• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 2, 2021

Email open and conversion rates surged in the first half of 2021, especially for automated messages like welcomes and abandoned cart follow-ups, according to Omnisend’s Ecommerce Statistics Report, a study released Thursday.

But the paper has a bittersweet tinge: This may be one of the last times it reports on open rates, thanks to the impending death of that metric, thanks to Apple.  

Conversion rates are the strongest measure of success. And they are on the rise: automated messages averaged a 33.19% conversion, up from 29.75% in the same period in 2020. And manually produced campaign emails went to 6.82%, up from 6.49% last year. 

Drilling down, here are the conversion rates for automated messages: 

• Welcome — 52.92%
• Abandoned Cart — 39.72%
• Lapsed-Purchase — 19.78%
• Order/Ship Confirmation — 18.17%
• Product Abandonment — 17.91%
• Birthday — 11.01%
• Browse Abandonment — 10.61%  

It was the same with click rates. Omnisend reports these percentages:

• Campaigns — 1.47% 
• Birthday — 7.74% 
• Browse Abandonment — 8.49% 
• Order/Ship Confirmation — 12.05% 
• Abandoned Cart — 5.80 
• Welcome — 5.63% 
• Product Abandonment — 5.41% 
• Post-Purchase — 4.97% 
• Lapsed Purchase — 2.60%

The click-to-conversion rates are slightly different:

• Campaigns — 12.58%
• Birthday — 24.41% 
• Browse Abandonment — 22.18% 
• Order/Ship Confirmation — 21.25%
• Abandoned Cart — 20.44% 
• Welcome — 19.48% 
• Product Abandonment — 15.40% 
• Post-Purchase — 13.77%
• Lapsed-Purchase — 10.82% 

For this study, Omnisend tracked 10 billion emails and nearly 25 million SMS messages sent by its customers. The statistics seem valid because the firm has not shied from reporting lower ones in prior reports. 

Meanwhile, open rates will also soon be disappearing, and they have other problems. 

“Open rates of scheduled promotional campaigns are one of the most challenging email metrics to benchmark,” the study notes. 

This is because they are often pulled down by issues such as “list management and hygiene, the number of unengaged contacts, segmentation, send cadence, and the use of Booster sends (remails) on a per-client basis.” 

That said, here were the average open rates in the first half: 

• Campaigns — 11.69% 
• Order/Ship Confirmation — 56.71% 
• Browse Abandonment — 38.28%
• Post-Purchase — 36.13%
• Product Abandonment — 35.15%
• Birthday — 31.72% 
• Welcome — 28.91% 
• Abandoned Cart — 28.37%
• Lapsed-Purchaser — 23.98%

Transactional messages sent by DTC brands pulled an average 56.7% open rate, a 12.1% click rate, 21.3% click-to-conversion and an 18.2% conversion rate.

Shipping confirmation emails pulled a 61.79% open rate, 24.15% click rate, 39.08% click-to-conversion and 6.49% conversion.

Here are the result for a couple of non-email channels:

SMS messages drew 11 and average c lick-through rate and a 2.4% conversion.

Of almost 20 million web push notifications tracked by Omnisend, almost a third led to purchases.