Email Marketing Benchmarks — March 2026

These are our March 2026 email marketing benchmarks — real data from 14 e-commerce brands and nearly 8 million emails. The flow multiplier is the number that should change how you allocate your email marketing resources. This month's data makes the case impossible to ignore.

Across 14 e-commerce brands and 7.97 million emails in March, our portfolio-wide flow multiplier ranged from 1.8x to 91.8x. That means the best-performing brand's flows generated nearly 92 dollars for every dollar campaigns generated per recipient. The worst-performing brand's flows still nearly doubled campaign efficiency.

This month's Spotlight digs into the spread — why it varies so dramatically, what drives brands to the top of the range, and what it means for where you should spend your optimization time.

March at a Glance

Portfolio: 14 brands · 10 verticals · $906,706 total email revenue · 7.97M recipients

Revenue split: Campaigns $438,743 (48.4%) · Flows $467,963 (51.6%)

Scorecard

vs. February: Revenue up 46.4% ($619K → $907K). March is a longer month and the portfolio grew from 11 to 14 brands, adding three new verticals. Recipients grew from 7.55M to 7.97M. Campaign open rates dipped from 47.85% to 43.02% — a composition effect from the broader brand mix rather than a performance decline. Click rates improved slightly (0.46% → 0.54%), and RPR held steady. The revenue jump is driven by both portfolio expansion and a strong month for the largest brand.

vs. Industry Benchmarks

How does this portfolio compare to Klaviyo's published industry averages?

Campaign open rates remain well above industry average. Click rates and conversion rates are below — the same pattern as February, and the same reason: we send broad. The larger the audience, the lower the rate metrics, but the higher the total revenue.

Email attribution rose from 25.0% to 28.0%. The portfolio now sits slightly above the industry benchmark of ~27%. Individual brand attribution ranges from 13.0% to 84.0%.

Klaviyo Benchmark Ratings (Campaigns)

Klaviyo benchmarks every account against similar-sized senders. Here's how our brands stacked up:

The pattern holds from February: deliverability metrics (unsub, bounce, spam) skew Excellent/Good — 79% of brands rate Good or better on unsubscribe rate, 71% on bounce rate. Performance metrics (click, conversion, RPR) skew Poor. This is the tradeoff of sending to broader audiences — rates look worse, but total revenue is higher. RPR improved from 9% Good+ in February to 36% in March as the three new brands include two high-RPR senders.

The Flow Multiplier

We track what we call the Flow Multiplier — flow RPR divided by campaign RPR. For every dollar a campaign generates per recipient, how many dollars does a flow generate?

Range: 1.8x to 91.8x. Median: 16.4x. Every brand, every vertical — flows outperform campaigns on a per-recipient basis. The spread is the story this month, and we dig into it in the Spotlight.

The Benchmarks

Here are the full email marketing benchmarks for March, broken down by revenue, engagement, deliverability, and the flow vs. campaign split.

Revenue

Total email-attributed revenue across the portfolio: $906,706.

Campaigns drove $438,743 (48.4%). Flows drove $467,963 (51.6%). Flows outpaced campaigns for the second consecutive month — the gap widened from $11K in February to $29K in March, with 26x fewer recipients.

Campaigns went to 7.67M recipients. Flows went to 296K. Flows generated $1.58 per recipient vs. $0.06 for campaigns — a 28x gap at the portfolio level, up from 22x in February.

Engagement

Open Rate: Portfolio weighted average 42.89% (campaigns 43.02%, flows 39.40%). Range: 20.21%–55.33% for campaigns.

Down from February's 47.85% campaign open rate. The decline is primarily a composition effect from the broader brand mix rather than a performance decline across existing brands. Seven brands rate Good or Excellent. As always, Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates these numbers — the signal is downstream.

Click Rate: Portfolio weighted average 0.54% (campaigns). Range: 0.18%–2.29%. Klaviyo's industry average is 1.29%.

