Email Marketing Is Back in the Spotlight for Irish Ecommerce, are You Making the Most of It?
With AI, social commerce and paid media dominating much of the ecommerce conversation, one of digital marketing’s most established channels is quietly becoming increasingly important for Irish retailers: email.
According to Wolfgang Digital’s 2026 Online Retail Report, email generated an average of 6.4% of ecommerce revenue in 2025 — the first time it has exceeded 5% in a decade of reporting. Among retailers growing faster than the market, email accounted for as much as 8% of total revenue.
That’s particularly interesting when you consider what’s happening across the wider ecommerce industry.
Customer acquisition is competitive. Paid channels remain important, while AI is beginning to change how consumers discover and research products. At the same time, retailers are increasingly focused on retention and getting more value from the customers they’ve already acquired. Against that backdrop, having a direct relationship with your customer becomes incredibly valuable.
And that’s where email marketing comes back into the conversation.
Irish Consumers Are Already Online and Using Email
Ireland is a highly established ecommerce market. According to the Central Statistics Office’s Household Digital Consumer Behaviour 2025 report, 85% of Irish internet users shopped online in 2025.
Email, meanwhile, regained its position as Ireland’s most popular internet activity in 2025, used by 95% of internet users. For retailers, the opportunity isn’t simply getting consumers comfortable with shopping online — they’re already there.
The challenge is turning those online shoppers into repeat customers.
That’s why email should increasingly be viewed as part of a retailer’s customer retention strategy rather than simply a way to send newsletters.
1. From Customer Acquisition to Customer Retention
Retailers naturally spend a significant amount of time thinking about acquiring customers. SEO, paid search, social media, marketplaces and increasingly AI-driven discovery all have a role to play in bringing shoppers to an ecommerce website.
But what happens once you’ve acquired them?
If a customer visits your website, makes a purchase and then disappears, the retailer has to work — and potentially pay — to acquire that customer again. Email provides an opportunity to build on that initial transaction. A customer who has purchased from you already knows your brand. They may also have provided useful information about the products or categories they’re interested in. Where the appropriate marketing permissions are in place, you have an opportunity to continue building that relationship.
This shift from acquisition to retention is one of the reasons email is becoming increasingly interesting for ecommerce retailers.
2. Your Ecommerce Data Is Becoming More Valuable
Modern email marketing isn’t just about having a large mailing list. It’s about understanding the customers behind it.
This is particularly relevant as Irish businesses become more sophisticated in how they use customer and transactional data.
According to the CSO’s Information Society Statistics – Enterprises 2025, 28.2% of Irish enterprises performed data analytics using transaction records in 2025, while 22.6% used customer information.
When your ecommerce website is connected with an email marketing platform such as Klaviyo or Mailchimp, relevant customer and order data can be used to create more targeted communications.
Instead of simply knowing:
“This customer is subscribed to our mailing list.”
you may be able to understand:
“This customer has purchased twice, usually buys from a particular category and hasn’t ordered in four months.”
That is much more useful information. It allows retailers to move away from sending the same promotion to every subscriber and towards communicating based on where customers are in their relationship with the business.
3. The Rise of Automated Customer Journeys
One of the biggest developments in ecommerce email marketing is the move from standalone campaigns towards automated customer journeys. Rather than manually deciding when every email should be sent, retailers can create automations triggered by customer activity.
Some of the most valuable examples include:
- Welcome Series: A new subscriber has shown an interest in your brand but hasn’t necessarily purchased yet. A welcome series gives you an opportunity to introduce your business, showcase popular products and encourage that first purchase.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery: A shopper has demonstrated strong purchase intent by adding a product to their basket but hasn’t completed checkout. A relevant reminder can encourage them to return and complete their purchase.
- Post-Purchase Communication: The checkout shouldn’t be the end of the customer relationship. Post-purchase marketing can introduce complementary products, request feedback or reviews and encourage customers to return when they’re ready to buy again.
- Customer Win-Back: Some customers naturally become inactive over time. Rather than continuing to send them every campaign, retailers can identify customers who haven’t purchased recently and create specific communications designed to re-engage them.
4. Personalisation Is Moving Beyond “Hi Sarah”
Personalisation in ecommerce has also evolved. Adding a customer’s first name to an email is no longer the most interesting part.
The real opportunity is behavioural personalisation.
Depending on the data available, retailers can create customer groups based on factors such as:
- Previous purchases
- Product or category interests
- Purchase frequency
- Average order value
- Email engagement
- Customer location
- How recently someone purchased
A loyal customer who has purchased five times shouldn’t necessarily receive exactly the same communication as someone who subscribed yesterday. Likewise, a customer who purchased last week may not need the same sales message as someone who hasn’t visited your store for six months. The goal isn’t to make email marketing more complicated. It’s to make it more relevant.
Where Klaviyo and Mailchimp Fit In
Platforms such as Klaviyo and Mailchimp provide retailers with tools to create campaigns, customer segments and automated journeys. But the marketing platform is only one side of the equation. The quality of the integration with your ecommerce platform matters too. When the systems work together, customer and order information can flow into your marketing platform and help trigger more relevant activity.
A direct integration can help retailers:
- Keep customer information up to date
- Sync relevant customer and order data
- Build customer segments
- Trigger automated campaigns
- Reduce manual list management
- Better understand how email contributes to ecommerce performance
The result is that email becomes less of a standalone marketing channel and more connected to the wider ecommerce customer journey.
What Does This Mean for Irish Retailers?
The Irish ecommerce market isn’t standing still. According to the CSO’s Information Society Statistics – Enterprises 2025, 37.5% of Irish enterprises had ecommerce sales in 2025.
At the same time, the wider retail landscape is changing quickly. Wolfgang Digital’s 2026 research found that Irish online retailers recorded average year-on-year growth of 19%, while retailers operating both online and offline grew by an average of 24%, compared with 5% for online-only retailers.
As ecommerce matures, the question for retailers becomes less about simply having an online store and more about how effectively they’re using the customer relationships and data generated through it.
Email has an important role to play in that.
Are You Getting the Most from Your Email Marketing Platform?
For Irish ecommerce retailers already using Klaviyo or Mailchimp, there are some useful questions to ask:
Is your AB Commerce website fully connected with your email marketing platform?
Are you using customer and order data to make campaigns more relevant?
Do you have automated journeys covering important stages of the customer lifecycle?
Are you communicating differently with new, loyal and inactive customers?
And are you measuring email based on the revenue and repeat business it generates, not simply opens and clicks?
Email marketing may be one of ecommerce’s oldest digital channels, but the way retailers use it is changing. As acquiring customers becomes more competitive and the routes consumers take to discover products continue to evolve, owning and developing the customer relationship becomes increasingly valuable.
For Irish retailers, that makes email much more than a newsletter channel. It makes it part of the wider ecommerce growth and retention strategy.
If you’re currently using Klaviyo or Mailchimp and would like to understand how your ecommerce integration could help you get more from your customer data, get in touch with our Customer Success team. We’d be happy to chat email joleary@magico.com
