What's a Good Email Click-Through Rate for E-commerce in 2026?

A good e-commerce email click-through rate in 2026 is around 2.15% for standard marketing campaigns, per Brevo's 2026 benchmark data, though the number you should target depends heavily on whether you're measuring a one-off campaign or an automated flow. Automated and transactional emails average 7.39% CTR — more than three times the campaign rate — because they're triggered by specific behavior rather than sent to a broad list.

Campaign CTR vs. Flow CTR: Don't Average Them Together

Benchmark reports that blend campaign and flow performance into a single average number produce a figure that doesn't represent either one accurately. Other trackers report slightly different campaign-level numbers for the same reason different sample sets and definitions produce different results: Mailchimp puts e-commerce campaign click rate at 1.74%, and Klaviyo's campaign-specific average for e-commerce sits at 1.69%. All three cluster in the same rough range (roughly 1.7%-2.2%) for standalone campaigns, which is the number to use when benchmarking a newsletter or promotional blast.

What Counts as Strong Performance

For a standard e-commerce marketing campaign, a CTR above 3% is generally considered strong, and top-decile performers reach around 5.22%. If your campaign CTR sits meaningfully below the 1.7%-2.2% baseline, that's usually a segmentation or relevance problem rather than a deliverability one — sending the same email to your entire list instead of a behavior-based segment reliably drags CTR down.

Why Flows Outperform Campaigns So Consistently

The gap between campaign and flow CTR comes down to timing and relevance rather than creative quality. A flow email — triggered because someone abandoned a cart or just made a purchase — reaches the recipient at the exact moment their intent is highest, while a campaign email competes with every other message in the inbox regardless of what the recipient was doing when it arrived.

This is also why comparing your store's blended CTR against a single published benchmark number is misleading if your flow-to-campaign send ratio doesn't match the benchmark's mix. A store that sends mostly promotional campaigns and has a thin automated-flow program will show a lower blended CTR than a store sending the same volume but leaning more heavily on abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows — not because the campaigns themselves perform worse, but because the mix skews toward the lower-CTR channel.

Bottom Line

Benchmark standalone campaigns against roughly 2% CTR and automated flows against roughly 7%, and don't combine the two into one number when evaluating your own performance. If flow CTR is underperforming that 7% range, check trigger timing and personalization first; if campaign CTR is underperforming 2%, check list segmentation before touching subject lines or design. And before comparing your numbers against any published benchmark at all, confirm whether that report measured unique clicks or total clicks — the two produce meaningfully different CTR figures from the same send, and mixing them is one of the most common reasons a store's numbers look worse than they actually are.