• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, June 27, 2019

If only retailers could survive solely on cart abandonment emails.

These triggered messages pull the most opens, the highest conversions and a superior revenue per click. And that’s just the beginning, according to a new study by Bluecore.

Cart abandonment emails draw an average open rate exceeding 30%, followed closely by product abandonment emails. Why? Because the prospects are hottest at that moment. Next are back-in-stock and search abandonment communications. 

One-time sends, defined by Bluecore as “emails that are not tied to a specific change in behavior or product and focus on brand awareness, promotions and newsletters,” draw the lowest open rates.  

In addition, cart abandonment emails pull the highest average conversion rate, approaching 1% for sales within five days of the email send. Nothing else even comes close, Price-decrease emails are a distant second and product abandonment come in third.

Still, the latter two message types perform better than other emails, apparently because they create a sense of urgency.

Best sellers and new arrivals pull the lowest rates.

Cart abandonment emails also generate the best click-to-conversion rates -- topping 12% -- and revenue per click, at roughly 15%. 

However, the highest click-to-open rates -- almost 30% -- are achieved by price-decrease emails, and the second-highest by cart abandonment. Welcome emails pull close to 8% in this category.

Cart abandonment sends also lose out on clicks, falling second to price-decrease emails, although not by much.

Meanwhile, the highest unsubscribe rates are for post-purchase and welcome emails. This is due to “shoppers who subscribe to emails to receive a discount and then promptly unsubscribe after receiving that discount,” the study states. 

In addition, post-purchase unsubscribes include consumers who “did not realize they were signing up for emails in the course of making a purchase,” it adds.

Back to one-time sends. The study found that personalization leads to boosts of 138.98% in click rates, 83.91% in open rates, 57.20% in revenue per email and 31.21% in click-to-open rates. 

This is mostly due to the fact that shoppers are more likely to be interested in relevant products.

Prime Day emails draw higher click rates for one-time sends than the average July day, but slightly decreased open rates. The latter may be because of “the large number of blasts going out on and around Prime Day.

During Cyber Week, open and click rates are lower for both one-time sends and triggers than on a normal November day—again, because of the staggering volume of email.  

It’s not easy to get through. But brands that do are likely to see above-average conversions for both open sends and triggered emails.

Blulecore analyzed the performance of over 3.26 billion emails sent by ecommerce brands from April 2018 through March 2019.