Email marketing statistics DTC brands should know in 2025

The majority of marketers see a 2 x increase in return on investment from email. For ecommerce store owners, email marketing is also the best channel for building personal relationships with customers.

But given how many emails bombard people (I get a minimum of 50 or so daily emails), how effective is it really?

How are potential customers interacting with email in 2025? What's the return on investment (ROI)? What type of email is most effective? 🧐

We've rounded up the latest email marketing statistics from the last year (or just over) to help you plan your email marketing strategy for 2025.

Top email marketing statistics to know in 2025

• Email is a dominant marketing channel with 4.59 billion users by 2025, making it the largest and most lucrative channel for marketers.
• Email marketing is still delivering great ROI, proving its effectiveness in driving sales and conversions.
• Personalisation boosts email performance with tailored messaging significantly improving engagement.
• The cart abandonment email is one of the most effective types a brand can send, with the highest email recipient revenue.
• Email is crucial for both customer acquisition and retention, as well as overall brand engagement.

Key email marketing statistics for DTC brands

Email usage statistics

Let's get a top-level look at marketing email usage statistics. These stats should give you a good understanding of the current landscape.

The number of email users worldwide in 2025 is projected to be 4.59 billion.

The world population is sitting at around 8.19 billion, and more than half will be using email in 2025. And most will be doing so from their mobile devices.

Email is the largest marketing channel available. And the bottom line? Brands of all sizes should incorporate email marketing into their strategy due to email’s global ubiquity. 💌

Source: The Radicati Group Inc (Q4, 2023).
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The total number of business and consumer emails is estimated to reach 376 billion in 2025.

If 376 billion emails will be sent in 2025, that means 1.03 billion emails on average will be fired off in 2025. 

With this many emails flying around, you'll need to make sure your brand stands out in your customers' email accounts. 

Source: The Radicati Group Inc (Q4, 2023).

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The global email marketing market is expected to grow to $46.1 billion by 2033.

The global email marketing market was valued at $11.5 billion in 2023, and is expected to grow to $46.1 billion by 2033. Plus email inboxes are one of the few marketing channels customers still have decent control over.

That's why email marketing is valuable—customers have to volunteer their email address. Customers who opt in to get emails is a good indicator that they’re interested in building a relationship with your brand. But don’t forget, customers can just as easily opt out if they don’t see the value in your emails.

Source: Market.us (Q3, 2024).

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The most common types of email marketing campaigns worldwide are newsletters (16.8%).

It makes sense that newsletters are the most common type of email campaign—it's often the email that people sign up to receive. For example, many brands will ask a customer to sign up to a newsletter, with a discount of their first order as a reward.

From there, brands will often shift to include promotional emails in follow-up sequences.

Here’s the top 4 types of email in 2024:

• Newsletters (16.8%)
• Promotional offers (15.3%)
• Lead nurture emails (11.6%)
• Welcome emails (11.6%)

We’ll cover some of these in more detail further into the article.

Source: Mailmodo (Q1, 2024).

Email marketing on mobile devices statistics

With most people accessing the internet on mobile, it makes sense to bring up mobile device-specific statistics. Let’s take a look at some below. 📱

29.9% of internet users aged 16 to 64 buy something each week from their mobile phones 

While this statistic isn’t specific to email, it does tell us that almost a third of 16–64 year olds are willing to spend money from their mobile devices. Later in the guide, we’ll see statistics on the conversion rates of email marketing. 

Source: Datareportal (Q1, 2024)
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Almost half (49.5%) of internet users aged between 16–64 used email apps in the previous month 

Remember what we were saying earlier about email marketing being the largest channel in the world? Here’s why: half of global internet users are accessing email apps. 

Source: Datareportal (Q1, 2024)
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41.6% of emails are opened on mobile devices

Here’s a list of the tools or devices people are using to open their emails:

• 41.6% of emails are opened on mobile devices
• 40.6% of emails are opened using webmail
• 16.2% of emails are opened using a desktop app
• 1.6% of emails are opened in other environments

This statistic is significant because it shows how important it is to optimise your email marketing campaigns for mobile devices. 

