2 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Table of Contents Introduction Key Takeaways Baseline Email Performance Benchmarks Conclusion Methodology Glossary of Terms Differentiated Email Performance Benchmarks 16 26 31 36 How Seasonal Events Impact Email PerformancePrime DayCyber Week How Audience Impacts Email PerformanceSpend LevelPurchase HistoryLifecycle Stage How Retail Vertical Impacts Email Performance How Average Order Value Impacts Email Performance3 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Introduction As people-based marketing trends emerge and new privacy laws like GDPR set higher requirements for collecting and using data, email the most addressable identifier with explicit opt in and opt out requirements has become a more important asset than ever. Changes at Facebook and Google to remove third party data and adjust ad algorithms are also evaporating the efficacy of paid media marketing dollars, which only adds to the growing importance of email for modern marketers. To successfully navigate this environment, the fastest-growing retailers have become more strategic about how they use email as both an identifier and a channel to increase customer engagement and grow revenue.To better understand how retailers are using email, including the extent to which they have embraced individualized messaging opportunities and the effectiveness of those messages, Bluecore turned to the data. Specifically, we analyzed the performance of more than 3.26 billion emails sent by eCommerce brands from April 2018 through March 2019. Our 2019 Retail Email Benchmark report provides a baseline understanding of these activities and more. Email is the most valuable component of digital marketing. While brands have often glossed over this decades-old channel, thats changing in 2019. In fact it already has changed for the most savvy, modern marketers.4 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Key Takeaways Segmentation is Not a Proxy for Personalization The emails that perform the best across all measures have one thing in common: They are extremely relevant to their recipients. This relevance can cover everything from the content, product recommendations and offers included in the email to the timing of when the email gets sent. Retailers that focus on relevance by going beyond simple segmentation, for example by engaging customers based on recent behaviors, recent changes to products in which shoppers have an interest and the unique characteristics of shoppers (like lifecycle stage), see the biggest returns. Retailers can only achieve this level of personalization if they have insight into interactions between individual customers and the products with which they engage. Seasonality Counts For Far More Than a One-Time Spike Retail is a seasonal business, and this seasonality impacts email performance. In particular, the back half of the year, which is full of shopping holidays like Prime Day, back-to-school and Cyber Week, proves especially important for retailers. These holidays offer more than an opportunity for a one-time spike in performance. They provide a unique opportunity to engage and acquire new customers who retailers must then focus on retaining throughout the rest of the year. Retailers should use these seasonal events to acquire new customers and then solidify loyalty by running smart, relevant email programs year round. 5 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Not All Customers Are Equal Each customers individual profile, including how much they typically spend with a retailer, their purchase history with that retailer and their lifecycle stage, makes an enormous difference when it comes to email engagement. Marketers must understand their distribution of customers across numerous factors and then differentiate among individuals based on these characteristics to achieve the goal of more relevant email marketing that drives performance gains. Long Term Views Deliver Long Term Returns The most successful email marketing programs take a long term view. For example, promotions may help increase email signups, but they significantly shrink margins. Further, they lead to shoppers who subscribe, buy once and promptly unsubscribe - a situation that occurs far too often, doesnt deliver any long term growth and makes the squeeze on margins even more painful to the business. Retailers should be wary of these short term efforts and focus instead on the aggregate view of customer engagement and emails ability to drive revenue. 6 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Baseline Email Performance Benchmarks Bluecore has established a series of benchmarks for how different retail emails perform as part of growing email marketing programs. These baseline findings include an overall look at email performance for retailers broken down by type of email, including eCommerce triggered emails and one-time sends. Triggered emails are automated emails that send when shoppers take certain actions (these are behavioral triggers and include cart abandonment, product abandonment, search abandonment, post purchase, wishlist and welcome emails) or when changes occur in the product catalog (these are merchandising triggers and include price decrease, new arrivals, best sellers, back in stock and low inventory emails). These emails get sent at the individual level based on behavioral and merchandising events and are very targeted based on the products featured. One-time sends are emails that are not tied to a specific change in behavior or product and focus on brand awareness, promotions and newsletters. These emails can be static, meaning the same exact email goes to all recipients, or personalized, meaning that product recommendations, content and offers included change based on each recipients interests. Marketers can send these emails to their full list or get more personal by targeting a specific audience. Finally, marketers can send these emails once or schedule them to send on a recurring basis (e.g. weekly, monthly). 