Nearly half of email revenue comes from 3.5% of the emails.

In Bulgaria, the median online store got 0.92% clicks per email delivered from April to December 2025. 8.1% of the people who opened an email clicked it, and 0.06% unsubscribed.

The top quarter tells you what good looks like: 1.69% clicks, and 14% of openers clicking.

Romania clicked most, and Greece least. Greek shoppers opened as often but clicked far less.

Campaigns go to a list: newsletters, promotions, one-off sends. Automations go to one person when they do something: leave a cart, view a product, sign up, see a price drop.

We compared the two inside the same stores, so each store is measured against itself.

Automations were about 3% of the emails and about 40% of email revenue in 2025. In 2026 their share of revenue passed half. Per email they got twice the opens, eight to nine times the clicks and about 25 times the revenue of a campaign.

They also get more unsubscribes per email, about 2.7 times a campaign. That's the price of reaching people at the moment they act.

Campaigns to lists under 15K got 0.90% clicks per email. Lists over 100K got 0.24%. Revenue per email fell in step: a large list earned about a sixth of a small list, per email.

Sending more often works the same way. Stores that sent a list member fewer than 2 campaigns a month got 1.34% clicks per email. Stores that sent 8 or more got 0.36%, and about a quarter of the revenue per email.

Frequent senders had fewer unsubscribes per email, 0.01% against 0.11%. The people who stay on a busy list are used to it, so the cost shows up in clicks, not in unsubscribes.

In November the median store sold 31% more than in a normal month. In Bulgaria, revenue from email nearly doubled against a normal month, and each email kept its click rate: 0.88%, the same as the rest of the year.

Black Friday week campaigns got fewer clicks each: 0.61% in Bulgaria. Shoppers see many offers that week, so every email competes harder.

December is a strong month for stores: revenue ran 10% above a normal month, and for about a third of stores it beat November, most often in electronics, grocery and toys. But it's a weak month per email. Stores sent 14% more emails, clicks fell to 0.51% in Bulgaria, and revenue from email fell 11% below a normal month.

Automations held. Their share of email revenue rose from about a third in November to 45% in December. In the gift weeks, the emails a shopper triggers work better than another newsletter.

For the season day by day, see The Black Friday Report 2026.

Stores. Online stores that use Releva, in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and other European countries: the same stores all period, a statistically significant sample. Car marketplaces and services are left out.

Period. April 2025 to August 2026. Per-person opens and clicks are kept from mid-March 2025, so the report starts in April 2025.

Metrics. Open and click rates are unique opens and clicks divided by delivered emails, counting each send on its own. Click-to-open rate is unique clicks divided by unique opens. Unsubscribes come from the link in the email.

Median store and top quarter. We compute each metric for each store and show the middle store, so one large sender can't move the result. The top quarter is the level a store needs to be in the best 25%.

Campaigns and automations. Told apart by how each email goes out: campaigns in a burst to a list, automations one person at a time on most days.

Revenue. Orders each store credits to an email, after a click or after an open or a click, depending on the store's setting. Shown only as shares, ratios and indexes.

Opens. Mail apps and security tools open some emails automatically. How Releva records opens changed in June 2026, so open rates come from June to August 2026 only.

Not a controlled test. These are observed results. They show what stores got, not what caused it. No store is named and no store revenue is shown.