Source: Litmus (Q3, 2021)

Statistics on the overall effectiveness of email marketing

Next, let's dig deeper into the overall effectiveness of email marketing. 👇

Email was the top-performing marketing channel for marketers (25%) 

Mailmondo surveyed 250 marketers at B2B and B2C companies on the effectiveness of their marketing channels. The winner?  Email, by a considerable margin! 

Here’s the top 5 best-performing marketing channels according to the survey:

• Email (25%)
• Organic search (19.7%)
• Social media ads (11.4%)
• Organic social media (11.3%)
• Paid search (10.4%)

Source: Mailmodo (Q1, 2024).

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Emails from the retail industry have an average open rate of 41.7%

Retail (and, by extension, ecommerce) sits around the middle of the pack in terms of industry email open rates. That means your DTC brand will need to work harder to stand out among industries like communications, non-profits, and entertainment.

However, ecommerce stores give brands the opportunity to collect data on your customers, which you can then use to personalise the emails you send them after checkout.

This edge makes message personalisation much easier. It’s a great way for your brand to improve  engagement and conversion rates.

Source: GetResponse (Q2, 2024).

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Retail has an average click-through rate of 5%.

As with the above statistic, retail also sits around the middle of the pack for click-through rates. And similarly, you can use zero-party and first-party data to create personalised content. For example, using customers' names in the subject lines. 

This approach should help you improve email marketing conversion and engagement rates. 

Source: GetResponse (Q1, 2024).

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Home and garden has the highest open rate

Replace with some commentary about the best ecomm sector for open rate:

• Home and garden: 41%
• Sporting goods: 41%
• Food and beverage: 41%
• Clothing and accessories: 40.9%
• Specialty: 40%
• Toys and hobbies: 40%
• Jewellery: 39%
• Hardware and home improvement: 39%
• Automotive: 38.9%
• Electronics: 38%
• Health and beauty: 38%
• Office supplies: 38%
• Other: 38%
• Mass merchant: 37%

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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Toys and hobbies have the highest click rate 

TAs we can see, the industry with the highest average click rates is Toys and Hobbies, while the lowest is Health and Beauty. 

• Toys and hobbies: 1.8%
• Sporting goods: 1.7%
• Automotive: 1.7%
• Hardware and home improvement: 1.7%
• Clothing and accessories: 1.6%
• Home and garden: 1.6%
• Office supplies: 1.6%
• Other: 1.6%
• Electronics: 1.5%
• Food and Beverage: 1.5%
• Jewellery: 1.5%
• Specialty: 1.4%
• Health and beauty: 1%

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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50% of consumers made a purchase from an email in the last year

Compare the purchases customers made from email to the following:

• 48% from social media ads.
• 43% from social media posts.
• 24% from SMS/MMS messages.

Purchase conversion rates are one of the top email marketing metrics for selling products or services. It may seem obvious, but you'd be losing out on a lot of sales opportunities if you only used your email list for giving weekly industry updates.

Source: Marigold (Q1, 2024).

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Poor email content has the potential to annoy your customers and damange your brand

51% of consumers globally felt that they received irrelevant content or offers from brands in the previous six months

Additionally, 41% also said that messages didn't reflect wants and needs.

Customers who receive irrelevant offers are more likely to lose trust in your brand, or at the least, ignore future promotional messages. 

This underlines how important good-quality content and personalisation are to your email marketing strategy. Ignore these at your peril!

Source: Marigold (Q1, 2024).

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Statistics on email marketing send times

Most marketers feel like the time they send marketing emails is important. But what times to send them are the most effective? ⏰

Tuesday is the best time of day to send emails

The source of this particular data comes from a mix of B2B and B2C industry professionals. However, it’s still worth highlighting because it provides a comparison to other data sources. Here’s a breakdown of the best day to send emails, according to marketers: 

• Tuesday - 35.3%
• Wednesday - 19.6%
• Monday - 15.7%
• Thursday - 12.4%
• Saturday - 7.2%
• Friday - 6.5%
• Sunday - 3.3%

And for ecommerce businesses? According to Brevo, you should send your emails on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10am.

Source: Mailmodo (Q1, 2024) and Brevo (Q2, 2024).

