You’d be hard-pressed to find a business that does not use email as a marketing channel. It is low-cost, easy to automate and personalize, and a preferred channel for most audiences.
Channel popularity can bring complications — and in the case of email marketing, the increase in activity has made it more difficult to land the inbox and stand out. There’s no quick-fix solution here, performance depends on consistently adhering to best practices, making optimizations, and monitoring your email marketing metrics to spot and respond to trends.
In this article, we’re going to look at how you can benchmark performance, the most important email metrics to track for campaign performance and deliverability, and how you can improve your performance.
Benchmarking your performance
It doesn’t take much searching to find industry-specific email benchmarks online. And, as marketers and humans, we all love to compare ourselves to others.
Looking at an industry-wide average, however, can be unreliable. As Travis Hazlewood, Head of Email Deliverability at Ortto, shared, “If you access all the different email marketing platforms’ benchmark reports and compare the data, you’ll find they all provide different information.
I’ve seen open rate averages for the same industry differ by 20% between reporters—especially alarming when the lower advised rate was at 20% to begin with (in this case, comparing email marketing benchmarks for the real estate industry between Hubspot and Mailchimp).
That’s an alarming difference.”
Plus, Travis shared, email engagement stats are not as straightforward as they might seem — “the growth in security software’s use of server clicks to check the safety of links by causing a false click report at or even before email receipt, engagement stats themselves are not quite as reliable as you’d think.
Additionally, some email-sending platforms attempt to filter out the fake from the real, for which there is no 100% foolproof method, and you can see why some of those benchmark stats can differ so wildly.”
Now you might be asking, if not comparing to industry averages, then what?
Using your own metrics to benchmark success is a far better way to assess and reassess your email performance. To do this, you will want to review your current 30-day stats and compare them to the previous 30-90 days.
By doing this consistently, you can start to understand what success looks like for you, and when you might need to make some changes to improve performance.
7 email marketing metrics to monitor and optimize in 2024
Like most marketing channels, campaign performance on email is not about the email itself, but the greater goal it is serving. For example, a brand awareness campaign with a high volume of opens could be deemed a success, even if the clicks didn’t come. A performance-led campaign about a short-term special offer, however, may be primarily judged on the amount of revenue attributed.
Keep this in mind as you browse the metrics below — it’s good practice to track everything as this will allow you to dive into the data if you’re doing further investigation, but individual campaigns should have a few hero metrics or KPIs attached to them to avoid data overwhelm.
1. Open rate
An email open rate measures the percentage of email recipients who open your email.
How to calculate open rates:
Divide the number of opens by the number of delivered emails and multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
What an open rate can tell you:
When measured collectively and consistently, open rates can be an indication of your email deliverability. At a campaign level, they can help to measure the effectiveness of subject lines, ‘from’ details, and preview text.
How to improve your open rate performance:
If you’ve observed a low open rate on a specific campaign or set of campaigns, the problem likely has more to do with your subject line, preview text, or from fields.
To improve your open rate next time, look at which subject lines in the past have performed best, consider adding or changing the preview text, and review whether the ‘From’ information comes from a real person who works at your company. You might also want to experiment with using merge tags to add personalization to your subject line or preview text.
Our AI subject line tester tool can help you write higher-performing subject lines, based on millions of real-world data points.
If your subject lines have been waning over time (you can observe this using an open rate trending chart) and you’ve observed other email deliverability-related metrics in decline, it might be time to audit your sending practices to ensure you are adhering to best practices.
If you’re not sure where to start, our guide to auditing your email deliverability wins and losses will help you better understand what you need to do to fix the issue. If your marketing automation or email service provider provides deliverability support, reach out to them for personalized support.
2. Click-through rate (CTR)
A click rate tells you how many people who received your email clicked through.
How to calculate email click-through rate:
Divide the number of clicks by the number of delivered emails and multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
What a click-through rate can tell you:
Clicks on an email can happen on any component — the logo in your header, an image, a CTA button, or any of the elements in your footer. An email click-through rate gives you an indication of engagement and performance.
