Email analytics are full of vanity metrics. Here’s which ones actually predict revenue — and how to benchmark them.
Open Rate: Useful, But Inflated
Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (2021), open rate data is inflated — Apple pre-loads images (which register opens) even if the user doesn’t open. Accept that your open rate metric is 20–40% over-stated. Use it for relative comparisons (subject line A vs B) within the same send audience, but don’t benchmark against industry averages assuming the measurement is clean.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Clicks are the real engagement signal: user actually did something beyond glance. Good CTR varies by industry and email type: transactional emails 10–30%, nurture 2–5%, promotional 1–3%, cold outbound <1%. Segment CTR: 3% on a whole-list blast is fine; 3% on a targeted segment is underwhelming. Build dashboards that show CTR per segment per campaign type — that’s where you learn what works.
Conversion Rate
The final measure: did the recipient take the desired action (purchase, signup, booking)? Conversion rate from email traffic varies wildly — 0.5% for cold outbound is good, 15% for warm cart-abandonment is normal. The more important stat is revenue per conversion multiplied by conversion rate — that’s what funds the program. Track conversion attribution back to the email that produced it to learn which campaigns drive revenue, not just clicks.
Revenue Per Recipient (RPR)
The king metric for email. RPR = total revenue attributed to the email / total recipients. Benchmark against yourself over time — this is your program’s health score. A well-run ecommerce list generates $0.50–$2 per recipient per campaign; lead-gen is harder to measure but should correlate with closed revenue over 30–60 day windows. RPR rising over quarters means your program is working; stagnant RPR means list fatigue or content staleness.
Unsubscribe Rate as Signal
Unsubscribe rate is your audience telling you you’re annoying them. Healthy: under 0.5% per send. Warning zone: 0.5–1%. Crisis: over 1%. A spike after a specific send means something about that send (over-pitching, wrong audience, poor timing) didn’t work. Don’t ignore unsubscribes as ‘just some people leaving’ — they’re the leading indicator of list burn-out.
Deliverability Signals
If your emails aren’t reaching inboxes, none of the above matters. Track: bounce rate (<1% healthy), spam complaint rate (<0.1% healthy), inbox placement rate via tools like GlockApps or Mailgenius. Drops in deliverability often show up as gradual open rate declines over weeks. Maintain sender reputation: authenticate with SPF/DKIM/DMARC, warm up new sending domains, sunset inactive subscribers. Deliverability is email’s foundation — without it, every other metric breaks.
Need help with email marketing?
Get a free audit of your email marketing setup. We’ll show you exactly where the opportunities are.
Get Free Audit →