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Effective email subject lines and CTAs

The content of your emails ultimately determines how effective your email marketing campaigns are. And two of the most important aspects of your emails are your subject lines and calls-to-action (CTA). Let’s take a look at a few statistics in this area. 🎬

47% of email recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line.

Additionally, 69% of recipients decide if your email is spam based solely on the subject line. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a single line of text, andit goes to show that first impressions can make or break your campaigns.

Source: OptinMonster (2024)

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64.7% of marketers said that they sent at least half of their email campaigns with subject line personalisation. 

With subject lines being so important, it’s easy to see why most marketers use personalisation in them. Addressing customers by their names or information about their recent purchases is more likely to convince them that your emails are relevant and worthy of opening.

Source: Mailmodo (Q1, 2024).

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Emails with a CTA have a click-through rate of 3–5%.

Earlier in the article, you’ll have seen the average click rates across ecommerce industry niches—you’ll notice those figures are quite a bit smaller than this one. The insight tells us that making sure your emails have a CTA can give you a significant boost in performance. 

This data box research also tells us that 43% of marketers only use a single CTA in their emails, while 30% use two. This insight tells us that often less is more for better performance. 

Source: Databox (Q3, 2023)

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Statistics on the ROI of email marketing

Now we're aware of how effective email marketing can be for promoting your brand and products, let's see how that translates in terms of money. 🤑

Half of marketers doubled their overall marketing ROI in 2023

If over half (52.8%)of the surveyed marketers saw twice the level of improvement in ROI, it's interesting to consider why. At least part of the answer could be the huge jump in focus on email when Google announced the sunsetting of third-party cookies.

Either way, email marketing is proving its value as we move into 2025. 

Source: Mailmodo (Q1, 2024).

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35% of US-based marketers spent $1–$100 per month on email marketing.

Email marketing doesn't have to cost a fortune. The majority of marketers spend less than $100 per month, with over half spending less than $500 per month.

However, the larger your email list, the more budget you'll need to spend on email marketing. Email service providers usually charge brands based on the size of your list. 

But when you factor in the effectiveness of the channel, the expense is usually worth it. 

Source: WebFX (Q3, 2024).

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17% of businesses allocate 6–10% of their overall marketing budget on email marketing. 

The largest group of businesses spend up to 10% of their marketing budget on email. While smaller groups allocate more budget to email marketing. 

The reason is likely the potential ROI—brands don't need to spend as much compared to display ads for similar levels of engagement, for example.

Source: WebFX (Q3, 2024).

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Cart abandonment emails statistics

Let's get more specific. One of the most effective types of sequences for driving email marketing revenue are abandoned cart emails. 

With the statistics below, you'll start to see why. 🛍️

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Abandoned cart email flows drive the highest revenue per recipient (RPR) at $3.65

Abandoned cart emails perform the best in terms of revenue, and there are likely a few reasons for this. 

First, marketers often include a discount voucher in abandoned cart emails to entice customers back to complete their purchase—driving up revenue.

Second, with this knowledge, customers often deliberately abandon carts to hunt for the best deal. But both scenarios are more likely to lead to a conversion compared to the other types of email since the customer has already engaged with your brand.

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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The average open rates across all sectors for abandoned cart emails was 51%.

Additionally, abandoned cart emails also have:

• A click rate of 6%
• A placed order rate of 3%
• An unsubscribe rate of 0.6%

Abandoned cart emails have a good open-to-unsubscribe rate ratio here. It roughly translates to 1 person unsubscribing for every 101 opened emails. Plus, almost half of customers who click-through end up placing an order.

Let's say you had 100 customers abandon their carts. If you send them an abandoned cart email, it's likely that 50 would open them, 6 would click through, 3 would place an order, and you might get one unsubscriber.

Not bad, right?

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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Cart abandonment open email rates by industry

Here’s a list of ecommerce sectors broken down by their abandoned cart email open rates:

• Food and Beverage: 52%
• Home and garden: 52%
• Sporting goods: 52%
• Clothing and accessories: 51%
• Jewellery: 50%
• Specialty: 50%
• Electronics: 49%
• Hardware and home improvement: 49%
• Health and beauty: 49%
• Office supplies: 49%
• Toys and hobbies: 49%
• Other: 49%
• Mass merchant: 46%
• Automotive: 4%

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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Cart abandonment emails have a global conversion rate of 2.6%.

