Ecommerce Email and SMS Marketing Benchmarks 2026
2026 ecommerce email and SMS benchmarks: open, click and order rates for campaigns and flows, SMS ranges, deliverability limits, plus real program data.
On this page
Ecommerce email campaigns average a 31% open rate, a 1.69% click rate and a 0.16% placed order rate in 2026, while automated flows click and convert far higher. This page compiles the 2026 email and SMS benchmarks ecommerce brands use most, mainly from Klaviyo's data on more than 183,000 brands, plus Postscript and Google. It adds something most benchmark pages don't: real program results from brands we work with, measured against those benchmarks.
What are the 2026 email marketing benchmarks?
For ecommerce, Klaviyo's 2026 data shows campaigns averaging a 31% open rate, 1.69% click rate and 0.16% placed order rate. Automated flows average 32.2%, 5.58% and 2.11%. Campaigns make up 94.7% of sends, but flows earn nearly 41% of email revenue.
| Metric | Campaigns | Flows | Top 10%: campaigns | Top 10%: flows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 31% | 32.2% | 45.1% | 45.8% |
| Click rate | 1.69% | 5.58% | 3.38% | 10.48% |
| Placed order rate | 0.16% | 2.11% | 0.36% | 4.3% |
| Share of sends | 94.7% | 5.3% | n/a | n/a |
| Share of email revenue | About 59% | Nearly 41% | n/a | n/a |
Sources: Klaviyo's 2026 email marketing benchmarks (more than 183,000 customers) for open, click and revenue figures; placed order rates as published by Klaviyo and reported by Konabayev. Klaviyo states flows have 13 times the placed order rate of campaigns.
What is a good email open rate?
Around 31% for ecommerce campaigns and 32% for flows is average in Klaviyo's 2026 data, and the top 10% of brands reach about 45%. But open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which loads emails automatically. Treat opens as a rough signal, and judge performance on clicks, orders and revenue per recipient.
What different open rates usually mean:
- Below about 20%: worth checking deliverability, list health and subject lines.
- About 30%: in line with Klaviyo's ecommerce average.
- Above 45%: top-10% territory for campaigns and flows.
- Well above 50%: normal for some flows. Klaviyo's abandoned cart emails averaged 50.5% in its earlier benchmarks, and Lifelines' flows averaged 52.4% in August 2026.
Because privacy protection inflates opens, two brands with the same open rate can have very different results. That's why the rest of this page focuses on clicks, orders and revenue.
What is a good email click rate?
For ecommerce campaigns, 1.69% is average in Klaviyo's 2026 data, and 3.38% puts you in the top 10%. Flows average 5.58%, with the top 10% above 10.48%. Click rate is more reliable than open rate, because a click requires a real person to act.
Click rates vary most by email type. Abandoned cart emails average 6% clicks in Klaviyo's 2026 data, well above campaigns, because the shopper has already shown intent.
What is the average email conversion rate?
Measured as placed orders per recipient, email campaigns convert at 0.16% and flows at 2.11% in Klaviyo's 2026 data. The top 10% reach 0.36% for campaigns and 4.3% for flows. Abandoned cart emails averaged 3.33% in Klaviyo's earlier benchmarks, with top performers at 7.69%.
Conversion rate here means orders attributed to an email divided by the people who received it, within the platform's attribution window. Other sources sometimes measure orders per click instead, which produces much higher numbers, so check the definition before comparing.
Why do email flows outperform campaigns?
Because flows reach people at the moment they act: when they sign up, browse, abandon a cart or buy. In Klaviyo's 2026 data, flows are 5.3% of email sends but nearly 41% of email revenue, with about 18 times the revenue per recipient of campaigns and 13 times the placed order rate.
Email flows: share of sends vs share of revenue
Source: Klaviyo 2026 email benchmarks.
The flow worth building first, by revenue per recipient in Klaviyo's 2026 abandoned cart benchmarks:
- Abandoned cart: $6.77 on average, and $13.70 for the top 10%.
Source: Klaviyo, 2026 abandoned cart benchmarks, more than 110,000 customers. Some older pages quote $3.65 for abandoned cart, which comes from earlier Klaviyo data.
What are the abandoned cart email benchmarks?
Klaviyo's 2026 data puts abandoned cart emails at a 6% click rate, earning $6.77 per recipient, with the top 10% at $13.70. Its earlier benchmarks put the average open rate at 50.5% and the placed order rate at 3.33%, with the top 10% at 65.34% and 7.69%.
| Abandoned cart metric | Average | Top 10% |
|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 50.5% | 65.34% |
| Click rate | 6% | Not reported |
| Placed order rate | 3.33% | 7.69% |
| Revenue per recipient | $6.77 | $13.70 |
Sources: Klaviyo's 2026 abandoned cart benchmarks for click rate and revenue per recipient; open and order rates from Klaviyo's earlier benchmarks, as reported by several 2026 compilations.
What are the 2026 SMS marketing benchmarks?
For ecommerce SMS campaigns, Klaviyo rates click rates of 8.9% to 14.5% as good and placed order rates of 1.0% to 2.0% as good. SMS flows are 7.6% of SMS sends but 45.2% of SMS revenue, earning about 8 times the revenue per recipient of campaigns.
| SMS campaign metric | Good | Great |
|---|---|---|
| Click rate | 8.9% to 14.5% | 14.6% or higher |
| Placed order rate | 1.0% to 2.0% | 2.1% or higher |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.66 to $2.41 | $2.42 or higher |
| Unsubscribe rate | 0.6% to 1.4% | Under 0.5% |
Source: Klaviyo's 2026 SMS marketing benchmarks (more than 183,000 customers), with ranges as reported by ClickMinded and eightx.
