Study on Email Marketing in E-Commerce 2022
19. October 2022
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Methods used by the top 1,000 online shops.
As we’ve just seen again in our analysis of the efforts of the 1,000 biggest online shops in Germany, e-mail marketing is a topic that seemingly never goes out of style. Virtually no other medium scales as beautifully as e-mail does, which is why it’s no surprise that providers invest a great deal of effort in gaining new subscribers. We’ve taken a closer look at how they do so on their websites.
86% of shops advertise their newsletter right on their homepage
Newsletters appear to be good drivers of revenue, with most shops encouraging visitors to subscribe on the very first page they see. There are some prominent exceptions, though – Amazon, Apple, and Limango, for example, which only start sending e-mails after you open an account or make your first purchase.
Pop-ups and pull-outs are part of the standard repertoire
Just over 70% of all shops also feature an eye-catching layer, pop-up, or pull-out that points visitors towards their newsletter. While some users find such things annoying, they still seem to pay off for retailers.
Push notifications are rarely utilised
While it feels like we’re constantly being asked to accept in-browser notifications, the share of Germany’s 1,000 largest online shops that use push messages like these is actually less than 5%. Of them, 10 only present offers via web push and don’t even have newsletters.
Over 40% offer an incentive
Of the top 1,000 online shops in Germany, just over 40% reward those who sign up for their newsletter. This figure is virtually identical to our findings from 2018 (42%).
When it comes to discounts, it’s flat amounts over percentages
The shops that work with incentives offer fixed discounts (60.3%) much more often than percentages (36.8%). Just 1% use free shipping to drive newsletter subscriptions, while 2% favour another form of reward (such as club points, prize contests/raffles, or tickets to a trade fair).
The most common discounts: €5, €10, or 10%
In most cases, shops offer discounts of €5 or €10 (this accounts for 87.5% of those that work with fixed amounts). Amounts not divisible by five are rare, as are discounts of more than €20. In terms of percentages, 10% is the clear favourite, but 15% is also common – and certain shops offer as much as 70%.
There are conditions in some cases, however, such as a purchase minimum (“€10 off your first order of at least €50”, for example).
Nearly one shop in three has its own app
A full 30% of all the shops surveyed offer an app of their own, and we expect that number to increase significantly in the years ahead.
About the method
The individual online shops in question were each examined once between June and August 2022. The overall population consisted of the 1,000 largest B2C online shops in Germany as ascertained by the e-commerce market study 2002 conducted by the EHI Retail Institute and Statista.The information presented regarding newsletters refers to the total population of 944 shops that offer a newsletter.
