2026 Cross-Channel Benchmark Report

Email remains the foundation of retailer-customer engagement, while SMS adoption continues to accelerate. Together, these channels are carrying more of the high-intent moments that drive engagement and revenue, from transactional and triggered campaigns to personalized post-purchase journeys.

Inside the Report

  • Clickthrough, Conversion, & Revenue Per Send performance stats
  • Insights into how much of email revenue triggered and transactional campaigns now drive
  • SMS program maturity and adoption benchmarks, including year-over-year send growth and revenue growth by vertical
  • Post-purchase, loyalty, and other high-intent performance strategies
  • Data-backed trends shaping cross-channel growth, from Price Drop alerts to Cart and Browse Abandonment programs

Benchmark Your 2026 Strategy

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Inside the Report

  • Clickthrough, Conversion, & Revenue Per Send performance stats
  • Insights into how much of email revenue triggered and transactional campaigns now drive
  • SMS program maturity and adoption benchmarks, including year-over-year send growth and revenue growth by vertical
  • Post-purchase, loyalty, and other high-intent performance strategies

What the 2026 report found

Listrak's annual benchmark report measures how retail brands on the Listrak platform performed across email and SMS. The 2026 edition covers 130 billion messages sent by more than 1,000 ecommerce clients during 2025, across fifteen campaign types and twelve retail verticals.

Email send volume was flat year over year in 2025, following 43% growth in 2024, while SMS send volume grew 19%
Triggered and transactional messages generated 49% of email revenue in 2025, up from 45% the year before
SMS revenue in the pets and animals vertical grew 262% year over year in 2025, measured against a small base from the vertical's first year in the SMS benchmarks
Source: Listrak 2026 Cross-Channel Benchmarks

How these numbers were measured

We publish the method with the figures so they can be checked, compared, and quoted accurately.

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Source and sample

The 2026 Cross-Channel Benchmarks reflect 130 billion email and SMS/MMS messages sent by more than 1,000 ecommerce clients between January 1 and December 31, 2025. The figures use a consistent client set year over year, so the comparisons are like for like.
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What's counted

Clickthrough rate is unique clicks divided by total sends. Conversion rate is completed orders divided by website visits. Revenue per send is total revenue divided by total messages sent. Where a figure isn't reported, the sample was too small to be statistically significant.
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How revenue is attributed

Conversion rate and revenue per send use a 30-day lookback window. A purchase is credited to a message when it happens within 30 days of that message being sent. Other vendor reports credit any purchase after a message was ever sent, or any purchase by someone who ever used a mobile coupon, which attributes far more revenue to the channel than it earned. If you're comparing published benchmarks, it's worth asking every vendor what window they use.
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Triggered and transactional messages

Transactional messages are sent via API in response to a customer action or transaction, such as order confirmations, shipping confirmations, password resets, and loyalty messages. Triggered messages are automated campaigns sent in response to a customer action, behavior, or event, such as shopping cart abandonment, welcome series, and product alerts. All other email sends count as broadcast.
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