Email and SMS sends skyrocket, and Industry performance shows common factors of highly-engaged email

A new 2022 ecommerce marketing report shows that brands increased their year-over-year usage of email marketing by 42%, SMS marketing by 62%, and industry verticals related closely to personal enjoyment and comfort garnered the highest engagement from consumers.

These findings are part of Omnisend’s Email, SMS, and push marketing statistics for ecommerce in 2023 report. The yearly research reveals how consumers engaged with campaign and automated emails, SMS, and web push messages in 2022, and the common theme of emails that generated the highest consumer engagement.

For the report, Omnisend examined the performance of more than 17 billion emails, 107 million SMS, and 207 million web push messages sent by Omnisend merchants in 2022.

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Scheduled promotional email campaigns sent by brands increased by 42.3% year-over-year (YoY). A conversion rate of 0.8% and a 6.34% click-to-conversion rate translated to a 12% increase in campaign orders.

Behavior-based automated messages continue to drive a disproportionate number of email orders. Sporting a conversion rate 2300% better than promotional campaigns, automated emails made up 31.5% of all email orders with only 1.8% of the total number of sends.

The report also showed the continuous rise in SMS marketing. Brands sent 62% more SMS in 2022, including 68% more messages on Black Friday and 89% more on Cyber Monday. This marks the third year in a row SMS sends have increased. The increase in sends translated to 23.8% more SMS orders in 2022.

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Other highlights of the report include:

Email Marketing:

** The click rate for all campaign emails was 1.23%. Categories relating to personal enjoyment and comfort had the highest click rates of all verticals: Hobbies & Leisure (1.95%), Books & Literature (1.90%), Food & Drink (1.55%), Auto (1.39%), and Arts & Entertainment (1.37%).
** Automated emails made up 31.51% of all email orders and 1.83% of sends.
** Conversion rates for automated emails finished at 1.92%, a 2300% lift over campaign emails.
** Browse abandonment messages saw the most significant increase in use, sending 221% more messages YoY.

SMS Marketing:

** SMS campaign sends reached nearly 100 million in 2022, up 62.3% YoY.
** Campaign SMS generated a 23.8% increase in orders YoY. Automated SMS sends decreased by 21% but generated 612% more orders.

Push messages:

** Brands sent 290% more campaign push messages and 42.6% more automated messages YoY.
** Push messages generated 18.8% more orders than in 2021.

The report also sheds light on not only how email programs across industry verticals compare to one another but how consumers engage with each. Hobbies & Leisure led all verticals in click rate, ending the year at 1.95% while Food & Drink generated the highest conversion rate at 0.17%.

“What we see when digging into performance by vertical is that consumers engage with email as part of their shopping and product discovery process,” says Greg Zakowicz, Ecommerce Marketing Expert at Omnisend. “And that categories with products more specific to the individual, like Health & Wellness, have better engagement. Brands should tap into emotion, regardless of their vertical, and work to create a greater personal connection in their emails.”

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