Consumer behaviour should always be what leads your decisions. If consumers are showing a preference for one item over another, it is time to pay attention and consider pivoting. Instead of increasing marketing for the underperforming item, businesses should ask what the data actually means. This is increasingly important in light of recent studies. Let’s explain.
A recent study by Omnisend notes that e-commerce in South Africa is showing an interesting trend. On the surface, the engagement with promotions is lower, but e-commerce is growing.
Shoppers bought 97% more often during 2025 in spite of lower engagement with promotions. Brands that focused on quality over quantity were rewarded as the engagement lowered, but a higher percentage of individuals who engaged showed true intent to buy – up to 97%!
Brands Must Be Intentional Like Customers’ Behaviour
This data underscores the importance of brands being intentional, as it is becoming more and more difficult to fight for consumers’ attention. Highly targeted advertising that accurately reflects the buyer persona is a non-negotiable.
Beyond thoroughly planned campaigns that are well-executed, entrepreneurs who are aiming to respond effectively to behaviours need to have reactive messages that target consumers when they are primed for the right marketing messages. Essentially, the micro-moment that Google has advocated for and built its ads on is now more important than ever.
The study backs this up: automated, behaviour-based marketing generated 30% of e-mail revenue from just 3,9% of sends.
Although the study only focused on e-mail marketing, it can still be deduced that the same benefits can be seen in other digital forms of direct marketing.
E-commerce Is Showing Growth
Interestingly, all channels that participated in the study indicated growth, amounting to a 47% year-on-year increase. Yet, Omnisend notes that this growth is skewed; The top 5% of brands generated the lion’s share of total growth (44%).
According to Marty Bauer, E-commerce Expert at Omnisend, this can point to a stronger confidence amongst consumers. “What we saw in 2025 reflects the broader economy – growth came back, but it didn’t reach everyone,” he says. “After years of uncertainty and pressure on household budgets, people were still willing to spend, but they were much more deliberate about how and when they did. Brands that were able to react quickly to customer behaviour had a clear advantage, while others found it harder to keep up.”
E-commerce businesses thus need to ask how they can grow their individual business to capture some of the traffic from the top five e-commerce brands. And with an optimised marketing strategy, this is possible.
Marketing performance from Omnisend shows deliberate shopping behaviour where clicks were hard to earn. Important statistics include:
- Average revenue per email increased by 43%, from R 0,66 to R 0,99
- E-mail click-to-conversion increased by 97%, rising from 6,09% to 11,99%
- At the same time, e-mail click rates declined by 29%
Takeaway for E-commerce Entrepreneurs
The takeaway for e-commerce entrepreneurs is that paying attention to consumer behaviour is a must. Google reports that the new consumer behaviours are centred around three characteristics:
- Consumers research everything: from major life changes to which toothbrush to buy, they research what the best choice is.
- Consumers expect location-specific responses while sharing less information about themselves.
- Urgency is the context. Consumers want answers “right now”.
Consumers are bombarded with marketing messages from all directions – social media, search, websites, inboxes, you name it – and more and more consumers are spending shorter periods of time on devices more frequently than before. When they have these “check-ins”, it’s to solve a micro need that needs to be solved immediately. Beit checking a specific profile on social media, or asking Google “how many cups of coffee is too much”?
Entrepreneurs need to have a deep understanding of their customers and what makes them tick. Every marketing message that is shared needs to explain the value proposition in under ten seconds, compressing the promise into a few sound bytes or words that grab the attention of the viewer. It needs to be intentional in what it wants to help the customer achieve: fulfilling their need to buy a well-researched product (or service). This is how e-commerce entrepreneurs can leverage the consumer behaviour of individuals who are equally intentional about what they spend their money on.
