What we learned from 41 billion emails sends

41 billion email and SMS messages. Not a survey, not estimates, real transactional data from across 9 countries.

If you're not capturing people and cleaning up people with the automations, unfortunately you're gonna be working way harder than you have to be for like the same kind of conversion efficiency, if you'd call it that. Stop what you're doing. Take a note that you need to focus on that as a huge opportunity to go implement for your brand or your client's brand.

So the smart play isn't just more campaigns in Q4, it's having the automation infrastructure locked in before Q4 even starts. Because your traffic is going to double and your traffic spikes are going to hit. And when these AOVs double, your automations are going to capture way more and basically automatically make you more money. Yo, Chase.

Yo, what's up?

Hey man, we got a lot to cover here today. I've got 41 billion emails to talk to you about.

Damn.

Ready?

That's a lot of reasons. Let's do it.

All right. Well, in 3, 2, One. From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. What is up, everyone? Welcome back to Send It, where you discuss everything and anything retention marketing, specifically in email and SMS marketing and e-commerce. My name is Jimmy Kim, and I'm here with my co-host.

Yes, Diamond.

All right, so I kind of told you a little bit, but our friends at Omnisend, shout out to them for not only being a Tidal partner but being great, you know, a platform sponsor, friends, all that good stuff. But they just recently sent us their complete 2026 annual report before anybody else. And Chase, when I opened this thing, I legitimately stopped what I was doing and just started digging in through it for like 3 hours.

It's crazy. And I think you said something like, is it 41 million or 41 billion emails? There was a huge number.

Yeah, 41 billion email and SMS messages, not a survey, not estimates, real transactional data from tens of thousands, I think 160,000 e-commerce brands across 9 countries.

Unbelievable, dude. Well, I'm excited to dive in.

And here's the thing, some of these numbers are going to make people kind of uncomfortable, I think, because the data shows that most brands are Fundamentally doing email wrong. Like they're optimizing for the wrong things entirely.

Dude, it means there's a huge opportunity. So what specifically are we looking at?

Okay, so Omnisend, they broke down everything, campaign versus automations, email versus SMS, quarterly performances, automation types, and even like a country-by-country comparison. And there are patterns here that are completely changing how you should be thinking about retention.

I love it. All right, well, let's give the people what they want. Should we get into it?

Yeah. And just so everyone knows, if you want to download this and get access, we're going to put the link to the show notes directing you to Omnisend so you can download it for yourself and look at it together. But let me start with the number that made me reread the spreadsheet like 5 times because I thought it was a typo.

What is it?

All right, so email automations across 41 billion messages earned $2.87. Campaigns earn 18 cents.

Wait, so can we recap that? So you said $2.87?

Yeah. Automations, $2.87 per email.

Okay.

Campaigns, 18 cents. That's not like 20% difference. We're talking 15.6 times more revenue per send.

Wow. Interesting. Okay. So automations are supposed to perform better, right? I mean, they're obviously triggered by behavior. They're contextual, but that's, that's a lot.

Yeah. But if you look at the volume difference between Omnisend's data, brands sent 20.1 billion campaign emails and only 422 million automation emails. It's like a 47 to 1 ratio.

Insane. So brands are spending 47 times more effort. On something that actually earns them 15 times less percent. Is that correct?

Exactly. And it gets worse when you look at the conversion rates. Campaigns convert at 0.07% and automations convert at 1.36%. Crazy.

So it's like 19, almost 20 times higher for the automation.

Right, right. So what Omnisend's data is really telling us is everyone's obsessing over their Tuesday sends, their subject line tests, their creative for their next campaign. But the money, the real money is in the stuff running in the background that nobody is optimizing. Wow.

Okay. So break down the automation numbers. What's actually winning? Like what automations are performing well?

Okay. So product back in stock emails, they hit $8 and 46%. Really good. Welcome emails, $6 and 30%. Uh, we got birthday emails at $4 and 37%. And you know, the percentage of brands in this dataset sending product Back in stock emails?

If I had to guess, it's probably going to be low.

Yeah. 1%, man. Super low. 1% are using automation that earns them over $8 per send.

Dude, that's nuts. Well, hey, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, stop what you're doing. Take a note that you need to focus on that as a huge, huge opportunity to go implement for your brand or your client's brand. Okay.

Okay. Here's another one that was crazy. Welcome emails. You would think that everybody's sending these things, right?

Yeah.

Well, only 4% of brands, 4%. What? These things convert at 2% with a 53% click conversion. That means that more than half the people click on a welcome email are actually buying.

