- 18% of marketers say that creating personalized emails is one of their biggest challenges, and 20% said that gathering data about their targeted audience in order to run segmented campaigns and develop personalized content is their biggest challenge.
- Marketing emails sent in response to behavioral triggers generate 10 times greater revenue than other marketing email types.
- 39% of email marketing professionals say that AI-driven hyper-personalization will have the biggest effect on email automation campaigns.
Email marketing performance statistics
- Analysts expect a total email marketing revenue of $9.5 billion in 2024 and project that annual revenues will reach $18.9 billion by 2028.
- 65% of email marketing professionals say email deliverability is becoming more difficult.
- In 2023, 86% of emails arrived in inboxes, 7% went to spam, and 7% went missing.
- In 2024, the average marketing email click-through rate was 2.62%.
- Consumers spend128% more when shopping from emails than when using other methods.
Email marketing statistics FAQ
How effective is email marketing?
Eighty-seven percent of marketing leaders say that email marketing is critical to the success of their company, and 90% of marketers say that delivering targeted messages to email users boosts performance.
What is the average return on email marketing?
Email marketing campaigns have an average ROI of 36 times, meaning that businesses earn $36 for every dollar they spend on email marketing.
Why is email marketing beneficial for ecommerce?
Effective email marketing strategies deliver a strong ROI—36 times, on average. One study found that consumers spend 128% more when shopping by email.
