Study: Email marketing of the 1,000 top-selling German online shops 2025

Email remains central to the marketing mix

Despite the growing number of digital push channels, email remains an indispensable part of the marketing mix in e-commerce: 90% of all shops examined sent active marketing emails during the survey period. Only 5.3% of e-commerce companies do not offer any option to subscribe to the newsletter at all. Almost all active senders use a professional marketing platform to send emails: 96% of the 898 shops that sent us at least one marketing email in the past year used an email service provider. These figures have been stable for years — a clear sign of the continued high relevance of this channel.

Klaviyo established itself in second place

A key result for 2025: With a market share of 10.0%, Klaviyo catapulted to second place — on par with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. In the previous year, Klaviyo was still 7.9%. With this impressive growth, the US platform is one of the leading providers in German e-commerce. With a market share of 19.6%, SAP Emarsys maintains its position at the top. Together, the three leading platforms cover just under 40% of the entire surveyed market. The stability of the positions of SAP Emarsys and Salesforce shows that proven enterprise solutions continue to enjoy great trust even after around two decades on the market.

ESP market shares: winners and losers 2025

Klaviyo is not the only one who is experiencing growth: Braze is in the top 10 of our survey for the first time this year at 3.5%. However, the size of this jump is partly due to our even more refined recognition logic. This shows even more precisely which front-end platforms are actually being used — even if shipping services such as Amazon SES, Sparkpost, Sendgrid or Mailjet are used in the background. Braze, Klaviyo and Bloomreach in particular benefit from this improved methodology. If the refined recognition logic is also applied to the previous year's study, it becomes apparent that Braze has increased its market share from ca. 2% to 3.5% year on year.

Also Bloomreach significantly increases its market share — from 2.3% to 3.8% — and thus strengthens its position in the top 10.

The picture is mixed when it comes to self-service platforms. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue and Newsletter2Go) has gained ground, while CleverReach has lost 1.7% of its market share. There are continually fewer shops using Optimizely, a trend that has been observed for years but which remains stable in the top 10 thanks to a loyal core customer base.

Klaviyo bridges the gap between enterprise and self-service

Klaviyo's success is no accident. The platform cleverly positions itself between more high-priced enterprise solutions such as SAP Emarsys, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Bloomreach on the one hand and self-service platforms such as CleverReach, Brevo or Rapidmail on the other. With a medium price point, intuitive interface and particularly powerful integrations with Shopify and Shopware, Klaviyo appeals to two target groups: On the one hand, e-commerce companies that want to switch from expensive enterprise solutions to a more agile, cost-effective platform and often have a small to medium-sized subscriber base, and on the other hand shops that grow out of the pure self-service segment and want to expand data-driven, personalized e-commerce automations that largely without IT Support must be implemented. This dual positioning is a key success factor that led Klaviyo to the top group in 2025.

Different preferences according to company size

The choice of email marketing platforms depends heavily on the size of the company: In the top 100 shops, the enterprise solutions SAP Emarsys and Salesforce Marketing Cloud dominate, flanked by Optimizely, Bloomreach, Inxmail and Oracle.

In the middle segment (places 101 to 500 with 19 to 116 million euros in turnover), SAP Emarsys is more strongly represented than Salesforce. Klaviyo, Brevo and CleverReach are also moving significantly forward. In the top half of the EHI Rankings segment, 1.6% of shops do not use an email service provider or sending service, but self-developed solutions for sending emails. Among the less profitable shops, we were only able to identify in-house solutions for 0.5% of the shops.

In the bottom half (places 501 to 1,000), SAP Emarsys is also ahead, but only with a market share of 15%. Klaviyo clearly follows behind Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This group shows the largest variety of platforms and the highest proportion of inactive senders: 16% of shops did not send us a single marketing email during the investigation period. The less profitable shops have the widest variety of platforms: places 501 to 1000 rely on a total of 67 different platforms. The platforms used in the lower segment often focus on ease of use and affordability. They are often more important than complex multi-channel functionality.

Is it worth switching to a new marketing platform?

Although a platform change is complex, expensive and risky, it still happens frequently: 15 percent of shops changed their marketing technology during the survey period. The reasons range from the desire for greater cost efficiency and data-driven performance improvements to better usability and reduced internal load. At the same time, the majority remains consistent: 85% of companies stick to their existing solution, as established systems offer stability and well-established workflows. An advantage that should not be underestimated in everyday operational life. Are you thinking about a change of solution? Find out here what common mistakes you should avoid when switching marketing platforms.

A market between diversity and consolidation

The market for email service providers remains lively — and contradictory at the same time: In 2025, we were able to identify 89 different providers (2024:75). The long tail is therefore even longer. At the same time, market shares are increasingly concentrated on a few dominant platforms: The top 10 already account for 72% of the overall market. The remaining 79 providers share 28%.

This apparent contradiction is explained by movements in the lower market segment: While specialized niche tools are being added, many smaller providers are continuously losing market share to the major platforms. 54 tools are only used by one or two shops from the top 1,000 — a clear signal of increasing consolidation pressure. See the complete overview of all tools we detected in this year's study on this page below.

Missed lead generation opportunities

Another interesting finding: Many of Germany's top 1,000 online shops are failing to exploit the potential of collecting email addresses. In a previous study we investigated where and how shops advertise their newsletter and what incentives they offer. In this year's study, we went one step further and analysed the checkout process — that is, the moment when the willingness to buy and communicate is particularly high. The result: Only 57.5 % of shops offer the option of actively signing up for the newsletter with a click during the ordering process. Only 7.1 % use the legally permitted option (under Section 7 (3) UWG in Germany) to include buyers in promotional communication via email at checkout. In over a third of shops (35.4%), there is no reference at all to the newsletter. As a result, valuable potential remains unused! Especially in the checkout process, shops could expand their reach with minimal effort — for example by means of a simple checkbox or a brief notice to send promotional emails with offers for similar products.

Overview: These marketing technologies are used by German online shops in 2025

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About the methodology

Basis: Evaluation of the 1,000 best-selling B2C online shops and the top 10 B2C marketplaces in 2025, determined by the EHI Retail Institute and eCommerceDB (”Study: German e-commerce market 2025“), sorted by e-commerce sales in fiscal year 2024.

Online shops that sent promotional emails via a email sending tool identified as an ESP, sending service or web shop email module during the investigation period of 12 months. The percentage market share is calculated from the number of companies for which the respective sender was identifiable. n = 898

* Identified front-end tool — using a shipping service on the back-end.

** Market share in percent minus the percentage of e-commerce companies for which we were able to identify a front-end marketing automation platform that sends via a sending service. When we were able to identify the front-end solution, the market share was attributed to that solution (market by a *).