6 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report7 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Open Rate Click Rate B B k k L Iy O-T -T 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% The above charts reflect the strength of emails that create a sense of urgency by capitalizing on high intent signals, most notably cart abandonment, price decrease, back in stock and low inventory triggered emails. The latter three are among a unique category of triggers, known as “merchandising triggers,” which automatically deliver a personalized email based on changes to product data rather than solely on shoppers actions. The retailers that see the most success with these merchandising triggered emails layer in customer data to narrow down the audience of recipients to shoppers who have previously interacted with or have a predicted affinity toward but have not bought the featured items.8 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Conversion Rate w v B B k k Lw Iv y O -T Most shoppers receive several emails before making a purchase. In the chart above, conversions are attributed to emails that occur within five days of the email send. The exceptionally high conversion rate of cart abandonment emails is not surprising given that shoppers who add items to their cart are typically most ready to buy. Price decrease and low inventory emails also boast higher than average conversion rates due to the ability of these messages to create a sense of urgency. Of course, other factors influence the relevance and performance of these emails: Timing, audience and products featured are also critical to success. This level of personalization is what helps one-time sends deliver conversion rates on par with triggers like new arrivals and best sellers .9 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Unsubscribe Rate -T 0% 0.1% 0.2% 0.3% 0.4% 0.5% Unsubscribe rates for post purchase and welcome emails are disproportionately high. The higher than average unsubscribe rates for these particular emails are often due to shoppers who subscribe to emails to receive a discount and then promptly unsubscribe after receiving that discount. Unsubscribes from post purchase emails also include shoppers who did not realize they were signing up for emails in the course of making a purchase. There are several steps retailers can take to lessen this disparity. First, marketers should be wary of using promotions as a crutch for email capture, since getting shoppers to sign up for emails does no good if those same shoppers immediately unsubscribe. Instead, they should think through how to add value to these campaigns, for example by adding non- promotional messaging about the brand values (welcome emails) and how to best enjoy certain products (post purchase). Second, marketers can look for opportunities to increase relevance by featuring personalized product recommendations based on past purchase behavior and/or predicted affinities.10 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Click-to-Open Rate -T 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Emails that create a sense of urgency and/or are specific to past interactions that a shopper had with a product receive higher engagement than general informational emails. This is why price decrease emails, which let shoppers know that a product theyve viewed or have a predicted affinity toward is now available at a lower price, perform better than emails that inform shoppers about best selling items.11 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Click-to-Conversion Rate v B B k k L Iv y O -T The most striking finding when evaluating click-to-conversion rates is the disparity between a price decrease emails effectiveness in generating clicks and its ability to spur purchases. Less surprising is that cart abandonment emails maintain high performance based on both click-to-open and click-to-conversion rates. Interestingly, one-time sends, which lag behind triggered emails in terms of opens, clicks and conversions alone hold their own when it comes to click-to-conversion rates. The one-time sends that perform best include some level of personalization, whether thats in the audience selected or through the use of dynamic product recommendations.12 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report Revenue Per Email Revenue Per Click B B k k L Iy O-T v B B k k L Iv y O -T The two charts above highlight the financial benefits of the various email campaigns included in this study. Whether evaluating results on a revenue per email or revenue per click basis, cart abandonment emails far outperform the rest of the field. That performance stems from the fact that these emails are extremely relevant to shoppers based on products featured and timing and that they target shoppers who have a high purchase intent.13 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report The Impact of Personalization SPOTLIGHT ON ONE-TIME SENDS: One-time sends can be static, meaning the same exact email goes to all recipients, or personalized, meaning that product recommendations, content and offers included change based on each recipients interests. Marketers can also personalize these emails by targeting a specific audience. Personalizing one-time sends has an enormous impact on email performance. One athletic retailer recently ran a test that pit static one-time sends against dynamic one-time sends featuring personalized product recommendations. In this head-to-head test, the personalized one-time sends delivered enormous performance gains at every level, including a 57% increase in revenue per email. Percent Increase in Performance: Personalized vs. Static One-Time Sends 14 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report We can attribute these increases in performance to the fact that shoppers are more likely to engage with emails when the products featured are relevant to their interests. Over time, this level of personalization can help retailers stand out in crowded inboxes and make customers more likely to engage with emails because they know they will be interested in the content. The performance gains of personalizing one-time sends is even more apparent when retailers can automate the creation of these emails. A new type of email, known as a Smart Promo campaign allows retailers to automate the build and delivery of personalized one-time sends. A Smart Promo email combines the basic idea of a one- time send (a broadcast announcement not based on any specific customer behaviors or changes to products) with the functionality of a triggered email (an automated email that gets set up once and runs on its own). An IR 100 apparel retailer recently launched one Smart Promo campaign alongside its static, manually created one-time sends. Although the Smart Promo campaign only made up less than 0.5% of live email campaigns for the retailer, it contributed to just over 90% of campaign revenue. Time Spent