Some emails you send will not be designed for click-throughs. They may be strictly informational, transactional, or about building brand awareness. A click-through rate becomes important for emails with a clear CTA to do something like learn more, make a purchase, sign up or register for an event, or complete a form or survey.
How to improve your click-through rate:
There are some tried-and-true design tricks you can use to improve your click rate, like the inverted triangle method which drives the eye down to your CTA button.
Overall, however, your click rate will climb if the information you are sending to recipients is presented clearly and offers the recipient something relevant and valuable. Using audience segmentation and email personalization can help ensure email content is relevant to the recipient, and reviewing your copy and design to ensure the most compelling information is clearly and quickly communicated can help nudge your recipients to take action on your emails.
3. Click to open rate (CTOR)
A click-to-open rate tells you how many people who open your email go on to click. It can be a useful complementary metric to a click-through rate when reviewing campaign performance.
How to calculate email click-through rate:
Divide the number of clicks by the number of opened emails and multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
What a click-to-open rate can tell you:
Since a CTR is calculated based on the total number of emails delivered, good or bad performance could actually be the result of a low or high open rate. A click-to-open rate removes that variable to tell you whether the content of the email inspired openers to take action.
This information can help you identify whether it’s the inbox-specific information (subject line, “from” fields, and preview text) or the content itself responsible for your email campaign’s performance.
How to improve your click-through rate:
All of the recommendations listed in the click-through rate section above apply to a click-to-open rate too. In fact, with a click-to-open rate, you have a little more assurance that it is your email content that needs to be optimized, and not your subject lines or deliverability.
4. Unsubscribe rate
An email unsubscribe rate is calculated as a percentage (rather than figure) to give you an indication of the volume of users opting out of your email campaigns.
How to calculate an email unsubscribe rate:
Divide the total number of unsubscribed users by the total number of emails delivered, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
What an unsubscribe rate tells you:
A high unsubscribe rate is not necessarily an indication of poor email deliverability, but it is used by email service providers (like Gmail) to signal that your business is sending spam emails, so it could go on negatively impact your deliverability over time. For this reason, it is important to keep your unsubscribe rates as low as possible, even if the unsubscribes are coming from audience members who are no longer important to your business.
On a performance level, a high unsubscribe rate is typically an indication that your list is not interested in what you're sending and, over time, the decline in contacts could go on to negatively affect your business health overall.
How to improve your unsubscribe rate:
Auditing your email processes and campaigns to ensure you are adhering to email deliverability best practices will go a long way to helping improve your unsubscribe rates — and preventing them from getting too high in the first place.
These checkpoints are the best place to start:
Get consent - ensure every audience member you are sending to has opted in. Not just to receive emails from your brand as a whole, but to receive the specific type of email you are sending. Preference centers are a great way to give your audience control over what they receive, and to manage audiences.
Engage meaningfully — Use audience segmentation, personalization, compelling copy and design to send useful, helpful information to your subscribers.
Be human — earn your audience’s trust by being as authentic and personal as possible. Appeal to their interests with engaging, natural language, rather than trying to “game” the inbox for attention.
List hygiene is another important part of reducing unsubscribes. Ensure you’ve got an automated reengagement or sunset campaign firing in the background to keep your audiences healthy, and consider using additional engagement filters (e.g. subscribers who have opened an email at least once in the last 30 days) on large sends to avoid sending to subscribers who are no longer interested in your brand, product or service.
5. List growth rate
Like an unsubscribe rate, list growth rate is displayed as a percentage to give you an understanding of your list health overall.
How to calculate a list growth rate:
First, you will need to know the total number of net new subscribers. To calculate this, take the total number of gained subscribers and subtract the total number of unsubscribed addresses and email bounces.
Divide this total number of net new subscribers by the total number of subscribers on your list, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
What a list growth rate tells you:
Email list growth rate is more of an indication of your general marketing activities, than your email specifically, though some subscribers could be gained from existing subscribers who forward or recommend your emails.
The rate shows you how quickly your list is growing. A growing list is nearly always a good thing — unless you’ve acquired emails through bad practices (like list buying) that go on to cause your unsubscribe rates to skyrocket. If you’ve acquired your subscribers through smart marketing and every individual has consented to receive your emails, steady, continuous, list growth is something to be celebrated.