Abandoned cart emails are an easy way to drive extra revenue. All you need is some email automation campaigns with behavior-based triggers.

Source: Omnisend (Q1, 2024).

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Welcome email statistics

Another popular type of email marketing sequence is the welcome email. Customers usually get welcome emails when they sign up for newsletters or create an account with your store while purchasing.

Let's take a look at how effective they are. 🤗

Welcome email flows drive an average $2.65 RPR within the overall ecommerce industry.

As we saw earlier, welcome email flows drive a lower RPR, but they're still more valuable than other flows. They're definitely still worth putting effort into.

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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Welcome emails have a global average open rate of 54.3% in ecommerce.

Compared to other email flows, welcome emails have a higher open rate. This makes sense because your target audience expects to see a welcome email when they sign up for updates.

However, they do fall short in other key email metrics:.

• Click rate of 5.8%
• Placed order rate of 2.3%
• Unsubscribe rate of 0.9%

It's likely because some customers only want to sign up for that first-time purchase discount and then promptly unsubscribe.

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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Welcome email average open rates by ecommerce industry

Global averages across industries are useful, but what can be even more helpful is knowing the average rates for your specific industry. Let’s break them down:

• Sporting goods: 57.6%
• Automotive: 55.5%
• Food and Beverage: 55.5%
• Home and garden: 55.3%
• Clothing and accessories: 55%
• Other: 54.7%
• Electronics: 54.4%
• Toys and hobbies: 54.4%
• Hardware and home improvement: 54%
• Office supplies: 53.8%
• Specialty: 53.6%
• Jewellery: 53.5%
• Health and beauty: 51.7%
• Mass merchant: 48.8%

Source: Klaviyo (2024).

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Welcome emails have a global average conversion rate of 2.7%. 

Omnisend suggests that welcome emails have a better conversion rate compared to abandoned cart emails. These emails set the tone for your relationship with customers and help establish a strong connection from the start.

Source: Omnisend (Q1, 2024).

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Customer retention email statistics

Customer retention is just as important as acquisition.

If you're interested in learning more about customer retention, check out our podcast with Hairstory about how to boost repeat purchases.

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78% of consumers are likely to engage with a personalised offer tailored to their interests.

You can base your emails on recent purchases, cross-sell or upsell recommendations, information on a cause your store supports, and more.

So when you want to re-ignite a past customer, a personalised email is the way to go. 

Source: Marigold (Q1, 2024).

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84% of consumers are likely to engage with loyalty program promotions

A customer loyalty program is one of the best vehicles for driving customer retention. And with an engagement rate of 84%, it’s not hard to see why

Source: Marigold (Q1, 2024).

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Customer retention was key objective for email marketers worldwide

Email marketers placed customer retention as second in their priority list, just behind awareness / brand promotion.  

Source: Mailmodo (Q1, 2024).

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Level-up your email marketing game

Email marketing will be very much alive in 2025. But what if you're struggling to manage your email marketing campaigns? We’ve got some fantastic resources to help you boost your email conversions and drive profit. Here are some highlights: 

• 🎧How to boost repeat purchases with email marketing - podcast with Hairstory 
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• 👩‍💻 18 ecommerce marketing strategies (including email marketing) 
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• 📈Using emails to boost brand awareness

Plus, if you’re struggling to manage all the content you need to build great email campaigns - look no further than Dash. ✨

Our digital asset management platform serves as the headquarters for your visual content. Your visual content isn't just images; you can include video, GIFs, logos, brand docs, and more. 

Dash makes it easy for you to navigate through your library of visual assets. You or your team can search for your specific email sequence hero images or your latest display ad. You can also send assets to retail partners and deploy your own content. 🚀

You can also easily embed content into email marketing tools like Klaviyo. ✨

Here's how some of our customers use Dash for their marketing:

• 🍹Goodrays use Dash to keep on top of all their ecommerce marketplace assets
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• 👟 Filling Pieces use Dash to quickly search and deploy images to their channels
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• 🪴Haws use Dash portals to get assets to their 100+ retailers around the world

Want to give it a go yourself? Sign up to Dash for free for 14 days.