Email reaches 4.48 billion people and, by the most quoted estimate in the industry, returns $36 for every $1 spent. This page collects 162 figures on how the channel performs in 2026, and every one of them links to the study, dataset or document it came from and carries the year it was published.
YOCTO research, reviewed by George Kapernaros. Last updated September 2026.
Key email marketing statistics at a glance
If you only need the headline numbers, these are the ones people cite most, corrected to their real source and date.
Most of what gets said about email is opinion. The ten numbers below follow a single send from the first mass email in 1978 to the money it makes today, and each one is sourced.
In 1978, one email made $13 million.
On May 3, 1978, a marketer at Digital Equipment Corporation named Gary Thuerk sent the first mass email, to about 400 people on the Arpanet. It reportedly booked his company $13 million in sales, a figure that is Thuerk's own and one he has put as high as $14 million (Computerworld, 2007; original message archived by Brad Templeton, 2003). People have been declaring email dead almost ever since.
400 recipients, $13 million. Gary Thuerk says his 1978 email to about 400 Arpanet users sold $13 million or $14 million worth of DEC machines. (Computerworld, 2007)#
May 3, 1978 is when the message went out from Thuerk's account at Digital Equipment Corporation, according to the archived original and the replies it drew. (Brad Templeton, 2003)#
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"Email is dead""Social killed email""Gen Z doesn't do email""Nobody reads newsletters"
Is it?
People keep saying email is dead. The numbers say the opposite. Here they are.
Scene 02 - The user base
Half the planet has an inbox.
Start with the population. 4.48 billion people used email in 2024, more than half of everyone alive, and the forecast for 2026 is 4.73 billion (The Radicati Group, 2024). You will often see this rounded to 4.5 billion and labeled with the current year. The figure is Radicati's, and it is a 2024 number.
It is not a young against old story either. 75% of online adults use email at least once a month (DataReportal, 2025).
Scene 03 - The volume
361 billion emails a day.
That user base sent and received 361.6 billion emails every day in 2024. The forecast for 2026 is 392.5 billion, growth of a little over 4% a year (The Radicati Group, 2024).
Honesty beat: 44.99% of global email traffic in 2025 was spam (Kaspersky, 2026), and Gmail alone blocks nearly 15 billion unwanted emails a day before anyone sees them (Google, 2023). We strip that out now so the engagement numbers later mean something.
Scene 04 - The behavior
You think you ignore it.
You probably think you ignore marketing email. The behavior data disagrees. 84.9% of consumers check their personal inbox at least twice a day (Sinch Mailgun, 2024), and 93% of surveyed email users say they use email every day (ZeroBounce, 2026).
It starts before work. In a 2021 survey of full-time employed Americans, 11% checked email the moment they woke, 19% within 30 minutes, and 78% before they went in to work (Sleep Advisor, 2021). These are self-reported survey answers.
Scene 05 - The funnel
The 8-second life of an email.
Follow 100 sent emails and watch the group shrink at every gate. The average email is read for 8.97 seconds (Litmus, 2022), which is where the eight seconds comes from. The funnel in the animation is a YOCTO illustration, rounded to whole emails so it can be drawn. The measured benchmarks behind each step are cited below it.
Gate 01 - Delivered
16 never arrive.
Globally, 83.5% of tracked email reached the inbox in 2024. The rest went to spam (6.7%) or went missing (9.8%) (Validity, 2025). Placement is a managed number, and senders who authenticate, keep complaint rates under Gmail's 0.3% ceiling and mail people who want the email sit well above the average.
Gate 02 - Opened
About a third get opened.
The large platforms land close together: 31.02% on Klaviyo (Klaviyo, 2026), 30.7% on Omnisend (Omnisend, 2026) and 30.8% at Constant Contact (Constant Contact, 2026). Of the emails that do get opened and can be timed, 29.4% are read for more than eight seconds, 41.1% are skimmed and 29.5% get a glance (Litmus, 2022).
Eight seconds does not sound like much. It is the entire pitch, and it costs almost nothing to earn.
Gate 03 - Clicked
Two people click.
The average campaign click rate on Klaviyo is 1.69%, so out of the original hundred about two people act (Klaviyo, 2026). Automated flows, which reach people at the moment they are interested, are clicked at 5.58%.
The reveal
One converts. That's enough.
Campaigns convert a small fraction of a percent of recipients into orders. Flows convert 2.11% (Klaviyo, 2026). Email does not win because everyone reads it. It wins because enough people give it eight seconds at almost no cost, and the math still works. Here is the money.
Scene 06 - The return
Every $1 in. $36 out.