That's really interesting. That probably is the most shocking. I feel like every brand has it set up. I think that just shows us like we're in a bubble. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably in the top 1 or 5% of people doing it. Because I imagine most of the people listening probably have a welcome series. So it means the mass virginity of people not listening are not doing this.

It's crazy. Yeah. And I think it's because it requires setup and thinking through the customer journey, building flows and mapping the experience. And most people don't want to do that work. They'd rather just blast another 20% off code and hope that it opens.

It's crazy. But you know, as we've seen with the data, the ROI isn't even close.

Yeah, it's not even in the same universe. And here's what kills me, abandoned cart. Which everyone is running, I think, right? Earns $2.54 per send. That's solid, don't get me wrong, but a welcome email still earns 2.5 times more and nobody's optimizing them.

It's crazy. Absolutely crazy. What does the volume look like on these? Like, are we talking about small sample sizes or large? What does that look like?

No, that's the beautiful thing about the data that we're reading right here. Abandoned carts had 157 million sends, the highest volume of any automation. Welcome had about 99 million sends, right? This is like real scale of data.

Interesting. So if someone's listening to this and they only have, you know, an abandoned cart running, let's help them focus. Like, what should they do first?

Well, simple. They should set up a welcome series, hands down. I mean, if you don't have a single welcome email, I mean, a proper 3 to 5 email series is probably the right thing to do that actually onboards people because according to data, If you do it correctly, you're leaving $6.30 per subscriber on the table if you're not doing it. Wow.

Yeah. And most brands I'd imagine that do have something are probably just sending something very generic, like, thanks for subscribing. Here's 10% off, right?

Yeah. Either that or they just start hammering people campaigns immediately and then they wonder why their engagement drops off a cliff in like 30 days.

Yeah, totally agree with you. Um, you had mentioned something earlier I want to kind of dive a little bit further into. I think you said something about like shipping confirmation earning like almost $3 or something. Did I hear that right?

Yeah. $2.86 per send. Um, I thought it was really interesting and it blew my mind a bit because shipping confirmations aren't really trying to sell you anything, right? They're transactional, but here's your tracking number. Here's your order on the way, but people are making purchases.

Yeah, that's interesting. So why do you think they are earning, or how do you think they're earning almost that $3 per send?

Well, my guess just based on the data is that the open rates on the data shows 63% with a click-through rate of 18%. These are the highest engagement numbers of any automation type.

Got it. Makes sense. So people want to know where their stuff is. It's driving the click and the curiosity. And from there they probably get distracted again. And I guess they're buying, right?

Yeah, you nailed it. And they're excited about their order. They're clicking that tracking and it's a perfect moment to show them what to buy next, basically. But according to the data, only 3% of brands are actually doing this marketing in their shipping confirmation.

Again, that's shocking. Only 3%.

Yeah, like brand, more actual marketing, because most brands are just sending us plain text with the tracking number and calling it a day.

Got it, got it.

I think you're just missing a massive opportunity ultimately. Hey, you guys want to stay connected with us? Guess what? We send a daily retention newsletter out that you should join right now. If you're not a part of it, it's at ecomemailmarketer.com. It's completely free. We send it to your inbox daily. We do breakdowns. We talk about the latest things. We talk about the latest tools out there. There's so much you can do. Plus we even talk about the pod, of course. So if you're enjoying the pod and you want to be here, you want to listen to us, you want more email and SMS retention marketing tips, tactics, tools, tricks, whatever it might be, head over to ecomemailmarketer.com. We probably have something free that we're giving away right now too on top of that. So go get that, download it, join our newsletter. We'll see you there.

Yeah, I agree. So expand this for me. What do you think brands should be doing differently?

Okay. So you can include product recommendations. You can show complementary products. You can do simple, simple people who bought this also bought these 3 things sections on an email. And this email is getting open 63% and you're not being pushy. In fact, I think that you're being super healthy.

So let's call about 2 out of every 3 people that receive these open these. And what is like the average order value look like on this type of thing?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I was looking at that data. It's $125 average. It's not as high as a welcome or birthday, but the conversion rate is strong because people are already in the buying mode. They literally just bought from you. And here's another thing that's similar, order confirmations. That's another one that I want to pull out. 54% with a 7.7% click-through rate, earning $1.60. Again, most brands treat this like purely transactional, but if someone who just bought a coffee grinder, maybe show them a coffee subscription or your brewing accessories, something to help them make another purchase.

And it just makes for such easy and smart merchandising if you think about it.

Yeah, right, right, right. But most brands aren't doing it because they think, oh, this is a transactional email, we can't market in it. But according to Omnisend's data, it shows that brands who are doing it are earning real revenue from it.