Five of 14 brands are rated Poor for campaign click rate. Two brands rate Excellent, both smaller-list senders where the audience math favors higher rates — the same pattern we explored in February's Spotlight on the click rate gap.

Conversion Rate: Campaign average 0.03%. Flow average 0.68%. Flows convert at 25x the rate of campaigns — up from 19x in February.

Month-over-month: Campaign click rate improved slightly from 0.46% to 0.54%. Campaign conversion rate held steady at 0.03%. Flow performance strengthened — flow click rate rose from 2.50% to 3.15%, and flow conversion rate from 0.60% to 0.68%. The portfolio is getting more efficient on the flow side even as it grows broader on the campaign side.

Deliverability

Unsubscribe Rate: 0.15% portfolio average. Down from February's 0.18%. Eleven brands rate Good or Excellent — 79% of the portfolio. Only one brand rates Poor. Healthy across the board.

Bounce Rate: 0.42% portfolio average. Up slightly from February's 0.35%, driven by a few brands with elevated flow bounce rates. Ten brands rate Good or Excellent for campaigns. One brand's flow bounce rate (3.57%) is the outlier — worth investigating.

Spam Complaint Rate: 0.008% portfolio average. Well below the 0.1% threshold that causes problems with ISPs. Five brands rate Excellent for campaign spam rates — three of those with zero complaints. Steady from February.

Deliverability remains the strongest section of the portfolio. Unsub rates improved, spam rates are near-zero, and the list hygiene work continues to pay off. The bounce rate uptick in flows is isolated to specific brands, not a portfolio-wide trend.

Flows vs. Campaigns

The core comparison:

March is the second consecutive month where flows outpaced campaigns in total revenue — $468K vs. $439K. The efficiency gap widened further: 28x RPR difference, up from 22x in February and 18x in January. This three-month trend is now hard to dismiss as noise.

Spotlight: The Flow Multiplier Spread — 1.8x to 91.8x

Every brand in the portfolio has a positive flow multiplier — flows outperform campaigns on a per-recipient basis for all 14 brands. But the spread is enormous: 1.8x at the bottom, 91.8x at the top. What explains a 50x difference between the best and worst flow multipliers?

The Three Drivers

After three months of tracking this metric across an expanding portfolio, three patterns explain most of the variation:

1. Campaign audience breadth. The denominator matters as much as the numerator. Brands that send campaigns to enormous audiences relative to their flow audiences will naturally have low campaign RPR — and therefore high flow multipliers. A large food & beverage brand sending to millions of campaign recipients will show a massive multiplier not because its flows are uniquely powerful, but because the campaign denominator is so large. Compare that to a brand with a few thousand campaign recipients and strong campaign RPR — the multiplier will be much lower, even if both are healthy programs. The multiplier reflects audience strategy as much as flow quality.

2. Flow sophistication. The top multiplier brands tend to have more developed flow architectures. The brand with the highest flow RPR in the portfolio (over $20 per recipient) achieves that not just because campaign RPR is low, but because its flow program captures high-value purchases through well-timed, well-targeted automations. A brand with only a basic abandoned cart flow will have a lower multiplier than one with a full suite of browse abandonment, welcome series, post-purchase, and win-back flows.

3. Product price point and purchase behavior. High-AOV, considered-purchase brands tend to see stronger flow performance relative to campaigns. Brands selling products where the buying decision takes time — jewelry, home goods, luxury items — benefit most from flows that nurture that decision process with reminders, social proof, and scarcity signals. These flows capture revenue that campaigns simply cannot. At the other end, brands selling lower-consideration products see a naturally smaller campaign-to-flow gap.

What the Spread Tells You

A high multiplier (30x+) means your flows are doing the heavy lifting. If your flow program disappeared tomorrow, you'd lose a disproportionate share of revenue. Invest in monitoring, A/B testing, and expanding flow coverage. But also recognize that part of the reason the multiplier is high might be that your campaign audience is very broad — which is fine if total campaign revenue is healthy.