Email returns $36 for every $1 spent. That is the figure Litmus publishes in its ROI guide, and it is the one that ends most arguments about the channel (Litmus, 2025). Litmus does not attach a survey or a year to it on that page, so it should not be labeled 2026. What Litmus does date: retail, ecommerce and consumer goods brands reported 45:1 in its 2020 survey (Litmus, 2025), and in its 2025 survey 35% of marketing leaders reported between $10 and $36 back per $1, 30% reported $36 to $50 and 5% reported more than $50 (Litmus, 2025). In the UK, marketers now estimate almost £41 back for every £1 (DMA UK, 2026).
0B
Email users worldwide
0B / day
Emails sent every day
$1
Returned for every $1 spent
100 / 100
surviving the funnel
Email users and volume statistics
About 4.5 billion people use email, they send and receive more than 360 billion messages a day, and most of them check their inbox several times a day.
4.48 billion people worldwide used email in 2024, in The Radicati Group's forecast (4,481 million, which most roundups quote as 4.5 billion). (The Radicati Group, 2024)#
4.73 billion email users worldwide is Radicati's forecast for 2026. (The Radicati Group, 2024)#
4.9 billion+ email users are forecast by the end of 2028, growth of about 3% a year. (The Radicati Group, 2024)#
Over half of the world's population used email in 2024. (The Radicati Group, 2024)#
361.6 billion business and consumer emails were sent and received per day in 2024. (The Radicati Group, 2024)#
392.5 billion emails a day is Radicati's forecast for 2026, up 4.3% on 2025, rising to 424.2 billion in 2028. (The Radicati Group, 2024)#
75% of online adults worldwide say they use email at least once a month, in GWI survey data. (DataReportal, 2025)#
58% of UK adult internet users used Gmail in May 2025, up from 55% in 2024 and 51% in 2023. (Ofcom, 2025)#
71.5% of consumers have more than one email account, and 28% keep a separate address just for marketing emails. (Sinch Mailgun, 2024)#
84.9% of consumers check their personal email at least twice a day, and 29% check it more than five times a day. (Sinch Mailgun, 2024)#
93% of surveyed email users say they use email every day. (ZeroBounce, 2026)#
42% of surveyed email users check their inbox three to five times a day. (ZeroBounce, 2026)#
78% of full-time employed Americans check their email before they go in to work. (Sleep Advisor, 2021)#
19% of full-time employed Americans check their email within 30 minutes of waking up. (Sleep Advisor, 2021)#
11% of full-time employed Americans check their email immediately upon waking up. (Sleep Advisor, 2021)#
Email is the one channel where the audience is nearly everyone and the habit is daily. The open question for a brand is what it does with the attention.
Email marketing ROI statistics
The most quoted return on email is $36 for every $1 spent, and the dated evidence around it puts most programs somewhere between 10:1 and 50:1.
The replacements that didn't
Social, paid and direct mail were each the email killer of their moment. Email is still used by as many marketers as organic social, and three quarters of them plan to hold or raise what they spend on it. The comparison this page used to make here, an ROI index of 28.5 for email against 7 for direct mail, traces to a 2012 Direct Marketing Association report and has been retired. The line that 73% of B2B marketers call email their most effective prospecting channel could not be traced to any primary study and has been removed.
$36 per $1 is the average email marketing return Litmus states in its ROI guide, the most quoted figure in the channel. Litmus names no survey or year for it on that page. (Litmus, 2025)#
35% / 30% / 5% of marketing leaders report $10 to $36, $36 to $50, and more than $50 back for every $1 spent on email. (Litmus, 2025)#
45:1 is the email ROI reported by retail, ecommerce and consumer goods brands, the highest of four industries, ahead of agencies (42:1), software (36:1) and media (32:1). (Litmus, 2025)#
42:1 was the average email ROI in Litmus's 2019 State of Email survey, up from 38:1 the year before. (Litmus, 2020)#
21% of marketing leaders do not measure email ROI, down from 36% in 2023. (Litmus, 2025)#
Top 8% of email programs report ROI of 45:1 or more, and they most commonly send newsletters and onboarding emails. (Litmus, 2026)#
Almost £41 per £1 is the email ROI marketers estimate in the DMA Marketer Email Tracker 2026, up from just over £38 in the previous edition. (DMA UK, 2026)#
40% of marketers use email marketing, tying it with organic social as the number 2 most used channel. (HubSpot, 2026)#
22% of marketers name email one of their top ROI-driving channels. (HubSpot, 2026)#
About 75% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their email investment in 2026. (HubSpot, 2026)#
A typical email open rate in 2026 is about a third: the large ecommerce platforms report averages between 30.7% and 33.9% once Apple's privacy opens are counted.
