E-Commerce Email Attribution Benchmarks: How Much Revenue Should Email Drive?

Email drives 33.4% of total store revenue across our portfolio. That's $11.8M out of $35.3M in total store revenue — and the range across individual brands runs from 17% to 67%. These are the email attribution benchmarks from a real, multi-brand e-commerce portfolio.

If your email program drives less than a quarter of total revenue, you're almost certainly underinvesting.

We manage email for DTC brands across food & bev, apparel, health & wellness, beauty, jewelry, home & lifestyle, general retail, and spirits. This post uses trailing-365-day data across the full portfolio — not a single month, not a seasonal spike — to answer the question every e-commerce operator eventually asks: how much revenue should email actually drive?

The answer is about a third. Here's the data.

What are email attribution benchmarks? Email attribution measures the percentage of total store revenue that can be attributed to email marketing — typically using last-touch attribution in platforms like Klaviyo. Across $35.3M in e-commerce revenue, our portfolio's email attribution benchmark is 33.4%, compared to Klaviyo's industry average of approximately 27%.

Email Attribution Benchmark: 33.4% of Total Revenue

Email drives 33.4% of total store revenue across $35.3M in combined store revenue. That's $11.8M attributed to email.

This is L365d data — a full trailing year pulled in February 2026. Not a single month. Not a cherry-picked Q4 snapshot. Twelve months of revenue, smoothed across seasonality, promotions, and product launches.

We publish monthly email benchmarks separately. In January 2026, those benchmarks showed email driving 33.7% of total store revenue. The L365d number is 33.4%. Two different time windows, same story.

Email is a third of revenue. Consistently.

Klaviyo email benchmarks put the industry average at roughly 27% for email-attributed revenue as a share of total store revenue. Our portfolio runs approximately 6 percentage points above that. The gap isn't because we have unusual brands or niche verticals — we span seven verticals and brands at every growth stage. The gap is execution and investment in the channel.

Here's the frame that matters: if your email program drives less than 25% of total store revenue, there's a gap. If it drives less than 20%, it's urgent.

Email Attribution Range by Vertical and Brand Size: 17% to 67%

The 33.4% number is the aggregate. Individual brands tell a more interesting story.

Across the portfolio, email attribution ranges from 17% to 67%. That's not a narrow band around an average. That's a 50-percentage-point spread across brands managed by the same agency, on the same platform, using the same playbook foundations.

The brand at 67% is a jewelry brand. The brand at 17% is a health & wellness brand. In between, you'll find food & bev brands at 50%, 38%, 35%, and 31%. Same vertical, four different numbers.

Here's the full range, anonymized by vertical and revenue tier:

Two patterns stand out.

Vertical doesn't determine attribution. Food & Bev appears four times in this table — at 50%, 38%, 35%, and 31%. If vertical determined the ceiling, those numbers would cluster. They don't. The same is true for Health & Wellness, which shows up at 52%, 27%, and 17%. Same category. Wildly different results.

Tier doesn't determine it either. The Scale brands in the portfolio sit at 35%. Emerging brands range from 24% to 67%. Being bigger doesn't mean email drives a higher share of revenue. Being smaller doesn't mean it can't.

The variable that actually explains the range is investment in email as a channel — list growth strategy, flow coverage, campaign cadence, segmentation sophistication. The brands at the top of this table didn't get there because of their vertical or their size. They got there because they treated email as a primary revenue channel and built accordingly.

Where do you fall in these email attribution benchmarks? And are you satisfied with that position?

Campaign vs Flow Email Revenue Split

Across the portfolio, the campaign vs flow email revenue split is 51% campaigns / 49% flows. Nearly even.

This mirrors what we see in our monthly email benchmarks — January 2026 showed a 50/50 split. The L365d data confirms it's not a one-month artifact. Over a full year, campaigns and flows contribute roughly equally to total email revenue.

But "roughly equal" at the aggregate level hides significant variation at the brand level. How a brand's revenue splits between campaigns and flows tells you a lot about where that program is in its maturity.

Campaign-heavy brands tend to be earlier in their email journey. They're sending regular campaigns — which is good — but they haven't built out the automation layer that compounds over time. Their revenue depends on someone hitting "send" every week.

Flow-heavy brands have the opposite profile. They've invested in automation — welcome sequences, cart abandonment, browse abandonment, post-purchase flows — and those systems generate revenue around the clock without a content calendar.

Balanced brands tend to be the largest and most mature programs. Both channels are working. Campaigns drive revenue from the full list. Flows capture intent-based revenue from specific behaviors. Neither one is carrying the other.

Neither extreme is "right." But if your split is 80/20 in favor of campaigns, that's a signal. You have untapped flow revenue sitting on the table.

Here's why that matters: in our monthly email benchmarks, flows generate 2–75x more revenue per recipient than campaigns. Every brand. No exceptions. If your flows account for less than 30% of email revenue, the per-recipient economics are screaming at you to build more automation. (For the full rate-level data — open rates, click rates, RPR, and the Flow Multiplier — see our companion post on monthly email benchmarks.)

