Benchmark Report 2026

Every WhatsApp message drives €1.02 in revenue.

What WhatsApp marketing really delivers in e-commerce – real platform data from 382 brands, 49.3M campaign messages and a full year.

382 brandsJune 2025 – June 2026Last updated: August 2026
Jump to methodology

Key Findings

  1. 0179.0% weighted open rate – measured on delivered messages (March–May 2026, 13.9M messages). The often-quoted 98% is folklore.
  2. 0211.8% click rate in the same period – counting every link and button click per delivered message, not unique recipients.
  3. 03Around €96M in attributable revenue and 935,235 orders in twelve months – that's €1.02 in revenue per campaign message sent.
  4. 04Flows deliver €2.48 in revenue per contact and account for almost half (47%) of WhatsApp revenue with €45.4M.
  5. 05November is in a league of its own: 6.5M campaign messages and €11.1M in revenue – 22% of the campaign year in a single month.
Finding 01

79% open rate. No folklore.

Since the measurement change on 15 March 2026, only delivered messages count towards the calculation – only someone who received a message can open it. On this basis, campaign benchmarks sit at a 79.0% open rate and an 11.8% click rate, with 0.37% opt-outs per message. That's roughly 3.5 times a good email campaign – and a number you'll actually find in your dashboard.

WhatsApp campaign benchmarks

n = 382 brands · Rates: Mar–May 2026, delivered basis
Open rate79.0%
Click rate11.8%
Opt-out rate0.37%

Rates on delivered messages since the measurement change of 15 March 2026. Click rate counts every click, not unique recipients.

Revenue: campaigns vs. flows

n = 382 brands · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026
47%Flows
Campaigns€50.6M
Flows€45.4M

Attributable revenue, deduplicated per brand – each order is counted once.

Finding 02

Flows sell while you sleep.

Automated journeys – cart abandonment, post-purchase, winback – generated €45.4M in attributable revenue and 420,771 orders: €2.48 for every contact that enters a flow. That's 47% of total WhatsApp revenue, running around the clock without a single manual send.

Finding 03

November is in a league of its own.

In the Black Friday month alone, brands sent 6.5M campaign messages – roughly two-thirds above the monthly average – driving €11.1M in campaign revenue. That's more than one in five campaign euros of the year (22%) in a single month. If you only start building your WhatsApp list in October, you miss exactly this lever.

Campaign revenue: November vs. average month

n = 382 brands · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026
€11.1M
November 2025
€3.6M
Average other months

Campaign revenue per month; average across the remaining eleven months.

The one number

Every campaign message sent drives an average of €1.02 in revenue.

€50.6M campaign revenue on 49.3M messages · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026
Transparency

Methodology & Definitions

All data comes from the Chatarmin platform. No surveys. No self-reported numbers. Every metric is calculated from actual send, delivery and order data on the platform.

Open rate

Read messages (read receipts) divided by delivered messages. Since 15 March 2026, messages that were never delivered are excluded from the calculation.

Click rate

All tracked link and button clicks divided by delivered messages. Every click is counted, not every person.

Opt-out vs. flow unsubscribe

0.37% opt-outs per campaign message sent; 1.13% unsubscribes per flow contact. Reported separately on purpose – the two values are not comparable.

Revenue attribution

An order counts when it matches a WhatsApp touchpoint: a coupon code from a campaign or flow, a tracked click within the brand's attribution window (default: 24 hours), UTM parameters, or chat activity within 24 hours. Each order is counted once per brand.

Campaign

A manually sent message to a segment – e.g. a newsletter, sale announcement or product launch.

Flow

An automated journey with a trigger – e.g. cart abandonment or post-purchase. One contact can receive several messages across the journey.

Cohort & window. We analysed 591 active brands with a WhatsApp display name on the Chatarmin platform; 382 of them sent campaigns in the period – all campaign benchmarks refer to these 382 brands. Observation window: June 2025 to June 2026, test accounts excluded. Open and click rates come from the period since the measurement change to a delivered basis (March to May 2026, 13.9M messages); volume, revenue and order figures cover the full year.

Limitations

  • The sample consists of Chatarmin customers and is not representative of e-commerce as a whole.
  • Revenue attribution includes a soft view-through component via the chat-activity criterion and may overstate in multi-channel funnels.
  • March 2026 partly includes the old measurement basis; the impact on the rates is minimal.
  • A per-brand median open rate is not yet available for the new measurement window; the message-weighted average is reported.
FAQ

Questions about this report

Things editors, journalists, and operators ask us most often.

Yes — with attribution. Cite as: "Chatarmin WhatsApp Benchmark Report 2026, chatarmin.com/en/studies/whatsapp-benchmark". Please link back to this page.

A 79.0% weighted open rate, measured on delivered messages across 13.9 million campaign messages (March to May 2026). The often-quoted 98% is a myth with no reliable source – no account reaches it as a campaign average.

Because we disclose how it's counted: every link and button click per delivered message, not unique recipients. Measured that way, it's 11.8%. And for WhatsApp, the metric that matters more than click rate is revenue per message: €1.02 across the full year.

Yes – the German version is already live at chatarmin.com/studien/whatsapp-benchmark. Both versions are based on the same data set and are updated together.

From the Chatarmin platform itself: 382 brands with campaigns (591 active accounts), 49.3M campaign messages, 18.3M flow contacts, June 2025 to June 2026. Fully aggregated and anonymised – details in the methodology.

Chatarmin (2026). WhatsApp Marketing Benchmark Report: Data from 382 brands. Retrieved from https://chatarmin.com/en/studies/whatsapp-benchmark

Chatarmin (2026). WhatsApp Marketing Benchmark Report: Data from 382 brands. Retrieved from https://chatarmin.com/en/studies/benchmark-2026