The honest number is a third
Forget the noise. Since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection began pre-loading email in September 2021, a reported open no longer means a person opened the message, so raw open rates are not comparable with anything measured before it. Brevo publishes the same data both ways, which makes the effect easy to see: 20.73% with Apple's privacy opens removed and 33.87% with them counted. On the platforms that count them, which is how most brands see their own reports, the averages cluster between 30.7% and 33.9%. The working figure is still one clean number: about a third of emails are recorded as opened. This page previously published that as a blended 32% (June 2026), and the primary data supports the same conclusion.
31.02% is the average campaign open rate across all industries on Klaviyo, and the top 10% of campaigns reach 45.12%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
32.21% is the average open rate for Klaviyo automated flows, with the top 10% at 45.80%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
Industry
Average open rate
Top 10%
All industries
31.02%
45.12%
Clothing and accessories
33.13%
46.72%
Jewelry
32.53%
46.51%
Home and garden
32.48%
46.06%
Sporting goods
31.91%
44.93%
Toys and hobbies
31.73%
45.06%
Food and beverage
31.17%
44.30%
Hardware and home improvement
30.93%
44.66%
Health and beauty
30.46%
44.73%
Electronics
29.29%
43.48%
Average and top 10% campaign open rates by industry. Source: Klaviyo, 2026 email marketing benchmarks (183,000+ customers). Open rate is unique opens divided by delivered emails and includes Apple MPP opens. Table belongs to stat #s-028.
30.7% was the average open rate for ecommerce email campaigns on Omnisend in 2025, up from 26.6% in 2024. (Omnisend, 2026)#
30.8% was the average open rate across all industries for Constant Contact customers in the first quarter of 2026. (Constant Contact, 2026)#
20.73% is Brevo's average campaign open rate with Apple MPP opens excluded, rising to 33.87% when they are included. (Brevo, 2026)#
43.46% was the median open rate across 3.6 million MailerLite campaigns sent between December 2024 and November 2025. (MailerLite, 2025)#
39.64% was the average open rate across 4.4 billion messages sent by GetResponse customers in 2023. (GetResponse, 2024)#
35.63% is the average open rate for all Mailchimp users, and ecommerce averages 29.81%. (Mailchimp, 2023)#
51.04% of email opens tracked by Litmus in August 2022 were Apple Mail Privacy Protection opens, one year after the feature launched. (Litmus, 2022)#
33% is the open rate Klaviyo advises senders to stay above as a deliverability best practice, alongside a click rate of at least 1%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
Open rate is now a deliverability signal more than a measure of interest. Treat it as a health check and judge the program on clicks, orders and revenue per recipient.
Email click rate and conversion statistics
Average campaign click rates sit between 1.7% and 3.3% depending on the platform, and automated flows are clicked about three times as often.
1.69% is the average click rate for Klaviyo email campaigns, with the top 10% at 3.38%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
5.58% is the average click rate for Klaviyo flows, more than 3 times the campaign average, and the top 10% of flows exceed 10%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
Industry
Campaign click rate
Flow click rate
All industries
1.69%
5.58%
Clothing and accessories
1.83%
5.54%
Home and garden
1.78%
5.96%
Food and beverage
1.70%
5.80%
Health and beauty
1.24%
4.80%
Average click rates by industry for campaigns and flows. Source: Klaviyo, 2026 email marketing benchmarks. Click rate is unique clicks divided by delivered emails. Table belongs to stats #s-038 and #s-039.
0.16% is the average placed order rate for Klaviyo email campaigns (top 10%: 0.36%), against 2.11% for flows (top 10%: 4.3%), a 13x gap. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
0.08% of Omnisend campaign emails led to a purchase in 2025, against 1.49% of automated emails. (Omnisend, 2026)#
9% of clicks on Omnisend campaign emails converted to an order in 2025, up from 5.9% in 2024. (Omnisend, 2026)#
2.09% was the median click rate, and 6.81% the median click-to-open rate, across 3.6 million MailerLite campaigns. (MailerLite, 2025)#
2.27% is the average campaign click-through rate across Brevo customers in 2025, with the top 10% reaching 5.22%. (Brevo, 2026)#
3.25% was the average click-through rate, and 8.62% the click-to-open rate, across 4.4 billion GetResponse messages in 2023. (GetResponse, 2024)#
2.62% is the average click rate for all Mailchimp users, and ecommerce averages 1.74%. (Mailchimp, 2023)#
8.97 seconds was the average time spent reading an email in 2022, against 10 seconds in 2021 and 13.4 seconds in 2018. (Litmus, 2022)#
29.4% of emails were read for more than 8 seconds in 2022, 41.1% were skimmed for 2 to 8 seconds and 29.5% were glanced at for under 2 seconds. (Litmus, 2022)#
One caution when reading click data in your own account: security scanners click links too. We cover how to spot it in why email click bots cause a click surge.