How to Increase Email Attribution Percentage

The data shows a clear pattern separating brands above 35% email attribution from those below 25%. It's not about vertical. It's not about brand size. It's about what's been built.

What High-Attribution Email Programs Have in Common (35%+)

Full flow coverage. Welcome, abandoned cart, checkout abandonment, browse abandonment, post-purchase, and winback — at minimum. These brands don't have gaps in their automation. Every major customer behavior triggers a relevant email sequence.

Consistent campaign cadence. They send 2–4 campaigns per week, every week. Not three campaigns one week and zero the next. Consistency compounds — it trains the audience to expect and engage with email, and it keeps deliverability metrics stable.

Active list growth. Popups, landing pages, lead magnets, SMS-to-email cross-enrollment. The list isn't just growing organically from checkout opt-ins. There's a deliberate strategy to add subscribers at the top of the funnel.

Segmentation in both flows and campaigns. First-time buyers get different messaging than repeat customers. High-value carts trigger different abandonment sequences than low-value ones. VIPs get early access. The content is matched to the recipient's context.

Signs Your Email Program Is Underperforming (<25%)

Missing 2–3 core flows. Browse abandonment and post-purchase are the most commonly absent. These aren't optional flows — they're core revenue drivers. A brand without browse abandonment is ignoring every shopper who looked at a product and left without adding to cart. A brand without a post-purchase sequence is ignoring every customer during the window when they're most likely to buy again — and our repeat purchase benchmarks show that window is just 30 days for half of all returners.

Inconsistent campaign schedule. Sporadic sends — four campaigns one week, one the next, none the week after. Inconsistency hurts engagement metrics, degrades deliverability over time, and makes revenue unpredictable.

Smaller or less actively grown lists. The list grows only from checkout opt-ins. No popup. No dedicated capture strategy. Slower list growth means a smaller addressable audience for every campaign.

Less segmentation. More one-size-fits-all. The same campaign goes to the full list. Flows don't branch based on customer behavior or value. The result is lower relevance and lower conversion rates.

This is correlation, not causation. But it's consistent across verticals and tiers. The brands that invest in email infrastructure — flows, list growth, segmentation — see email drive a larger share of total revenue. The brands that treat email as an afterthought get afterthought results.

The important nuance: most of the brands on the lower end aren't "bad at email." They just haven't invested in it yet. The channel responds to investment more predictably than almost any other channel in e-commerce.

Why Most DTC Brands Underinvest in Email Marketing

Here's the take worth defending: most DTC brands are significantly underinvesting in email relative to what the data says it can do.

Consider the economics. Email drives a third of total store revenue across this portfolio. The cost of running a properly built email program — whether in-house or through an agency — is a fraction of what brands spend on paid acquisition.

Most DTC brands allocate 20–40% of revenue to paid media. Paid drives traffic. It's necessary. But email takes that traffic — the subscribers, the cart abandoners, the browsers, the past purchasers — and converts it at a fundamentally different cost structure. No incremental CPM. No rising CPCs. No attribution fights with Meta. The audience is yours.

And yet, the brands at 17–20% email attribution aren't there because email "doesn't work for their vertical." The data in this post proves that. The same vertical can be at 50%. The same tier can be at 67%. The ceiling isn't set by your product category. It's set by how much you've built.

Let's make this concrete.

The math on a $2M store:

A brand doing $2M per year with email driving 20% of revenue generates $400,000 from email.

Moving that number to the portfolio benchmark — 33% — would mean $660,000 from email.

That's $260,000 in incremental annual revenue.

What does a properly built email program cost? An agency retainer or a dedicated in-house hire runs $3,000–$8,000 per month. Call it $36,000–$96,000 per year on the high end.

The incremental revenue from closing the gap is $260,000. The cost to close it is $36,000–$96,000. That's a 2.7x to 7.2x return on the investment. The payback period is measured in weeks, not months.

And that's on a $2M store. Scale the numbers to $5M or $10M and the gap becomes even more absurd.

The gap between 20% and 35% email attribution on a $2M store is $300,000. On a $5M store, it's $750,000. On a $10M store, it's $1.5M. These are not rounding errors. These are headcount decisions, inventory decisions, growth trajectory decisions.

Every brand that's sitting below 25% email attribution should be asking one question: what would it take to get to 33%? The answer, based on everything we see across this portfolio, is almost always the same — build the missing flows, fix the campaign cadence, grow the list, and segment.

It's not glamorous. It doesn't require a new platform or a rebrand or a viral moment. It requires doing the work that compounds.

How to Calculate Your Email Attribution Percentage

Pull up your Klaviyo dashboard. Set the date range to L365d. Divide email-attributed revenue by total store revenue. That's your number.

Here's how to interpret it.

Below 20%

You're significantly underinvesting. Start with a flow audit — you're almost certainly missing core automations, and that's the fastest lever to pull.

Check for these flows first: welcome series, abandoned cart, checkout abandonment, browse abandonment, post-purchase, and winback. If any of those are missing, build them. If they exist but haven't been updated in six months, audit them. Missing flows is the single most common reason brands sit below 20%.

