A cart abandonment contact drives €9.65 in revenue.
What automated WhatsApp flows really deliver in e-commerce. Data from 18.3M flow contacts and four flow types, June 2025 to June 2026.
Key Findings
- 01Cart abandonment flows drive €9.65 in revenue per contact entering the flow. That's 22 times a post-purchase flow at €0.44.
- 02Lead-gen flows generate €38.8M – around 85% of total flow revenue. They reach 10.3M contacts across 460 brands.
- 03Shipping tracking flows almost never get unsubscribed: 0.23% unsubscribe rate across 3.4M contacts. Marketing flows sit between 1.4% and 1.7%.
- 04Basket size is similar across all flow types, between €87 and €110 per order. The difference is the purchase rate: 8.7% of contacts in a cart abandonment flow place an order – after a purchase, it's 0.4%.
- 05Across all flow types, one flow contact drives €2.48 in revenue. Flows account for 47% of total WhatsApp revenue in the WhatsApp Marketing Benchmark.
The cart abandoner is the most valuable contact.
A contact entering a cart abandonment flow drives €9.65 in revenue on average. Lead-gen flows come in at €3.76 per contact, post-purchase flows at €0.44 and shipping tracking at €0.23. The reason is purchase intent: whoever leaves a cart behind was one decision away from buying. The WhatsApp reminder brings 8.7% of these contacts back. Across 173 brands and 440,280 contacts, that adds up to €4.25M in revenue from 38,453 orders.
Revenue per flow contact
n = 121 to 460 brands per flow type · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026Attributable revenue divided by contacts entering the flow. Only flow types with at least 20 brands are shown.
Flow revenue by type
€45.4M flow revenue · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026Flow types with fewer than 20 brands are grouped under "Other flow types", e.g. winback.
Lead-gen flows carry the revenue.
Looking at revenue volume, the picture flips. Lead-gen flows – welcome series after opt-in – generate €38.8M, that's 85% of total flow revenue. They run in 460 brands and reach 10.3M contacts. Cart abandonment flows contribute €4.25M, post-purchase and shipping tracking around €0.75M each. The cart abandonment flow is the most valuable per contact, the welcome flow is the biggest in total.
Service flows keep your list clean.
Shipping tracking flows have an unsubscribe rate of 0.23%. Post-purchase flows sit at 1.60%, lead-gen at 1.37% and cart abandonment at 1.68%. Messages with a service character are tolerated, messages with sales intent cost reach. That's exactly where the opportunity lies: shipping tracking flows reach 3.4M contacts and generate 2.4M clicks. It's the most-clicked message in the entire data set – and a safe entry point for brands just getting started with WhatsApp.
Unsubscribe rate by flow type
n = 121 to 460 brands per flow type · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026Unsubscribes during the flow divided by contacts entering the flow. A different denominator than the campaign opt-out rate – that's why the two values are reported separately.
“One contact in a cart abandonment flow drives €9.65 in revenue.”
€4.25M revenue from 440,280 contacts · 173 brands · Jun 2025 – Jun 2026Methodology & 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.
Flow contact
A contact entering an automated flow within the period. One contact can receive several messages and run through several flow types.
Revenue per contact
Attributable revenue of the flow type divided by contacts entering the flow. An average across all brands in the segment.
Purchase rate
Attributed orders divided by contacts entering the flow.
Unsubscribe rate
Unsubscribes during the flow divided by contacts entering the flow. Reported separately from the campaign opt-out rate because the two metrics have different denominators.
Revenue attribution
An order counts when it matches a WhatsApp touchpoint: a coupon code from the 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.
Flow types
Cart abandonment (reminders for abandoned carts), post-purchase (messages after the order), shipping tracking (delivery status updates) and lead-gen (welcome series after opt-in, usually with a coupon code).
Cohort & window. We analysed all automated flows in the Chatarmin pool of 591 active brands – the same brand pool as in the WhatsApp Marketing Benchmark – from June 2025 to June 2026, test accounts excluded. Only flow types with at least 20 brands are reported individually: cart abandonment (173 brands), post-purchase (121), shipping tracking (259) and lead-gen (460). Other flow types are included in the totals of 18.3M contacts and €45.4M revenue but are not shown separately.
Limitations
- The sample consists of Chatarmin customers and is not representative of e-commerce as a whole.
- Lead-gen flows usually include a coupon code. This makes attribution easier and favours this flow type in the revenue comparison.
- Orders are deduplicated per brand. If a contact runs through several flow types, their order may be attributed to the first matching touchpoint.
- Revenue per contact is an average across the segment. A per-brand median is not yet available for the flow types.
Questions about this report
What editors, journalists and operators ask us most often.
Cite this study
Chatarmin (2026). WhatsApp Marketing Benchmark Report: Data from 382 brands. Retrieved from https://chatarmin.com/en/studies/whatsapp-benchmark