Email deliverability and spam statistics
Roughly five in six marketing emails reach the inbox worldwide, and since 2024 Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft have all set the same rules for anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day.
83.5% of emails tracked by Validity reached the inbox globally in 2024, while 6.7% went to spam and 9.8% went missing. (Validity, 2025)#
89.1% inbox placement in Europe was the highest of any region in 2024, ahead of North America at 85.0%. (Validity, 2025)#
87.2% of tracked email sent to Gmail reached the inbox in 2024, against 86.0% at Yahoo and AOL, 76.3% at Apple and 75.6% at Microsoft. (Validity, 2025)#
5,000 a day is the volume of messages to personal Gmail accounts at which Google classes a sender as a bulk sender, with sender requirements in force since February 1, 2024. (Google, 2024)#
0.3% is the spam complaint rate Gmail tells senders never to reach, and it recommends staying below 0.1%. (Google, 2024)#
June 1, 2024 was Gmail's deadline for bulk senders to add one-click unsubscribe to marketing and promotional messages. (Google, 2024)#
2 days is how quickly Yahoo requires bulk senders to honor unsubscribes, and it sets the same 0.3% spam complaint ceiling as Gmail. (Yahoo, 2024)#
5,000+ a day is also the threshold at which Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live addresses require SPF, DKIM and DMARC from senders, enforced from May 5, 2025. (Microsoft, 2025)#
99.9%+ of spam, phishing and malware is blocked by Gmail before it reaches the inbox, nearly 15 billion unwanted emails a day. (Google, 2023)#
44.99% of all email traffic worldwide in 2025 was spam. (Kaspersky, 2026)#
52.1% of the top 1.8 million domains had a valid DMARC record in early 2026, up from 47.7% in 2025 and 29.1% in 2023. (EasyDMARC, 2026)#
22.9% of the top 1.8 million domains enforce DMARC with a quarantine or reject policy, while 29.2% sit at p=none. (EasyDMARC, 2026)#
95% of Fortune 500 companies had a valid DMARC record in early 2026, and more than 80% had an enforcement policy. (EasyDMARC, 2026)#
Automated flows are a few percent of sends and between 30% and 41% of email revenue, which makes them the most valuable emails a brand sends.
What actually moves the needle
"Email works" is the headline. The machinery underneath is unglamorous, and it shows up in every platform's data the same way: the emails triggered by what a customer just did earn many times more than the emails sent to everyone on a schedule. The wins come from restraint and relevance.
41% from 5.3%. Flows generate nearly 41% of total email revenue from 5.3% of sends across Klaviyo customers. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
Nearly 18x higher revenue per recipient comes from Klaviyo flows than from campaigns. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
$7.79 is the revenue per recipient reached by the top 10% of email flows on Klaviyo. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
48% vs 16%. Nearly 48% of flow-driven email revenue comes from new buyers, compared with 16% of campaign revenue. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
3.33% and $3.65 are the average placed order rate and revenue per recipient of abandoned cart flows on Klaviyo, the highest of all flow types. (Klaviyo, 2024)#
30% from 2%. Automated emails were 2% of sends but generated 30% of email-driven revenue for Omnisend merchants in 2025. (Omnisend, 2026)#
$2.87 vs $0.18 was earned per automated email versus per campaign email on Omnisend in 2025, a 16x difference. (Omnisend, 2026)#
76% of all automation-generated orders on Omnisend in 2025 came from abandoned cart and welcome messages. (Omnisend, 2026)#
6.46% was the conversion rate of back-in-stock emails, the highest of any automation type on Omnisend in 2025. (Omnisend, 2026)#
2.11% and 1.72% of welcome emails and abandoned cart emails converted to an order on Omnisend in 2025, against 0.08% for campaign emails. (Omnisend, 2026)#
83.63% is the average open rate of welcome emails sent through GetResponse, with a 16.6% click-through rate. (GetResponse, 2024)#
70.22% is the average documented online cart abandonment rate, calculated from 50 studies. (Baymard Institute, 2025)#
This is where most of the value in a lifecycle program is built, and it is the core of what we do as an ecommerce email marketing agency.
Segmentation and personalization statistics
Seven in ten consumers expect personalized communication, and the measured studies show segmented sends earning about three times the revenue per recipient.