Yeah, that's interesting. What about like an order follow-up email? Is there anything around that at all or no?

That's a good one to call out. So the order follow-up is earning $1.08 per send with a 48% open rate. And that's how everything— this is like a, how's, how's everything going with your purchase email? You know, most brands don't even send it at all or just ask for a review.

Dude, it could be so easy to set up like a plain text email or a very simple email with some links and some images. Like it's, it's so simple to do. And like, you could be building like the goal of like the next purchase happening and it's not hard.

Yeah, exactly. And if someone bought some like running shoes, your follow-up email too, weeks later should be checking in on how they're working out, maybe sharing tips on how to break them in or naturally suggesting the moisture-wicking socks or your running shorts that may be perfect for those shoes.

Yeah, I love that. So essentially the pattern here, right, is that like these transactional moments, they actually lend themselves to really kind of high-intent marketing moments, right?

You are nailing it, my friend. That is exactly right. The most brands are leaving money on the table because they're Thinking that transactional and marketing are separate things, but according to this data, they show that they're the same thing when done right. All right, let's flip over because I also had another thing that was really exciting. Let's talk Q4 because where this data gets really interesting for planning next year, and I know we're really far away, but I, yeah, that's what I'm thinking about.

Yeah, it's a good time, I think, to recap. So Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all the holiday shopping that, you know, had just recently somewhat happened. You know, everyone goes crazy in Q4.

Yeah, right, right. But if you look at what actually happens in this data, email campaign revenue per send goes from 13 cents in Q1, 13 cents in Q2, 15 cents in Q3, and then 28 cents in Q4.

Wow. So from the beginning of the year, 13, 13, 15, and 28. So you're saying that essentially more or less like it doubles in Q4?

Oh yeah. And look at it in the AOV numbers. So they're making $190 to $230 average order value, but in Q4, $426.

Dude, that is so much money. People are spending so much money during the holidays that, again, I know that's not like groundbreaking, but when you actually put it into numbers like that, I didn't realize people were spending that much.

Yeah, but here's what I think people are going to miss when they hear this data, because everyone knows that Q4 is big.

Yeah.

So they prepare by sending basically more emails, more SMS, more campaigns, more discounts, more volume, right? We all talk about sending more and they're trying to win through frequency.

Yeah, dude. The classic spray and pray approach still here.

Yeah. But we, we, we go and look at the automations across the quarters around the data. Q1 automation earns $298,000. Q4, $268,000. It barely changes.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess automations, right? They're not as kind of dependent or kind of reliant on the timing. They're more dependent on, I guess, the behavior. So I guess that makes a little bit of sense, right?

Right, right. So the smart play isn't just like more campaigns in Q4. It's having the automation infrastructure locked in before Q4 even starts because your traffic is going to double and your traffic spikes are going to hit. And when these AOVs double, your automations are going to capture way more And basically automatically make more, make you more money.

Yeah. And I think it sounds obvious, right? But essentially the Q4 prep needs to happen in Q2, Q3, really getting it dialed in.

Yeah. I mean, I think that this is exactly what happens to larger brands, but smaller guys don't think about this sometimes. So if you're scrambling October to build your welcome series, your browse abandonment, your customer reactivation flow, you're like really behind at that point. The brands that are crushing Q4 are the ones who spent the summer building their systems.

Yeah. And you know, what does that actually look like? Right? Like if I'm a brand and maybe it's June, right? Which sounds again, far away from now, but it's going to be here before we know it, which is kind of scary. Um, what should I be focused on doing, you think?

Yeah, I think you should be auditing your abandoned, uh, automation coverage, right? Like all your automations, make sure that you've got the big 5 running: welcome, abandoned cart, browse, customer reactivation, back in stock. And these should be built, tested, and optimized by like September, Basically. Yeah. Then I think you should look at your segmentation. Are you segmenting based on purchase behavior, engagement level, by product category? Because in Q4, when you're sending way more volume, your segments need to be tight and you're— or you're going to burn out your list. In fact, this is where people mistake the idea of like sending more emails. They're like, oh, well, I'll just blast everybody. What we're really talking about is sending more variety of emails based around that segmentation data.

Yeah. And when I was looking at the data as well from Omnisend, it shows that like the click-to-conversion rates don't really actually improve in Q4. Did you see that as well?

Yeah, nothing. Click-to-campaign Q4 is 8.9%, rest of the year, 8 to 10%. So even with those higher AOVs, campaigns are still less efficient at converting clicks than automations, which sits at around 31% year round.

Yeah. So the takeaway that I'm hearing, right, is if you're not capturing people and kind of cleaning up people with the automations, uh, you know, unfortunately you're going to be working way harder than you have to be. Probably the same kind of conversion efficiency, if you'd call it that, right?