A low multiplier (under 5x) means there's room to grow. Either your flows are underdeveloped, or your campaigns are already performing well on a per-recipient basis (which is good). Look at absolute flow RPR: if it's under $1.00 per recipient, there's likely untapped potential in your flow architecture. A low multiplier doesn't always mean weak flows; it can mean very strong campaigns.

The median matters more than the extremes. The portfolio median is 16.4x. If your flows are generating 16 dollars for every dollar your campaigns generate per recipient, you're performing in line with a portfolio of well-managed e-commerce brands. Below 10x, ask whether your flows need work. Above 30x, ask whether your campaigns need more segmentation.

Want to know your brand's flow multiplier and how it compares? We calculate this for every new client in their first week. Get in touch and we'll show you where the gaps are.

What We'd Do About It

Based on March's data, here are the five things we'd prioritize:

1. Investigate campaign RPR declines. When campaign RPR drops while flow RPR rises, the flow multiplier inflates — but that doesn't always mean things are going well. It could mean the brand is deliberately broadening its campaign audience, trading rate for reach. But it could also signal campaign content fatigue or a merchandising issue. Pull per-campaign data and compare individual send performance. If the highest-revenue campaigns are still performing and the decline comes from incremental sends to colder segments, it's a healthy trade. If flagship sends are underperforming, there's a content problem worth addressing.

2. Address elevated flow bounce rates. At 3.57%, one brand has the highest flow bounce rate in the portfolio by a wide margin, rating "Poor" on Klaviyo's flow bounce benchmark. Elevated bounce rates in flows typically mean stale profiles are entering automated sequences — either through list imports that bypass double opt-in or through segment-triggered flows that include profiles who haven't been cleaned. Run a bounce analysis by flow to identify which specific automation is generating the bounces, then tighten entry criteria.

3. Build out flow programs for low-multiplier brands. Brands with multipliers under 5x have the clearest growth opportunity. Some are new to the portfolio and their flow programs haven't had time to mature. Others already have healthy flow RPR, which means the opportunity is in flow volume: more flow entry points, more triggers, and more branching paths to capture more of the purchase journey. Even a modest increase in flow recipients would meaningfully grow total flow revenue for these brands.

4. Capitalize on campaign breakthroughs. When a brand goes from near-zero campaign revenue to strong performance in a single month, that's a significant inflection point worth building on. The next step is establishing a consistent send cadence and testing content formats. High-AOV brands benefit from storytelling sequences — product provenance, craftsmanship details, customer stories — rather than promotional blasts.

5. Audit low open rate brands. One brand in the portfolio has a campaign open rate well below the rest, with the engagement issue extending to flows as well. Before any content or strategy changes, this needs a deliverability audit: check sender reputation, review spam folder placement rates, and evaluate whether the sending domain has any blacklist issues. Open rates this far below the portfolio average are usually a deliverability problem, not a content problem.

How to Read This Report

This report aggregates anonymized data from 14 e-commerce brands managed by our agency. Brands are identified by vertical and revenue tier:

• Emerging: <$25K/mo in email-attributed revenue
• Growth: $25K–$100K/mo
• Scale: $100K+/mo

Klaviyo Benchmark Ratings compare each brand's metrics against Klaviyo's industry percentiles:

• Excellent = 75th–100th percentile
• Good = 50th–75th percentile
• Fair = 25th–50th percentile
• Poor = 0–25th percentile

Weighted averages weight each brand by recipient count, so larger senders have proportionally more influence on portfolio metrics.

Revenue figures are Klaviyo-attributed (last-touch email attribution with Klaviyo's default attribution window). These numbers represent revenue that Klaviyo attributes to email, not total store revenue.

This is the third edition of our monthly email marketing benchmarks report. Historical comparisons reference February 2026 data and January 2026 data.