71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when that does not happen. (McKinsey, 2021)#
40% more of their revenue comes from personalization at faster-growing companies than at slower-growing ones. (McKinsey, 2021)#
88% of consumers are more likely to buy when engagement is personalized in real time, and 71% will walk away if the experience does not feel relevant. (Twilio, 2025)#
73% of customers say companies treat them like an individual rather than a number, up from 39% in 2023. (Salesforce, 2024)#
41% of US consumers say the single biggest reason they open a marketing email is a personalized offer tied to something they have already shown interest in. (Optimove, 2026)#
90%+ of marketers responding to Litmus's State of Email survey report that segmentation improves email performance. (Litmus, 2025)#
3x. Highly segmented Klaviyo campaigns earned $0.19 per recipient versus $0.06 for unsegmented sends. (Klaviyo, 2022)#
+14.31% opens, +100.95% clicks were recorded for segmented Mailchimp campaigns against the same senders' unsegmented campaigns. (Mailchimp, 2017)#
Apple Mail and Gmail account for nearly nine in ten tracked opens, so an email designed and tested for those two clients covers almost the whole audience.
62.26% of tracked email opens were attributed to Apple in July 2026, ahead of Gmail at 27.03% and Outlook at 5.83%. (Litmus, 2026)#
Nearly 90% of tracked opens come from just two clients, Apple Mail and Gmail. (Litmus, 2026)#
Over 25% of email users view email in Dark Mode. (Litmus, 2026)#
June 7, 2021 is when Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection. It shipped with iOS 15 on September 20, 2021. (Apple, 2021)#
97% of marketers surveyed by Litmus use at least one interactive element in their emails. (Litmus, 2025)#
47.88% of 376,348 HTML emails analyzed had images missing alternate text, and 58.48% had insufficient color contrast. (Email Markup Consortium, 2026)#
Because Apple's share includes automatic privacy opens, read it as the share of reported opens. It still tells you where to test first.
Email frequency and timing statistics
The measured data favors a steady rhythm of one to two emails a week over infrequent sending, and consumers object to repetition more than to volume.
48.31% open, 5.71% click. One newsletter a week earns the highest average open rate and click-through rate on GetResponse, and 46.77% of senders mail at that pace. (GetResponse, 2024)#
5.31% is the average click rate for businesses sending 2 emails per week on MailerLite, against 3.74% for those sending less than once a month. (MailerLite, 2025)#
0.87% vs 0.38%. Senders mailing less than once a month see a 0.87% unsubscribe rate, against 0.38% for those sending once a week. (MailerLite, 2025)#
Tuesday and Friday. Tuesday has the highest open rate (31.27%) and Friday the highest conversion rate in Omnisend's analysis of about 26 billion emails. (Omnisend, 2026)#
Friday 6 PM had the week's highest average open rate (49.7%) across 2,138,817 MailerLite campaigns, and click rates peaked between 8 PM and 9 PM. (MailerLite, 2025)#
50% of UK consumers receive emails from the brands they have opted in to two or three times a week, up from 45% in 2021. (DMA UK, 2023)#
56% of US consumers say they will unsubscribe if they get four or more marketing messages from the same company within 30 days. (GetApp, 2024)#
58% of US consumers say they would welcome more emails from brands because they find them helpful. (Optimove, 2026)#
22.7 billion messages were sent through Klaviyo over the five days of BFCM 2025, up 25% year over year. (Klaviyo, 2025)#
20.4 billion emails were delivered by Sinch's email platforms during Black Friday week 2025. (Sinch Mailgun, 2025)#
Frequency is a relevance question. Brands that send more to the people who want more, and less to everyone else, keep both the revenue and the list.
List growth and unsubscribe statistics
A healthy unsubscribe rate is around 0.2% per campaign, a list loses about 23% of its addresses a year, and a signup popup converts between 2% and 4% of the people who see it.
0.22% was the median unsubscribe rate across 3.6 million MailerLite campaigns. (MailerLite, 2025)#
0.22% is the average unsubscribe rate for all Mailchimp users, and ecommerce averages 0.19%. (Mailchimp, 2023)#
0.46% was the average unsubscribe rate across Brevo customers in 2025, with top performers at 0.05%. (Brevo, 2026)#
0.20% vs 0.59% was the unsubscribe rate for Omnisend campaign emails versus automated emails in 2025, with welcome emails at 0.87%. (Omnisend, 2026)#
2.33% was the average bounce rate for GetResponse customers in 2023, with spam complaints below 0.01%. (GetResponse, 2024)#
0.3% / 1% / 0.01% are the ceilings Klaviyo advises for unsubscribe, bounce and spam complaint rates. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
23% of an email list, at least, degrades every year, based on more than 11 billion addresses ZeroBounce checked in 2025. (ZeroBounce, 2026)#
2.1% was the average conversion rate of Omnisend signup popups in 2025 across 1.24 billion displays. (Omnisend, 2026)#
4.23% is the average popup conversion rate across more than 516 million popup views on Sleeknote, with mobile at 5.60% and desktop at 2.86%. (Sleeknote, 2026)#
48% of UK consumers say discounts and promotions are a reason they sign up to brand emails, the most cited reason. (DMA UK, 2023)#
57% of UK consumers who unsubscribe from a brand's emails say it is because they receive too many. (DMA UK, 2023)#
46% of US consumers who unsubscribe from brand emails do so because they receive the same promotions repeatedly. (Optimove, 2026)#
For ecommerce brands, email and text drove 42% of revenue over BFCM 2025 on Klaviyo, and repeat customers and subscribers account for a share of revenue far larger than their headcount. If you are planning this year, our BFCM checklist covers the 2026 dates and the prep that starts in October.