Yeah, that's it. And, you know, I think Q4 isn't about working harder. It's about having systems that capture the increased intent automatically, right? You got more traffic coming in. Your automations are obviously where dollars are being sent. So you should be spending more time there. And the brands doing 8 figures in Q4 aren't sending 10 times more campaign. They're just set up better, in my opinion.

Yeah, 100%. Well, can we shift gears a little bit? We talked a lot about email. Can we talk about SMS now? Like, What does SMS look like in Q4? You know, is that a spike as well, or what do you, what are we seeing?

Yeah, I haven't seen the Q4 data for SMS unfortunately, because we're, we're so early with this data.

Yeah.

But so far looking at everything around the clock, SMS click rates are steady, 5 to 8% in campaigns. SMS automations though, they have about 20%, again, 4 times more the click-through rate.

Okay. So we'll, we'll have to, by the time this pod kind of airs, I imagine there'll be a lot of that data available. So download that, but Essentially what we're seeing is the same pattern as email, right? Automations crush it over campaigns.

Every single time. And I'd bet money that in Q4, when brands are hammering their lists with SMS campaigns, the automation performance stays strong while campaign performance probably drops from fatigue.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. That makes sense to me. You know, if I'm getting blasted 3 SMS messages a day in November, I'm probably going to ignore them and tune them out. But if I get like an abandoned cart text, right, I'd say that's going to be relevant because it's something that I'm doing and very focused on.

Yep. Relevance beats frequency almost always.

100%. Um, so yeah, I guess like the Q4 stuff, maybe we're still waiting a little bit, but like SMS in general, right? You know, brands are investing heavily here. Um, is there kind of just some general data that Omnisend has that you see, um, that we can talk about?

Yeah. Here's the biggest data point that I think stood out. SMS campaigns are getting 12.4% click-through rate and email campaigns are only at 0.7%.

So SMS is 12.4%, emails sub-1%. So SMS is something like 15, 16 times better in terms of the clicks than email.

Yeah. But, but there's a catch.

Okay.

What is it? Conversion rates are only 0.12%.

Conversion rates, okay. So people are clicking, but they're not necessarily buying really?

That is right. The SMS trap where I see, I've seen this with brands falling into this all the time. They look at their 12% CTR and think SMS is crushing it. And then they've got these crazy attribution models, so they don't realize it, but then they check their revenue. And it doesn't match what's attribution or the engagement is showing.

Interestingly, what's the hypothesis? Are people clicking just to stop getting texts?

Like, yeah, I think some of that.

Yeah.

But I think it's more about message quality and timing. Because if you look at SMS automation data, 20% click-through rate, 0.77% conversion, that's 6 times better than a campaign.

Hmm. Yeah. And I guess, right. Automation is contextual. That makes sense, right?

Right. And when you blast SMS campaign, you're interrupting someone's day. They might click out of curiosity, but they're not buying. They're not in the buying mode because you're disrupting them. It's like social marketing ultimately. And when you send an SMS campaign on abandoned cart, back in stock, order update, all that fun stuff, you're responding to something that they already did and they were already engaged with.

Got it. And what does like the revenue difference look like here?

So it's about 74 cents for an SMS automation and an SMS campaign earns about 15 cents. So 5 times difference.

Okay. So the same exact pattern as email, right? Automations again, crushing campaigns.

Yep. And you know what kills me here is that brands burning through their SMS compliance, sending 3, 4 campaigns a day, then they wonder why their opt-in rate's so high while their conversion rates suck ultimately.

Yeah. So what do you recommend then that they should be doing instead? Real quick, I have a 30-second message for you to tell you something that we've been working on, and I'm super excited about this and you should be too. So what if I told you you could instantly search every single email that Allbirds, Parachute, or Sunday Citizen ever sent? That's inbox.ai. It's an AI-driven searchable database of over a million emails from the fastest growing Shopify brands. Need a win-back sequence? Type it in. Want to see how the best brands handle abandoned cart? Type it in. It's there. Looking for a holiday promotion idea? Done. We've got you covered. No more endless Google searches or digging through your personal inbox, hoping you saved that one email and never being able to find it. With our platform, you can search, find, and execute campaigns way quicker. It's like having every single top brand's email strategy at your fingertips. Inbox.ai. Again, it's inbox with 2 Os. Stop guessing, start searching. Head on over to inbox.ai to check it out.

So based around this, I would say we want to keep SMS tight, right? The brands winning with SMS are using it for 4 things, right? There's 4 like major key things: abandoned cart recovery, Back in stock alerts, order updates, and VIP-like exclusive drive, and that's it.