Three more SMS findings worth knowing:
- SMS flows win new customers. Klaviyo reports 64.4% of SMS flow revenue comes from new buyers, against 20% for SMS campaigns.
- Revenue per message on Shopify: Postscript's 2026 benchmarks across more than 17,000 Shopify stores put median revenue per message at $0.98, with the top 10% above $4.54, as reported by eightx.
- SMS open rates aren't a useful metric. Nearly every text is seen, so judge SMS on clicks, orders and revenue.
What are good email deliverability benchmarks?
Keep spam complaints below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%, as Google requires of bulk senders. Keep bounces low and steady; we treat 1% as a warning line. Watch unsubscribes per send; we treat 0.3% as a warning line. A sudden rise in any of the three means stop and investigate.
Google's sender guidelines also require SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication and one-click unsubscribe for anyone sending 5,000 or more emails a day to Gmail.
What healthy looks like in practice: when we moved Vertigo Vinyl, a drop-based record store with about 250,000 contacts, from Mailchimp to Klaviyo, its bounce rate stayed at 0.14%, spam complaints at 0.002% and unsubscribes at 0.03% throughout the move. After its SMS moved to a new number, 93% of the first texts were delivered.
Source: Solo Media Group account team, October 2026 migration. Single-brand results, not a benchmark.
What share of revenue should email and SMS drive?
There's no single right number. We aim for 20% to 30% from email and SMS combined. A full program can go further: email and SMS drove 39% of Lifelines' site revenue in September 2026.
Revenue share depends heavily on attribution settings. Klaviyo credits an email for an order within 5 days of an open or click by default, so compare your share using the same attribution window over time.
How does a real email and SMS program compare with the benchmarks?
Well above them, when it's built properly. In August 2026, Lifelines' Klaviyo campaign click rate was 2.54% against an ecommerce peer median of 0.75%, its flow click rate 7.95% against 3.39%, and its flow open rate 52.4% against 42.6%. Its SMS campaigns reached 8% to 23% click rates.
Lifelines vs Klaviyo ecommerce peer median, August 2026
Source: Klaviyo Live Benchmarks, ecommerce peer group, August 2026 data.
These comparisons use Klaviyo's live benchmarks inside the Lifelines account, which compare a brand against a peer group of similar ecommerce businesses. Peer medians differ from the all-customer averages earlier on this page, because they compare like with like, so they're the fairer yardstick for a single brand.
Other first-party results from the Lifelines program:
- Welcome flow conversion: 10.3% in its first month.
- Flow share of revenue: 63% of Klaviyo-attributed revenue in August 2026.
- Campaign open rates: 40% to 45%, holding steady.
- SMS sign-up form: converting at 10% or more, about three to four times the email forms.
- Monthly revenue: Klaviyo-attributed revenue grew from $5.1K to $106.6K a month in four months.
Sources: Klaviyo Live Benchmarks, ecommerce peer group, August 2026 data, and Lifelines monthly Klaviyo reports, June to September 2026. Single-brand results, not benchmarks. The full story is on our Klaviyo email and SMS marketing page.
How we compiled these benchmarks
We gathered the most-cited 2026 ecommerce email and SMS benchmarks, recorded each figure with its source and definition, and kept our own client results separate from industry benchmarks. Where a figure appears in only one secondary source, we say so.
- Klaviyo publishes 2026 email and SMS benchmarks based on more than 183,000 customers, and abandoned cart benchmarks based on more than 110,000.
- Postscript publishes SMS benchmarks from more than 17,000 Shopify stores; its figures here are as reported by eightx.
- Google sets the spam complaint thresholds that matter most for deliverability.
- Our own data comes from Klaviyo reports and Klaviyo's live peer benchmarks for programs we run, and from our account team's migration records. Single-brand results aren't benchmarks, and we label them that way.
We review this page when new benchmark data is published. Last reviewed November 2026.
How to cite this page
You're welcome to use these figures. Please credit the original source of each figure, and link to this page as the compilation:
Source: Solo Media Group, "Ecommerce Email and SMS Marketing Benchmarks 2026," solomediagroup.com/blogs/insights/email-sms-marketing-benchmarks (updated November 2026), compiling data from Klaviyo, Postscript and Google, with first-party program data.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good SMS click rate?
For ecommerce SMS campaigns, Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks describe 8.9% to 14.5% as good and 14.6% or higher as great. SMS flows usually click higher than campaigns, because they reach people at a moment of intent.
What is a good email unsubscribe rate?
Keep it low and stable. We watch a 0.3% line for email unsubscribes per send. For SMS campaigns, Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks put under 0.5% in its top band. A sudden rise usually means a frequency or targeting problem.
Why are email open rates unreliable?
Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads emails automatically, which registers as an open whether or not anyone read the message. Open rates now run high and noisy, so use clicks, placed orders and revenue per recipient to judge performance.
What is revenue per recipient?
Revenue per recipient is the revenue attributed to a message divided by the number of people who received it. It combines click rate, conversion and order value in one number, which makes it the best single measure of whether an email or text is earning.
What spam complaint rate is too high?
Google asks bulk senders to keep spam complaints below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%. Above that, more of your email can land in spam or be rejected by Gmail.
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