Email deliverability has eroded over the past five years. Promotional tabs, spam filters, and inbox fatigue mean the average ecommerce email campaign reaches a fraction of the list it used to. A 20-25% open rate is considered strong. Most campaigns land closer to 15%.
That is the starting point before you account for click rates (2-5% on average, according to Mailchimp benchmark data) and conversion rates from email (0.1-0.5% of list, per typical ecommerce benchmarks). The math on email marketing ROI works at scale, but the channel is saturated.
WhatsApp sits in a different attention zone. It is the messaging app most people check continuously throughout the day. Messages arrive in a personal feed alongside family and friends. The open rate reflects this: 98% of WhatsApp messages are opened, according to Statista, most within the first hour of sending.
For ecommerce, this creates a channel with high reach and high attention. The challenge has been access: WhatsApp Business API requires technical setup, and managing campaign responses manually is not scalable. When customers respond to your WhatsApp campaign, someone has to reply.
