Ecommerce personalisation statistics: what the research shows

Personalisation drives revenue

• 80% of respondents said they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalised experiences (Epsilon, The power of me, 2018; an online survey of 1,000 consumers aged 18 to 64).
• Companies that excel at personalisation generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average players (McKinsey & Company, The value of getting personalisation right, or wrong, is multiplying, 2021).
• 35% of what consumers purchase on Amazon comes from product recommendations (McKinsey & Company, How retailers can keep up with consumers, 2013).

Consumer expectations are rising

• 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen (McKinsey & Company, 2021).
• 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that recognise and remember them and give them relevant offers and recommendations (Accenture Interactive, Personalisation Pulse Check survey, 2018; a survey of 8,000 consumers in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and Spain).
• 49% of shoppers have bought a product they did not intend to buy after receiving a personalised recommendation from a brand (Segment, 2017 personalisation survey; a survey of 1,006 US adults).

Personalised email beats generic email

• Multichannel retailers saw a 37% increase in unique open rates for emails with personalised subject lines, compared with non-personalised subject lines sent in the same period (Experian Marketing Services, 2013 Email Market Study, published 2014).
• Triggered emails, such as abandoned cart and post-purchase messages, had an average open rate of 45.38%, against 40.08% for newsletters (GetResponse, Email Marketing Benchmarks, 2024; 4.4 billion messages sent by GetResponse customers in 2023).

Mobile personalisation is critical

• Mobile now accounts for three-quarters of all online traffic, according to Salesforce Shopping Index data (Salesforce, 2026 holiday predictions, 2026). Whatever you personalise has to work on a phone first.

Privacy and trust are the balancing act

• 62% of customers say they are more afraid of their data being compromised than they were two years ago, yet 79% are willing to share relevant information about themselves in exchange for contextualised interactions in which they are immediately known and understood (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer, second edition, 2018; a survey of more than 6,700 consumers and business buyers worldwide).

That is why first-party data matters: information customers give you directly, through loyalty programmes, quizzes and account sign-ups, on terms they understand.

What this means for a Shopify brand

You do not need an enterprise budget to personalise well. Shopify has built-in tools for segmented email campaigns and product recommendations, so useful personalisation is within reach at any size. Three places to start:

• Segment your email list by purchase history, location or browsing behaviour. Even basic segmentation makes your emails more relevant.
• Use post-purchase flows to recommend products that go with what the customer just bought. If someone buys a child’s hat, suggest matching accessories or the next season’s alternative.
• Collect first-party data on purpose, through quizzes, preference centres or loyalty sign-ups, so your personalisation improves over time without relying on third-party cookies.

We build Klaviyo segments and flows from your Shopify data, and measure the revenue the flows bring in, as part of our AI services for Shopify merchants. If your store needs a rebuild first, see our Shopify Plus development work.

Further reading

• McKinsey & Company on what getting personalisation right, or wrong, is worth
• Salesforce: State of the Connected Customer, now in later editions
• Accenture’s research on what shoppers expect from personalisation
• More on growing a Shopify store in our ecommerce insights

Final thought

Personalisation is now the standard shoppers expect, not an extra. The brands that invest in understanding their customers, build up their own first-party data and make every touchpoint relevant are the ones best placed to grow.

Start small: one segment and one post-purchase flow, then measure the revenue they bring in before you add the next. If you want help deciding what to personalise first, talk to us about your Shopify store.