$3.8 billion+ in Klaviyo Attributed Value was generated over the five days of BFCM 2025, up 27% year over year. (Klaviyo, 2025)#
42% of total revenue across a cohort of 10,000 Klaviyo brands was driven by email and text during BFCM 2025. (Klaviyo, 2025)#
13.5% year over year growth in revenue from repeat customers during BFCM 2025 outpaced revenue from new buyers across the same cohort. (Klaviyo, 2025)#
9% year over year GMV growth in Q1 2026 across 10,000 leading Klaviyo customers, with GMV from text messages growing 17.5%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
$14.6 billion in sales was generated by Shopify merchants over BFCM 2025, a 27% increase on 2024. (Shopify, 2025)#
Half of consumers surveyed had purchased from an email offer in the previous year, ahead of social media ads (48%) and SMS (24%). (Marigold, 2024)#
78% of consumers rank promotional offers and discounts among the three most engaging types of email. (Litmus, 2024)#
21% and 44%. Repeat customers are 21% of customers but generate 44% of revenue and 46% of orders across 12,000+ ecommerce merchants. (Gorgias, 2023)#
4.4 orders per subscriber per year at a typical Recharge brand, up 15% on the year before. (Recharge, 2024)#
Nearly 3x more orders were placed by subscribers than by one-time shoppers across 20,000 Recharge brands. (Recharge, 2026)#
45% and 33% of subscribers were retained after 6 and 12 months across more than 15,000 Recharge merchants in 2022. (Recharge, 2023)#
75% of subscribers who pause eventually return, across more than 2,200 subscription businesses on Recurly. (Recurly, 2026)#
Consumers still name email first as a channel for hearing from brands, and SMS adds to it: text flows on Klaviyo drive 45% of SMS revenue from under 8% of sends.
69% of consumers name email as a preferred channel for brands to contact them, ahead of SMS (43%) and direct mail (43%). (SAP Emarsys, 2025)#
75.4% of consumers chose the email inbox as a preferred channel for promotional messages from brands. (Sinch Mailgun, 2024)#
60% of US consumers name email as a preferred channel for brand communication, ahead of SMS at 34%. (Optimove, 2026)#
72% of frequent online shoppers have made a purchase after receiving a text from a brand. (Klaviyo, 2024)#
45.2% from 7.6%. Flows are 7.6% of SMS sends on Klaviyo yet drive 45.2% of total SMS revenue. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
Near 10% is the average click rate for SMS flow messages on Klaviyo, almost double SMS campaigns, and top performers exceed 16%. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
2.87% to 8.01% is the 25th to 75th percentile range for SMS campaign click-through rate across 17,000+ Shopify stores on Postscript in 2025. (Postscript, 2026)#
12.39% vs 20.34% was the average click-through rate for SMS campaigns versus automated SMS on Omnisend in 2025. (Omnisend, 2026)#
$0.74 vs $0.15 was the average revenue per automated SMS versus per SMS campaign message on Omnisend in 2025. (Omnisend, 2026)#
40% growth in SMS send volume on Omnisend in 2025, after 31% growth in 2024. (Omnisend, 2026)#
25% year over year growth in text message revenue for Klaviyo brands over BFCM 2025, with text send volume up 34%. (Klaviyo, 2025)#
29.6% of Klaviyo's SMB+ customers were using text messaging and WhatsApp at the end of fiscal 2025, up from 26.1% a year earlier. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
The two channels work best when they are planned as one program with one view of the customer, which is how our SMS marketing team runs them.
AI in email marketing statistics
About eight in ten email senders use or plan to use AI, mostly to work faster, and the measured gains so far come from AI applied to recommendations and timing.
