Research conducted by Omnisend, an ecommerce marketing automation platform, has found that larger lists in emails tend to get more orders for online sellers. This goes against the conventional wisdom that smaller email lists offers better open and click through rates.
The study was based on over 964 million emails. It revealed that larger email lists have a much higher order rate despite weaker open and click through rates.
The study confirmed that smaller email lists, such as those under 5,000 email addresses, indeed have better open (20.2 per cent) and click through rates (5.3 per cent) with a typical order rate of 1.8 per cent. However, bigger lists, such as those containing more than 50,000 addresses, have a nearly 20 per cent order rate.
According to Rytis Lauris, CEO of Omnisend: “This data is crucial for ecommerce marketers, as it helps them to carefully plan their email marketing strategy for the upcoming huge sales season, including Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and of course Christmas. As larger lists earn more orders, marketers should take advantage of the high-traffic holiday period by acquiring as many email subscribers as possible as part of a profitable long-term strategy.”
There is a variety of methods online sellers use to convert new subscribers to an email list during the holiday period. Creating a pop-up box or an exit-intent box with a sign up incentive for already deal-conscious shoppers is one effective way. Using gamification to make signing up more attractive to customers, or making it easy by including an opt-in within the checkout flow is also a popular choice.