20–30%

You're in range but below the portfolio median. The foundation is there — you're sending campaigns and you have some automation running. The question is whether both channels are pulling their weight.

Look at your campaign cadence. Are you sending consistently — 2–4 times per week, every week? Or is it sporadic? Inconsistency is the most common drag on attribution in this range.

Then look at your flows. Are they A/B tested? Do they branch based on customer behavior? Have you extended sequences beyond the initial 2–3 emails? Flow optimization is where the incremental revenue lives.

30–40%

You're at or above the benchmark. Your email program is performing. The focus here shifts to optimization — tighter segmentation, deeper personalization, extending flow sequences, testing send frequency and timing.

This is also the range where you should be looking at the campaign vs. flow split. If you're campaign-heavy (65%+ of email revenue from campaigns), there's room to build out automation. If you're already balanced or flow-heavy, the next gains come from content quality and segmentation sophistication.

Above 40%

You're in the top tier. Email is a dominant revenue channel for your brand. That's a strong position — but also worth stress-testing.

Ask: is paid acquisition healthy? Is organic traffic growing? Are you building the brand in channels that don't depend on your email list? Over-reliance on any single channel is a risk, even one that performs this well. Diversification matters when you're already winning.

A caveat on attribution

These ranges assume Klaviyo's default attribution windows, consistent with published Klaviyo email benchmarks. If you've customized your attribution settings — shortened the click window, removed the open window — your numbers will look different. The benchmarks in this post use Klaviyo defaults across the board. Adjust your interpretation accordingly.

Email Attribution FAQ

How much revenue should email drive for e-commerce?

Email should drive approximately 30–35% of total store revenue for a well-optimized DTC brand. Across $35.3M in e-commerce revenue, our portfolio averages 33.4%. Brands below 25% are typically underinvesting in email infrastructure — flows, campaigns, or both.

What is a good email attribution percentage?

Based on our Klaviyo email benchmarks across multiple verticals: below 20% indicates significant underinvestment, 20–30% is below average, 30–40% is at or above benchmark, and above 40% puts you in the top tier. The industry average reported by Klaviyo is approximately 27%.

Should email revenue come from campaigns or flows?

Our portfolio splits almost exactly 50/50 — 51% campaigns, 49% flows. Neither extreme is ideal. If you're heavily campaign-dependent (65%+ from campaigns), you likely have untapped automation revenue. Flows generate 2–75x more revenue per recipient than campaigns.

How do I check my email attribution percentage?

In Klaviyo: go to Analytics > Dashboard > set the date range to Last 365 Days. Divide your email-attributed revenue by your total store revenue. That's your email attribution percentage.

Methodology: How We Measured Email Attribution

Data source: Klaviyo analytics (the same platform underlying Klaviyo email benchmarks industry reports), L365d (trailing 365 days), pulled February 2026.

Revenue definition: Klaviyo-attributed revenue using last-touch attribution with Klaviyo's default attribution window. This represents revenue Klaviyo attributes to email — it is not a causal claim that email "caused" 33.4% of all purchases. Attribution is a model. This is what the model says.

Portfolio composition: Multiple DTC brands spanning food & bev, apparel, health & wellness, beauty, jewelry, home & lifestyle, general retail, and spirits & beverage. Revenue ranges from Emerging (<$25K/mo in email-attributed revenue) through Scale ($100K+/mo).

Aggregate calculation: $11,797,563 in email-attributed revenue / $35,291,570 in total store revenue = 33.4%.

Campaign/Flow split: 51.4% campaigns / 48.6% flows at the aggregate level.

Anonymization: Brands are identified by vertical and revenue tier only. No brand names. No brand counts.

How to Pull Your Own Number

1. Log into Klaviyo
2. Go to Analytics > Dashboard
3. Set the date range to L365d (or "Last 365 days")
4. Find email-attributed revenue
5. Divide by your total store revenue (from Shopify, your ERP, or wherever you track it)

That's your email attribution percentage. Compare it to the email attribution benchmarks in this post.

For the full rate-level data — open rates, click rates, conversion rates, revenue per recipient, and the Flow Multiplier — see our monthly email benchmarks report. This email attribution benchmarks post is the companion piece. The monthly benchmarks tell you how well your emails perform. This post tells you how much revenue email should be driving overall.

The Bottom Line

These email attribution benchmarks tell a clear story: email drives a third of revenue. The data is consistent — 33.4% over a trailing year, 33.7% in a single month, across multiple verticals and brand sizes.

The range is 17% to 67%. Same agency, same platform, same foundational playbook. The difference is investment in the channel — flow coverage, campaign cadence, list growth, segmentation.

If you're below 25%, the gap between where you are and where the data says you could be is measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cost to close it is a fraction of that.

Email is not a solved problem. It's not a commodity. It's not "just newsletters." It's a third of revenue, and most brands are underinvesting.

The question isn't whether email can do more for your brand. The data already answered that. The question is why you haven't let it.

We publish email benchmarks every month and update the attribution data quarterly. Follow along for the next edition.