Email is Dead (unless you look at the data)

As a brand or retailer, it’s likely that at some stage you’ve heard these very words uttered: email is dead. Sure, in a hyper-connected world with overloaded inboxes it sounds like something that could be true. Unless you actually look at how consumers are making purchases.

It may come as a surprise that we’re seeing noticeable growth from email as a proportion of total e-commerce revenue. When we look at the first two months of 2021 for example, email revenue is 15.58%. For the same period the year before it was 13.36% and in 2019 it was 12.17%. 

2021: Email revenue at 15.58%

2020: Email Revenue 13.36%

When discounting affiliate and referral traffic which understandably has an above average conversion rate given the targeted shoppers, email is the top performing channel for conversions with an average of 3.48% for January and February 2021. This is much higher than the general conversion rate for the same period which was 2.75%. 

It was not a trend we expected, but that’s what’s so exciting about looking at the data in real-time. With developments in segmentation and AI, email is an enormous opportunity for retailers. We’ve seen the very real role of loyalty programs, the pandemic push to online and the impact on consumer behaviour. 

Retailers are utilising email as a massive revenue generator. So, is email dead? Only if you’re not using it properly. 

Power Retail’s benchmarking platform offers retailers a single source of truth when it comes to e-commerce performance. With benchmarks developed based on over 60,000 consumer and retailer interviews, and more than 500m online sessions, our technology overlays retailer Google Analytics data with performance benchmarks which are automatically updated every 24 hours. Retailer Performance Benchmarks are available exclusively to Switched On Members. Find out more: https://powerretail.com.au/switched-on/