- Across the brands I work with, email drives about 32% of total revenue on average.
- A rising email share can be a warning sign: one subscription wellness brand's share went from 41% to 53% in a month when store revenue fell 37%.
- Calculate it as Klaviyo-attributed email revenue divided by total Shopify revenue, for the same dates.
- Klaviyo's attributed revenue isn't the same as incremental revenue, so read the number next to total revenue and new customers.
What percentage of revenue should come from email?
My reference point is about 32%. That's the average share of total revenue that comes from email across the brands I work with, as shown on my homepage.
I'd treat it as a sanity check, not a goal. If you're far below it, there's a good chance your flows are missing or thin. If you're far above it, don't celebrate yet. Check what happened to the rest of your revenue first.
The right number for your brand depends on a few things:
- How much you spend on acquisition. Heavy ad spend brings in lots of first orders that email doesn't get credit for. That pulls email's share down, and that's fine.
- Whether your product runs out. Consumables have a built-in reason to reorder, so email has more to work with.
- Whether you sell subscriptions. Subscription reminders can carry a lot of revenue on their own.
- What month it is. Launches, restocks and sales swing the share fast.
How do you calculate your email revenue share?
Here's the simple version:
- Pick a date range. A full month is a good start.
- In Klaviyo, pull the email revenue attributed to campaigns and flows for those dates.
- In Shopify, pull total revenue for the same dates.
- Divide the email number by the Shopify number.
Say Klaviyo credits email with $40,000 in a month and Shopify shows $125,000 in total revenue. That's $40,000 ÷ $125,000 = 32%. (Made-up numbers, just to show the math.)
A few things to keep consistent so you're comparing apples to apples month to month:
- Same dates in both tools. Watch time zones if your Klaviyo and Shopify settings differ.
- Same revenue definition. Decide whether you're using gross or net in Shopify and stick with it.
- Email only, or email plus SMS. Either is fine. Just don't switch between them.
Why Klaviyo's number isn't the same as incremental revenue
This is the part that's easy to skip, and it matters.
Klaviyo credits an email with a sale when someone opens or clicks it and then buys within a set window. Its help center says the default window for new accounts is 5 days for email. It also says that opens triggered by Apple Mail Privacy Protection count by default, unless you change the setting.
So if a loyal customer gets your email, Apple auto-opens it in the background, and that customer buys three days later because they ran out, email gets the credit. Some of those people would have bought anyway. That's the difference between attributed revenue (what Klaviyo credits) and incremental revenue (sales that wouldn't have happened without the email).
I don't think that makes the number useless. It makes it a number you read with context. Use it to track direction over time, and always look at it next to total revenue and new customers.
When a high email share is a warning sign
Here's the clearest example I have.
One subscription wellness brand saw email's share of revenue jump from 41% to 53% in one month. On its own, that looks like a win. But in that same month, store revenue fell 37% and new customers dropped from 1,657 to 223.
Email didn't suddenly get better. New customer acquisition slowed down hard, so total revenue shrank. The existing customers, who were still getting emails and subscription reminders, became a bigger slice of a smaller pie.
That's why I never look at email share alone. When it jumps, I check three things first:
- Did total store revenue go up, down or sideways?
- Did new customer count change?
- Did ad spend or anything else upstream change?
If total revenue fell and new customers dropped, a rising email share is telling you about acquisition, not email.
When a jump in email share is real
Sometimes a jump means email did its job.
A haircare brand launched a new product, and the launch email made $31,059 from 395 orders. Email went from 23% to 47% of total revenue that month. That's what a list is for: when you have news, you can tell thousands of people who already like you, today, without paying for the click. Ads are rented, your list is owned.
The difference from the wellness example is what happened around it. A launch month with a big campaign behind it is email pulling more sales in. A month where acquisition fell off is email holding steady while everything else shrank.
Look at the mix inside email, too
Your email share has two parts: flows (automated emails like welcome, cart and reorder reminders) and campaigns (the sends you schedule).
After one skincare brand's flow system was rebuilt, flows went from 60% to 83% of its email revenue. Flows keep working whether or not you send a campaign that week, which makes that revenue steadier.
At the subscription wellness brand, one "your order is coming up" reminder made $47,321 in one month, 74% of all flow revenue. When one flow carries that much, it's worth knowing, because if it breaks, your email share breaks with it.
Where these numbers come from
The 32% figure is the portfolio average shown on my homepage, across the brands I work with. The other examples come from individual client accounts and are labeled with a descriptor instead of a name. They show what can happen in one account, so treat them as directional, not as a benchmark. More numbers are in our CPG email marketing benchmarks.
What should you track alongside email share?
Email share is one number. On its own it can fool you. Here's what I'd put next to it every month:
- Total store revenue. So you can tell growth from shrinkage.
- New customers. So you can tell when acquisition is the real story.
- Flow vs campaign split. So you know how much of email is steady and how much depends on what you send.
- Revenue per recipient. So you can see which emails are actually earning. I break it down in revenue per recipient.
If you want a fuller checkup, the Klaviyo audit checklist walks through the rest.
FAQ
Is 50% of revenue from email too high?
Not necessarily, but check why. If total revenue grew and email grew with it, great. If total revenue fell and new customers dropped, a high email share is telling you acquisition slowed, like the subscription wellness brand that went from 41% to 53% in a month when store revenue fell 37%.
Is 10% of revenue from email too low?
It's well below the roughly 32% average across the brands I work with, so I'd look at your flows first. Missing or broken welcome, cart, post-purchase and reorder flows are the usual reasons. Heavy ad spend can also pull the share down without anything being wrong.
Should I include SMS in my email revenue share?
Either way works. Just pick one definition and keep it, so you can compare month to month. If you run both, it's worth tracking them separately too.
Does Klaviyo over-report email revenue?
It reports attributed revenue, which isn't the same as incremental revenue. Klaviyo's help center says opens and clicks both start the attribution window, and that Apple Mail Privacy Protection auto-opens count by default. Some of that revenue would have happened without the email.
How often should I check email's share of revenue?
Monthly is enough for most brands. Compare it to the same month last year when you can, since launches, restocks and holiday sales swing it a lot.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.