How to Improve Shopify Email Open Rates and Click-Through Rates

Understanding What “Good” Email Performance Looks Like for Shopify

Before optimising, know your benchmarks. For Shopify ecommerce email:

• Campaign open rate: 20–35% is average; 35%+ is strong
• Flow open rate: 35–55% (triggered emails always outperform broadcasts)
• Click-through rate (CTR): 2–5% for campaigns; 5–10% for flows
• Click-to-open rate (CTOR): 10–20% (clicks as % of openers)

If you’re below these benchmarks, here’s how to fix it.

Improving Open Rates: The 6 Levers

1. Subject Line Quality

Subject lines drive 60–70% of open rate variance. Test these approaches: curiosity (“The one thing most Shopify stores get wrong about…”), specificity (“3 products selling out this week”), personalisation (“[First Name], we picked these for you”), and direct value (“Free shipping ends tonight”). Run A/B tests with at least 1,000 recipients per variant to get statistically valid results.

2. Preview Text Optimisation

Preview text is displayed next to the subject line in most email clients. Most stores leave this as the first line of email body copy — which is often an image alt tag or legal footer. Set preview text explicitly to complement your subject line. Together they form a two-line ad for your email.

3. Sender Name

Test “Sarah from [Brand]” vs “[Brand]” as your sender name. First-name sender names increase open rates by 8–15% on average because they feel like messages from a real person rather than a faceless brand.

4. Send Time Optimisation

Best times for ecommerce emails: Tuesday–Thursday, 10am–12pm or 7pm–9pm in your subscribers’ local time. Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time feature analyses your specific audience’s open patterns and picks optimal send times automatically. Use it.

5. List Hygiene

Sending to unengaged subscribers drags down your overall open rate and — more dangerously — signals to Gmail and Outlook that your emails aren’t wanted. Suppress non-openers from the last 180 days from your main send segments. Your open rate will jump 10–20 percentage points immediately.

6. Sending Frequency

Sending too frequently fatigues subscribers. Most stores do best at 2–3 campaign emails per week to engaged segments. Watch unsubscribe rates — if they spike above 0.3% on any send, you’re either sending too often or the content isn’t relevant enough.

Improving Click-Through Rates: The 5 Levers

1. One CTA Per Email

Multiple CTAs split attention and reduce clicks on any single one. Pick one goal per email and make the CTA clear and prominent. If you’re promoting a product, one button: “Shop [Product Name].” If you’re promoting a collection, one button: “View Collection.”

2. Mobile-First Design

60–70% of emails are opened on mobile. If your email requires horizontal scrolling, has text smaller than 14px, or has CTAs narrower than 44px tap targets, you’re losing clicks. Use single-column layouts, large fonts, and full-width CTA buttons.

3. Content–Audience Match

Promoting a men’s product to your full list when 60% are women tanks CTR. Segment. Send the right product to the right person based on purchase history, browse behaviour, and demographics where available.

4. Image–Text Balance

Image-only emails often end up in spam. Text-only emails can feel transactional. Aim for 60% images, 40% text. Always set descriptive alt text on images — if images don’t load, subscribers still know what they’re looking at.

5. Product-Specific Emails Over Generic Newsletters

Emails featuring one specific product with a compelling story convert significantly better than “here’s everything in our catalogue” roundup emails. Focus each email on a single product, collection, or story.

Struggling with low open or click rates on your Shopify emails? Our email marketing team runs full audits and rebuilds underperforming sequences. Get a free email audit or see our results.