Got it. So not the routine every Tuesday blast, here's 20% off, go buy.

Nope. And if you look at the volume of about 247 million SMS campaigns sending versus the 20 million SMS automation sends, brands are sending 12 times more campaigns, but automations are earning 5 times more.

It's crazy. So what about though, like SMS and abandoned cart versus like email and abandoned cart? Like how do we, can we look at those?

Yeah, so that's a great question. I think that was a good data point. The data doesn't break that out specifically, but I can infer from the overall like automation numbers, email abandoned cart converts about 1.51%, while SMS only converts at about 0.77%. But I would say that SMS has more of an immediacy factor ultimately. So the smart play, I think, if you're asking me, would be using both, right? Email immediately, then SMS 2 to 4 hours if they haven't come back. And SMS almost acts like an urgency layer on top of the email's detailed product reminder, which we kind of knew already, right?

Right. And this way you're not burning your SMS list because you're only texting people who have real intent.

No, you're, you're nailing it. And I think, uh, you're not texting your entire list, you're sending those 5 to 10% who have abandoned the cart, the difference between using SMS strategically versus treating it like email 2.0 ultimately.

Yeah. And then what about like SMS AOV versus email kind of AOV?

Yep. That was a good question too. So this one's pretty shocking, which I thought was crazy. SMS campaigns, $125 AOV. Email campaigns, $276 AOV average. So your email drives almost double the order value.

Wow. That's interesting. Yeah, I think that's probably because if I had to guess, like email gives you more space to kind of merchandise and show maybe multiple products and get people just interested more visually. Yeah.

SMS is great for the impulse buy and a quick decision and, you know, oh, we're just thinking about that moment, but email is obviously better for considered purchases, especially at higher price points where someone wants more details, read reviews, compare options, and so much more. All right. I got another interesting one here. SMS automation AOV is $95. Email automation AOV is $211. Even the automations, email is driving the bigger basket.

That's insane. So email is more like kind of a full conversation where SMS is more of like a tap on the shoulder, kind of like a nudge of sorts. Okay. Interesting.

That's a great way to put it. And the brands doing this are using both channels in their automation, not just their campaigns. So, all right. I have controversial data because I think this is really interesting. Let's talk about order growth.

All right, let's do it. Let's, let's get into it.

Yeah. So I know we've heard all the big numbers in the market and people talking about it, but according to their data, their brands, we're just talking about their brands year over year, their growth has almost doubled at 97.8% of growth.

Wow, dude, that's insane. That's awesome.

Okay. So it's interesting. It's actually only 54.5% of their brands grew.

So half of the brands grew, grew, you're actually saying? Yeah.

Well, average growth is 98%, but only half of those brands grow. Do you know what that means? Basically?

Got it. So what you're saying is the winners are winning big, right? And everyone else, unfortunately. Is not doing as well, not doing great.

Yeah, you got it. Unfortunately, half their brands are going downwards, but the other half is going really well for them. So well that they're making up the gap that in the big bubble of data, it looks like there's huge growth within the customer base. And it gets even more stark when you look at the quarters. Q4, the biggest shopping quarter of the year, 145% average growth, but that's only from 60% of their brands.

Got it. So the other 40% of brands then shrunk during BFCM?

Yep, you got it. And during that biggest e-commerce period of the year, it's when this data is so valuable that I don't think anyone's talking about the different markets and the different categories. And they're all kind of e-commerce brands on the same platform, in the same channel, dealing with the same ad costs.

Got it. So what you're saying is it's less about the market and it's more religious about execution?

I think that's right. And I bet the real money that the brands growing 200 to 300% have automation game locked in and they're not spending all their time on campaigns.

Yeah, that makes sense. I get that. Looking at like US data, right? Obviously that's where we're based. I know we have a lot of people that are international as well, but what does like the US data specifically show? Like, what do you see there?

Okay. So I thought this was a really interesting data point to bring up. US averaged 147% growth, but only 56% 52.6% actually grew. So that was like the breakdown. If you go to China, which is even crazier, they had 136% average growth in Q2, but only 47% grew. So we're seeing that worldwide.

Interesting. So half the brands were kind of subsidizing the other half's growth in these averages, I guess you'd call it that, right?

Yeah, it's a little bit of the uncomfortable truth. So you're hearing this and listening to it and your brand didn't grow last year. Yeah, can't blame iOS updates, you can't blame CPMs, you can't blame economy ultimately.

Yeah, that's hard because I guess, right, everyone is kind of dealt the same cards. We're all kind of in the same situation and, you know, unfortunately some did grow while maybe others didn't, right?