How to improve your list growth rate:
It’s important to remember that slow, steady growth of truly interested, opted-in, engaged subscribers will always outperform quick growth from list buying or other harmful practices.
If you do have growth goals, start by making it easy for interested leads, customers, or website browsers to subscribe to your email list. To do this, check that there are easily identifiable forms in key areas of your site, and that each one has an engaging hook to inspire subscribers to take action. Use reCAPTCHA or double-verification (or both!) to keep spam out, and to build an audience of people who have consented to receive emails from your business.
If list growth is a goal, consider what kind of engaging content you could offer via email to bring new subscribers in. For example, you could create an email course that drip-feeds information over a month or two, or you could send a newsletter that appeals to your audience’s interests. Once the new offering is ready, promote it through organic and paid channels or partnerships to drive growth. Later, you could create incentives for subscribers who share the content with a friend — this will form a growth loop that runs in the background to keep list growth rate steady.
6. Conversion rate
Conversion rates are calculated against most marketing activities to measure the impact of the channel or campaign against your business’s core goals.
How to calculate conversion rate:
Conversion rates are different from click-through rates or click-through-to-open rates, as they are focused on one primary conversion activity. This activity could be a sale or subscription, a booking or appointment, or something else entirely — it depends on your business.
To calculate your conversion rate, you will need to take the number of conversions and divide it by the total number of email recipients, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
What a conversion rate tells you:
Since not all emails are about conversions (for example, transactional emails or brand awareness emails are not about generating conversions), it’s best to measure the conversion rate on a campaign level. This will tell you how effective your email is in real terms, which can help you justify resources spent or provide a case for a dedicated resource.
It is important to be realistic about email conversion rates. Promoting a short-term sale to an already-engaged email list can realistically be measured based on conversions. But the buyer’s journey is incredibly complicated and, in the case of B2B, can be long. Even if your lead nurture campaign isn’t driving a bunch of direct conversions, it could be playing an important role in landing new business.
Use conversion rates wisely, and in conjunction with other metrics, to ensure you don’t under or overestimate the power of a specific campaign or email.
How to improve conversion rates:
Let’s say you have an email campaign around a webinar registration, with the registration being the conversion activity. This is a good example of an email that can be accurately performance measured and managed based on the conversion rate.
To diagnose an underperforming email, start by looking at the surrounding metrics. Low open rates could indicate a bad subject line or poor email deliverability. Declining clicks could be the result of unclear email copy or design.
Once you have an indication of where your email may have fallen flat, you can use an A/B test in the follow-up to see whether your performance improves.
7. Email delivery rate
Delivery rate tells you how many of your emails are actually landing in the inbox.
How to calculate delivery rate:
Email delivery rate can be calculated by dividing the number of emails delivered to inboxes by the total number of emails sent, then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.
What delivery rate tells you:
Delivery rate tells you what percentage of your emails did not bounce. Bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered because the email service provider believes the email to be fake or spam. There are also soft or temporary bounces that happen when an inbox is full — but these tend to be low-volume and less of a concern.
A low delivery rate (or high bounce rate) can be an indication that email service providers are not accepting your emails because they are deemed to be spam.
How to improve your delivery rate:
Your delivery rate is not the same as your email deliverability, but it is a hard metric that can indicate your email deliverability is suffering. To improve your email delivery, you need to follow email deliverability best practices.
A bounce log or report can help you gain insights into why bounces are happening so you can troubleshoot and fix the problem with your next send. There are lots of different reasons this can happen — typos in email addresses, spam reported by the address, duplicate emails, missing subject line or JSON document, or invalid unsubscribe headers.
Once you’ve identified the issue or issues, work to improve your sending practices to improve your delivery rate, and your email deliverability.
Final word
Each of these seven metrics plays an important role in helping you to understand how your email campaigns are performing so you can work to improve over time. Deeper insights can be found by using filters and segmentation to look at which audience/s, campaign/s, and messaging performs best.