79% of email senders are using or plan to use AI in their email program, and 27% use AI tools regularly. (Sinch Mailgun, 2026)#
46% of email senders say AI helps them increase speed and efficiency, and 43% cite improved creativity. (Sinch Mailgun, 2026)#
75% more likely is how much likelier marketers with deeply integrated AI are to report email ROI above 45:1. (Validity, 2026)#
75% of marketers have adopted AI. (Salesforce, 2026)#
86.4% of marketing teams say they use AI in at least a few marketing areas. (HubSpot, 2026)#
One third of mid-market marketers report using AI widely in their organizations, while 98% believe it will improve marketing effectiveness. (Intuit Mailchimp, 2025)#
89% of business decision-makers believe AI-driven personalization will be critical to their success over the next three years. (Twilio Segment, 2024)#
3.75% is the average click rate for Klaviyo emails using AI product recommendations, and 8.79% for top performers, against a 1.69% campaign average. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
45% year over year increase in use of AI-driven product recommendations by Klaviyo brands over BFCM 2025, with revenue from those messages up 71%. (Klaviyo, 2025)#
The pattern in the data is consistent: AI raises the ceiling for teams that already have clean data, clear segments and a working lifecycle program to apply it to.
B2B vs B2C email statistics
Email is the second most used channel for B2B marketers and their second best for ROI, while B2C programs see their highest returns in retail and ecommerce.
39.3% of B2B marketers use email marketing, their second most used channel after website, blog and SEO (48.4%). (HubSpot, 2026)#
23.6% of B2B marketers name email a top ROI channel, second only to website, blog and SEO at 30.2%. (HubSpot, 2026)#
71% of B2B marketers used email newsletters to distribute content in the previous 12 months. (Content Marketing Institute, 2024)#
42% of B2B marketers rate email among their most effective content distribution channels, level with organic social. (Content Marketing Institute, 2024)#
85% of B2B marketers who personalize content do so in email campaigns, far ahead of social media content (34%). (Content Marketing Institute, 2025)#
54% of B2B marketers name email newsletters among their most effective channels for thought leadership, second to LinkedIn at 76%. (Content Marketing Institute, 2025)#
99.2% of B2C emails were delivered in the UK in 2024, lifting the overall delivery rate to 98%. (DMA UK, 2025)#
The mechanics differ, since B2B email nurtures a long decision and B2C email prompts a repeat one, but in both the channel earns its place on return.
Klaviyo and platform benchmarks
Klaviyo now serves more than 205,000 customers, and its fastest growing group is larger brands: customers paying over $50,000 a year grew 36%.
205,000+ customers were using Klaviyo as of Q2 2026. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
4,477. Klaviyo customers generate over $50,000 in annual recurring revenue, up 36% year over year. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
$370.6 million was Klaviyo's Q2 2026 revenue, up 26% year over year. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
$1.2 billion was Klaviyo's full-year 2025 revenue, up 32% year over year. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
109% was Klaviyo's net revenue retention in Q2 2026. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
35% year over year revenue growth outside the Americas for Klaviyo in Q2 2026. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
20% of Klaviyo's annual recurring revenue comes from customers using three or more products. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
5 days is Klaviyo's default attribution window for email opens and clicks, which is why platform-attributed revenue shares differ between tools. (Klaviyo, 2026)#
Platform benchmarks are averages across every kind of sender. The more useful comparison is against brands like yours, which is what the next section is for.
YOCTO client benchmarks
Metric
Campaigns
Flows
Email and SMS share of total store revenue
38.0% (30.0% to 55.0%), all sends
Open rate
53.6% (48.8% to 68.9%)
46.9% (44.1% to 65.5%)
Share of email and SMS revenue
34.4% (24.0% to 80.1%)
65.6% (52.5% to 85.4%)
YOCTO client benchmarks, all industries: median with 25th to 95th percentile range. Source: YOCTO, accounts we manage on Klaviyo, May to June 2026. Revenue share is email plus SMS, normalized to a common attribution window. Open rates include Apple MPP opens.
YOUR TURN
What Should Your Numbers Look Like?
Real benchmarks from the accounts we manage - from the share of revenue email & SMS drive, to campaign vs flow engagement. Filter by your category and see where you'd land against the median operator and the top quartile.
Email & SMS share of total revenue
38%
of total store revenue, attributed to email & SMS - normalized to a common attribution window.
Methodology: Engagement and revenue-mix figures: aggregated, anonymized performance across the Klaviyo accounts we manage (May to June 2026). Revenue-share figures are normalized to a common attribution window so accounts compare like-for-like.
Open rates reflect post-MPP inflation - compare like-for-like.
What should your numbers look like? These are real benchmarks from the accounts we manage, from the share of revenue that email and SMS drive to how campaigns and flows perform. Filter by your category to see where you would land against the median operator and the top quartile.
38.0% of total store revenue is attributed to email and SMS at the median account we manage (25th to 95th percentile: 30.0% to 55.0%). (YOCTO, 2026)#
53.6% median campaign open rate (25th to 95th percentile: 48.8% to 68.9%). (YOCTO, 2026)#
34.4% median share of email and SMS revenue that comes from campaigns (24.0% to 80.1%). (YOCTO, 2026)#
46.9% median flow open rate (44.1% to 65.5%). (YOCTO, 2026)#
65.6% median share of email and SMS revenue that comes from flows (52.5% to 85.4%). (YOCTO, 2026)#
One note on reading these against the platform averages above. Our 38% is email and SMS together under one normalized attribution window, so it is not comparable with the email-only tiers in our email revenue share benchmarks.