Yep, you're right. And based on this data here, the differences must be, to me humbly, based on all the splits that we're seeing, is probably fundamental. Are you running a proper welcome series? Are you Got a back-in-stock flow? Are you using browse abandonments? Are you reactivating dormant customers? The strategy, man.

Right. It's the quote unquote non-sexy stuff. It's the stuff that's boring that actually does move the needle that for whatever reason people don't want to do.

It's the stuff that works, man. And the crazy thing, these are cutting-edge tactics. We talk about it on the pod every week here. Products back-to-stock alerts have been around forever, but people don't set them up. Welcome emails. Come on, dude. You know that. Everyone you might know has welcome emails, but 1 to 4% of brands are executing at any type of goodness ultimately.

Yeah, that's, that's wild. Wild. It's absolutely mind-blowing. So still a massive, massive opportunity for brands who just do the fundamentals right. Like you don't have to even do that much more. You're going to be like way ahead.

Yeah, huge opportunity. And that's what I think the data really shows is not having a secret strategy or finding some secret growth hack. It's literally about doing the basics and building the infrastructure that captures Revenue automatically is something that shows intent.

Yeah, that's interesting. What do you think about the brands that are shrinking? Like, what do you think they're doing wrong? I think it's probably obvious, but I think it's obvious to some degree, right? They're just not doing what we're talking about. What do you think though?

I can't say for sure because I don't see that specific data, but I'm guessing that they're campaign heavy, automation light, or they're campaign light and automation light, and they're probably sending 1 to 3 emails a week max, if anything, and they're not doing any segmentation. They're probably burning lists and when it doesn't work, they send campaigns with deep discounts.

Yeah, unfortunately, right? That's just a downward spiral. We've seen how that ends and unfortunately it's not pretty.

No, it's not, unfortunately. And meanwhile, the brands growing 200% are probably sending fewer campaigns, but have 8 to 10, 12, 15 automations running that are properly optimized, generating 2 to 3 times the revenue percent, basically.

Yeah, I think like the comparison here, like to make it really tangible, it's like compound interest, right? The more infrastructure you build and the more things you have in place, but just keeping it really simple, the more it's going to compound over time.

Yeah, that's a great analogy. And that's why Q4 prep needs to happen in like Q2, Q3, and you can't compound interest overnight, in my opinion.

Yep. Yeah, that's right. Um, all right. So we've had a lot of, a lot of data that we've given to people. Um, why don't we try just to really kind of quickly, as we round this out, make it super actionable. So if someone's listening and thinking, okay, I need to fix this, um, where do you recommend they start?

Well, clearly the first thing is auditing your automation coverage. Don't overcomplicate it. Just check if you have these 5 running: welcome series, abandoned cart, Browse abandonment, back in stock, and some kind of customer win-back or reactivation.

Amazing. Amazing. And I'm guessing most brands, I would've guessed probably had more of these initially, but I'm guessing maybe most brands after hearing the data maybe have 2 of these, maybe 3 max.

I think the most brands have abandoned cart setup, which is interesting that that's the thing that they chose to set up, but welcome series earns 2.5 times more percent than abandoned cart. So if you're missing it, then that should be your first priority.

Yeah. And real, and real quick, you know, I don't wanna go at length, like what should a welcome series look like? Hey there, it's Chase here. I hope you're enjoying the pod, but I wanna get just 30 seconds of your time real quick to tell you about one of our sponsors who let us make this great podcast. So first I wanna start with a question for you. Do you ever find yourself staring at a blank page waiting for inspiration to strike? Your marketing campaigns don't have to suffer when your creativity runs dry. Omnisend has recently launched their most powerful AI update yet, and it is awesome. Its AI completely transforms how you can create and send your next marketing messages. And here's really what's incredible. Their AI doesn't just write your emails, but it actually helps you write really compelling subject lines, preheader text that are geared to increase your open rates and ultimately build customer segments in a heartbeat. And just whisper to the AI who you're targeting, and it's gonna figure out all the complex segmentation for you. That way you have no more guessing games. But hey, wait, it gets better. Their AI writer actually now proactively suggests improvements to your copy, and it's gonna adapt to your brand's unique voice and tone while following email marketing best practices. And their personalized product reminders analyzes your browsing behavior to serve up exactly what each of your customers wants and needs to see. And their campaign booster automatically resends emails to people who didn't open or engage with them, which helps lift revenue by an average of 13%. And now with over 150,000 very happy customers already dominating their markets using Omnisend's email SMS, and push notifications. Plus they have 24/7 amazing that actually responds fast and is very helpful. You're joining a winning team. So stop wrestling with writer's block and start letting AI do the heavy lifting for you. Visit omnisend.com and experience the future of marketing automation. Let them know that Jimmy and I sent you. And now back to the pod.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's at least, at least the minimum 3 emails. Email 1, which is an immediate set expectations, maybe a discount if that's your thing. Email 2 would be 1 to 2 days later telling your brand story, showing your best sellers. And then email 3 would be social proof and urgency to convert. I think that's at least the bare minimum. And here's the key. I think it's just not sending discounts and hoping that they buy. According to this data, welcome emails that focus on education and onboarding convert better than the ones that lead with 20%.

