![StubHub order confirmation email: Your tickets are ready - order# [ORDER_NO]](/email-examples/img/19cf58c7a74b0d0b-t.webp)
![Yelp welcome email: Welcome to Yelp, [NAME] ✨](/email-examples/img/19958d2587e6f88f-t.webp)
What an online marketplace email is
An online marketplace email is one that a platform connecting buyers and sellers, such as Etsy, eBay, Depop, Fiverr or Airtasker, sends to either side: order, shipping and delivery updates, booking confirmations, requests to rate a seller, listing round-ups and promotions.
We collected 540 of them in two ordinary inboxes, sent between 2016 and 2026 under 88 sender names (a few platforms send under more than one name, such as Groupon and Groupon Sydney), and show 46 here. The percentages describe all 540.
One sender dominates the count. Depop sent 236 of the 540, and 231 of those are shipping or delivery updates. Every Depop email we rendered names a private buyer or seller by their handle, so none is shown here, but all 236 count in the numbers. That is why the comparison below gives the set with and without Depop.
Depop shows both sides of a marketplace in one inbox: 203 of its 236 emails are buyer-side order updates ("Your order from ...") and 27 are seller-side ("Your sale to ..."). Newsletters are 34 of the 540 (6%, or 11% without Depop), and 8 are shown here.
Browse 46 marketplace emails
Filter by type, or search a brand or subject line. Open any email to see it full length, with its subject line, notes on what it is doing, and a prompt that rebuilds it.
Tixel
🔥Trending in March on Tixel – Dua Lipa, New Order, Kneecap...
StubHub
Your tickets are ready - order# [ORDER_NO]
Yelp
Welcome to Yelp, [NAME] ✨
eBay
We’re updating our Payments Terms of Use
Treet
Welcome to Purebaby Pre-Loved!
hipages
Glow up your home with TLC in 2026
Humanitix
The author of The Body Keeps The Score is touring Australia!
Hatch
This will save you hours 👀
Redbubble
Up To 40% Off Valentine's Gifts For Him
Acquire.com
Top Startup Listings: October 2025 Edition
TeePublic
What’re you interested in?
Tixel
Sydney! Oasis is tomorrow. Last chance to go.
StubHub
Your event lineup: Dimension 20 Live: 2025 Viva Mas Vegas
Hatch
[NAME], are you open to hearing about job opportunities?
Makeship
Almost there! Please Confirm your Subscription at Makeship 🚀
Worlds.Cool
Yes, These High-Paying Jobs Are Real 👆
TeePublic
We guarantee it.
TeePublic
Your classic tee’s cool older sibling.
Tixel
Last chance! $250 could be yours 😎
Groupon
Customers With Your Good Taste Purchased These Deals
Groupon
Say yes to the deal! It's still available
Groupon Sydney
Event Cinema eVouchers Price Drop Sale
Acquire.com
Webinar Replay Inside: Get Deal-ready Before You List
Swimply
Please Verify Your Email Address
How marketplace email differs from everything else in the same inboxes
Marketplace email against every other email
540 marketplace emails, the 304 not from Depop, and 11,762 other emails| What we measured | All marketplace (540) | Without Depop (304) | Everything else (11,762) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shipping, delivery or tracking update | 47% | 8% | 7% |
| Order or booking confirmation | 6% | 11% | 5% |
| Survey or review request | 4% | 6% | 3% |
| Promotional email | 14% | 25% | 23% |
| Newsletter | 6% | 11% | 13% |
| Account notice | 6% | 11% | 7% |
| Sent to win a new customer | 4% | 8% | 16% |
| Written for businesses | 7% | 13% | 20% |
| Minimal design style | 53% | 22% | 18% |
| Utilitarian design style | 31% | 51% | 33% |
| Plain-text layout | 13% | 18% | 33% |
| Opens with a hero image | 5% | 7% | 12% |
| Subject line plain and functional | 61% | 33% | 30% |
| Greets the reader by first name | 26% | 46% | 40% |
| From a UK sender | 44% | 1% | 2% |
With Depop in, marketplace email looks like a stream of parcel notices: 47% are shipping, delivery or tracking updates, 53% use a minimal design and 61% have a plain, functional subject line. Take Depop out and the shipping share falls to 8%, close to the 7% of everything else.
The other 304 still differ in a few ways. They send about twice the share of order and booking confirmations (11% against 5%) and more survey and review requests (6% against 3%). About half the share is written to win a new customer (8% against 16%). Half use a utilitarian design (51% against 33%), and fewer are plain text (18% against 33%). Depop is also why 44% of the set comes from UK senders: without it, 1% does.
Depop's split points to what is different about marketplace email. A marketplace has two customers, the sellers and the buyers, and has to market to both in step, so one sender ends up running two programs from one account.
Nitrosend's co-founders ran Bluethumb, an Australian online art marketplace, before they built email tools. A daily email that recommended art from what each buyer had liked and added to cart came to drive about 10% of its revenue, as described in a Built to Sell interview.
What is in the collected set
By type
all 540 marketplace emails collected| Type | Emails | Share of the set |
|---|---|---|
| Shipping update | 153 emails | 28% of the set |
| Delivery update | 102 emails | 19% of the set |
| Promotional | 77 emails | 14% of the set |
| Newsletter | 34 emails | 6% of the set |
| Account notice | 34 emails | 6% of the set |
| Order confirmation | 20 emails | 4% of the set |
| Survey or review request | 19 emails | 4% of the set |
| 27 other types | 101 emails | 19% of the set |
The five biggest senders
of 540 collected, sender names combined by platform, and how many are shown| Sender | Collected | Shown here |
|---|---|---|
| Depop | 236 emails | 0 shown |
| Etsy | 33 emails | 1 shown |
| eBay | 23 emails | 1 shown |
| Mad Paws | 16 emails | 0 shown |
| Groupon | 16 emails | 3 shown |
Of the 46 in the grid, 34 were sent in 2023 or later, 15 are promotional and 8 are newsletters. None is a shipping, delivery or tracking update, because every one of those we rendered carries a private buyer, seller or purchase history. 116 of the 540 have been rendered for the library so far, and we left 70 of those off: 40 that show private personal details such as a handle, name, face, purchase or ticket code, 2 one-to-one customer service replies, 2 that do not render properly, 4 that are not marketplace email, and 22 repeat sends of a template already shown.
Next to this one
The same library, cut a different way: ecommerce, retail and fashion and events by industry, or by the job the email does: shipping, delivery, order confirmations and surveys.
Questions about the collection
Mostly order traffic. Of the 540 marketplace emails we collected, 256 (47%) are shipping, delivery or tracking updates, 77 (14%) are promotional and 34 are newsletters. Most of the order updates come from one sender, Depop. Without it, promotions lead at 25%.
Depop emails at each step of an order, when it ships and when it arrives, and one of our two inboxes both bought and sold there. Depop accounts for 236 of the 540 emails, 231 of them shipping or delivery updates. Each one we rendered names a private buyer or seller, so none is shown, but all still count.
Plainer. 53% use a minimal design, against 18% of other email, and only 5% open with a hero image, against 12%. Without Depop the minimal share drops to 22%, but half (51%) are utilitarian. Subject lines are plain and functional in 61%, against 30% of other email.
Less than other senders overall: 26% of the 540 greet the reader by first name, against 40% of other email. That gap is Depop, whose order updates almost never use a name (1 of 236). The other 304 marketplace emails greet by first name 46% of the time, a little more often than everything else.
116 of the 540 have been rendered full length for the library so far. We left 70 of those off, 40 of them because they show private personal details. The other 424 still count in every percentage on this page.