THE VERDICT
It just keeps paying.
Email is older than most of the people who keep declaring it dead. It is not loved. It is not new. It just keeps paying.
Method, update log and how to cite this page
Method. Every third-party statistic on this page was read on the primary source: the original study, benchmark page, dataset, regulatory filing or official document. Roundup articles were used only to find leads and are never cited. Each figure shows the publisher and the year of publication, and where the data is older than the publication the text says so. Forecasts are labeled as forecasts and survey answers as self-reported. Where two sources measure the same thing differently, such as open rates with and without Apple's privacy opens, both are shown. One stat is one figure from one source. Tables count once. Of the 162 statistics, 157 are third-party and 5 are YOCTO's own.
Update log.
September 2026: rebuilt as a sourced reference. Every figure re-verified against its primary source and given a permanent ID.
Re-dated: 4.5 billion email users and 361.6 billion emails a day are Radicati Group figures for 2024 (4.48 billion and 361.6 billion). Forecasts for 2026 added beside them.
Re-labeled: the $36 return per $1 is an undated Litmus figure. Its industry breakdown is from Litmus's 2020 survey. The 2025 distribution and the 2026 UK estimate were added.
Replaced: the 2018 read-time split (61% read, 23.5% skimmed, 15% glanced) with Litmus's latest edition, 2022 (29.4%, 41.1%, 29.5%).
Replaced: "automation earns 30x more per recipient" (a 2023 abandoned-cart comparison) with Klaviyo's current figure for all flows, nearly 18x.
Replaced: the blended 32% open rate and its "1B+ tracked sends" basis with the platform averages it was built from. The conclusion, about a third, is unchanged.
Re-sourced: the email-checking habits previously attributed to HubSpot belong to Sleep Advisor (2021) and ZeroBounce. ZeroBounce's current figures are 93% daily and 42% three to five times a day, replacing 88% and 39%.
Removed as untraceable or out of date: 73% of B2B marketers (prospecting), the 28.5 vs 7 ROI index (2012), 63% quit over bad personalization, +26% opens from personalized subject lines, +50% clicks and +30% opens from segmentation, 77% of ROI from segmented campaigns (2015), abandoned cart converting 3x other automations, and monthly sends performing best.
Cite this page. YOCTO (2026). 162 Email Marketing Statistics for 2026. https://yocto.agency/email-marketing-statistics/. Every statistic has its own link: add # and the stat ID to the URL, for example https://yocto.agency/email-marketing-statistics/#s-018 for the ROI figure. If you use a number, please cite the original source shown next to it and link this page as where you found it.
Email marketing statistics FAQ
What is the ROI of email marketing?
The most quoted figure is $36 for every $1 spent, published by Litmus without a survey year. Litmus's dated evidence shows 45:1 for retail, ecommerce and consumer goods (2020 survey), and in 2025 about a third of marketing leaders reported returns above $36 per $1. UK marketers surveyed by the DMA in 2026 estimate almost £41 per £1.
What is a good email open rate in 2026?
About a third. Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks put the average campaign open rate at 31.02% and the top 10% at 45.12%. Omnisend and Constant Contact report 30.7% and 30.8%. These figures include Apple Mail Privacy Protection opens. With those removed, Brevo's average drops from 33.87% to 20.73%.
What is a good email click rate?
For campaigns, 1.69% is the Klaviyo average and 3.38% puts you in the top 10%. Automated flows average 5.58%. General-purpose platforms that include newsletters report higher campaign averages, between 2.1% and 3.3%.
How many people use email?
4.48 billion people used email in 2024 according to The Radicati Group, more than half the world's population, with 4.73 billion forecast for 2026. They sent and received 361.6 billion emails a day in 2024.
How much revenue should email drive for an ecommerce brand?
Across the accounts YOCTO manages, the median is 38% of total store revenue from email and SMS combined, under a normalized attribution window (May to June 2026). During BFCM 2025, Klaviyo reported that email and text drove 42% of revenue across a cohort of 10,000 brands.
Sources
Primary sources only. Each link goes to the page where the figure appears.
88YOCTO (2026). Internal client data: aggregated, anonymized performance across the Klaviyo accounts we manage, May to June 2026.
PUT THE $36 TO WORK
We Build the Email That Pays.
YOCTO runs retention and lifecycle for fast-growing DTC brands. We'll run a free audit, hand you a written breakdown, and tell you honestly if we can help.
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