Yeah. And that just goes back to like building a relationship when you're building the relationship and not just solely making a transaction. It's, it's going to be better for everyone.

Yeah. And you know, if you, you know, jump over to inbox.ai, shameless plugs, and study how brands structure their welcome series, you're going to see that sending 2, 3, 4 emails does build trust before they even ask for the sale.

Yep. And what about, you know, browse abandonment, right? That's different from cart abandonment. So let's talk about that.

Yeah, browse abandonment triggers are when someone views a product but doesn't add it to cart, right? The cart abandonment triggers when they add to cart but don't buy, and browse abandonment catches people earlier in that funnel. And in this data, a product viewed email is earning about $1.13 per send.

Okay.

And it's not as high as the other automation, but it's still 6 times better than campaigns, and looks like about 1% of their brands are actually running them. Yeah.

And the thing with the, you know, browse abandonment, like it's A, low-hanging fruit and B, it's typically a lot higher volume than some of the cart abandonment or abandoned checkout. So it kind of makes up for a little bit with the volume. There's just a lot of people that can trigger it.

Yeah. Huge low-hanging fruit. Is someone looking at your product page and they're interested, send them 2 to 4, uh, send them an email 2 to 4 hours later with the product plus a similar option and you're staying top of mind.

Yeah. And another one, right, that like, I feel like it's such a no-brainer. Um, the back of the stock alerts, like talk to me about that.

Okay. Just let's dig really deep into this real quick. So 58% open rates, 21% click-through rates with a 6.5% conversion coming in at $8.46%. Only 1% of brands using that one.

Yeah. And it's not that hard to set up. I don't know. Like, I don't know why people aren't doing it.

Dude, it's, it's already built in. You just need to enable it and make sure you're capturing interest when the people, when the product goes out of stock, put a notify me when back in stock button on your page. And when it comes back, these people are literally automatic notified and the conversion rate, it's insane because these people already told you that they're, they want it. You're not convincing anyone. You're just telling them that it's available.

For sure. And I think it's clear, right? Like these are the must-have automations. Obviously there's going to be additional, but you have to have these at the core. Um, let's talk about campaigns for a second. Yeah.

Yeah, sure. So if you look at your campaign to automation ratio, that was my biggest thing. You're sending 20 campaigns and you have 5 automations. It's almost backwards. Like there's, it's like a wrong ratio.

Yeah. Um, what do you recommend then to be the right ratio?

Well, I'm going to give you the classic, it depends, because there's no perfect number, but if you think about it this way, if an automation earns you 15.6 times more than send, your team's time should be spent reflecting that and you should be spending more time optimizing your automations than creating your next Tuesday campaign.

That's right. All right, so maybe flip the script for a bit, get caught up on the automations, maybe start dedicating 70% of your time on automations, 30% on campaigns, and then maybe you kind of find an equilibrium around 50/50 or something.

Yeah, and look, I want to make sure people know that doesn't mean send fewer campaigns necessarily. It means stop obsessing over them. Your campaign should be on brand voice, image design, your content, your storytelling, but your time should be spent in automation because that's your revenue engine.

What's the third thing?

Well, tracking revenue per send. You know, I think one thing that we've got to think about is like not open rates anymore. We talk about this plenty of times, but I see brands celebrating these open rates when they've made like 5 cents per send. I know you've seen this, right?

Yeah, and meanwhile they're ignoring You know, an automation with a 25% open rate that's making less than $3 a send.

Yeah, no, exactly. And the data made it really clear. The automations with the best open rates aren't the ones making the most money. Back in stock has a 58% open rate, but makes $8.46 while customer reactivation has a 33% open rate and makes 49 cents. So like, there is some data there. So if you're optimizing for opens, you're probably optimizing for the wrong metric. Optimize for dollars per send.

And like, what's the best way that you recommend to track this?

You know what? It's in your ESP already. It shows your revenue per send on campaign and your automation analytics reports. So if yours doesn't, you should definitely figure it out, but it's not hard. It's just your total revenue divided by your total send. Track it monthly for each automation and for your campaigns overall, and start tracking that trend. You'll see some information that I think you might not even know about.

Right. And then it's going to be so much easier to see where the actual true opportunities exist.

Yep. And you might find your abandoned carts earning $1.50 when Omnisend's benchmark is $2.54. So it tells you there's room to optimize ultimately. Maybe your product images aren't great. Maybe your copy is weak. Maybe you're creating, not creating enough urgency.

Yeah. And maybe you need to add a second or third email to the sequence type of thing as well.

Yeah. guarantee that most brands just send one abandoned cart email and the data doesn't break out the multiple steps that of sequences, but I've never seen a brand, something that I've done with many of audits and reviews, never seen a brand where adding a second or third didn't increase recovery rate by 30 to 50%.

Yeah, for sure. And for SMS specifically, you have any SMS-specific recs?

Yeah, I would say number one, stop using SMS like email. Based on this data, SMS works on high-intent moments like abandoned carts, back in stock, order updates, and VIP drops. That's it.

Yeah, right. Not, not for the weekly kind of newsletter blast type stuff.

Yeah. Save those SMS credits when someone has actually shown intent for your stuff, exclusive stuff for your VIPs that actually care about. But if you're running SMS campaigns, keep them under like 2 a week maybe, unless you have really engaged list. And the brands crushing SMS are using 90% for automation and 10% for campaigns, not the other way around. Okay, dude, we're at like the top of the hour, so let's wrap this thing up, Chase. What's the biggest takeaway from hearing all this stuff about 41 billion messages?

Dude, I've been like mind-blown about like how few people are actually doing the basics that we've been talking about for years, so I think most brands are just, working on the wrong things. You know, everyone's so dang obsessed with their next campaign, their subject line tests, you know, their send time optimization, right? If they even care about that. But the data just shows that automations are where the dollars and cents are at. And it's not even close, right? I think it was like 15 or 16 times more revenue per send for an automation than for a campaign. That's not like a small improvement, right? Like that's a completely different business. where you're just gonna be able to drive way more profitable revenue from email and, you know, even SMS, right? Um, I think the opportunity also is just so big because so few people are doing it. Welcome emails, the back in stock alerts, the shipping confirmations. Um, again, they're not cutting edge, they're basic, but because so few people are actually executing them, by doing it, you're going to be so far ahead.

That's the gap. And if you close that gap before your competitors do, you're going to make You're going to be the top brand in that like sector and market that you might be going after. And even the top 20% that grew by 200%, basically.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the action items are pretty clear now. You know, I think number one is just start with auditing your automations. 2 is kind of starting to dedicate and allocate more time towards your automations. And 3, like with this, start tracking your revenue per send, not just like a vanity metric, like an open rate. And I'd say to do it now, having some urgency, not waiting till the end of the year when Q4 is hitting or about to hit. If you start today, if you build this infrastructure in the next 60, 90 days, you're going to be set up for a good chunk of the year and especially for Q4 when that lift is really going to take place. So I guess like for you, kind of the final question I kind of have is like, You know, for brands that are on the fence about their ESP, um, you know, is this data kind of relevant to their decision?

I think absolutely. Well, first of all, huge thanks again to Omni Center Title Partner for all this data. We're going to link it below and all that good stuff. But I do think that this data is going to help you understand, do I have the right tool? Do I have the right information? Do I have the right ESP? Am I missing things out? Maybe I don't have a good customer success. All this stuff should hit But I would even echo on your thing. You say start doing it now. I almost think like this should be a method, like a methodical thing that all brands are doing every month, ultimately reviewing. I mean, we're talking about this within our own company, for example, about our welcome series. They're not working. Things aren't working, but they were great when we set them up. But we even fall into the trap of not going back and changing them. And now we've instituted where we need to review them every month or every week and just make sure we're doing QA testing, make sure they're working because Man, the world moves fast and you forget really quickly when things are automated and set and forget. So listen, if you've gotten value out of this show here today, I hope you enjoyed today's pod. And, you know, I think the biggest lesson I would say is automations over campaigns, infrastructure over tactics, revenue sends over open rates, and really just getting to the basics. So that's a wrap for today's show.

Heck yeah.

All right, dude. Well, with that, if you enjoyed today's pod, as always, like, subscribe, follow. Again, show notes, very important here today. You'll be able to link to get your hands on that report that we're looking at a couple weeks earlier than they will have released into the market. We're releasing this after they've gotten on the market, so you can look at it now, but we highly recommend you take a look at that. We hope you enjoyed the show, and we'll see you next week. See you later. From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it.