Ever got yourself into overanalyzing messages in the group chat? They just replied with 'k' and no emoji, and you started to doubt your words.
Well, when it comes to email marketing, that obsessive attention to detail does not mean just your overthinking brain at work. This is the key to the success of your email marketing campaign. You should indulge in it while tracking your email metrics.
Smart marketers revere email marketing analytics and keenly observe email metrics. While monitoring these key metrics, marketers transform raw data into useful insights, assisting in the creation of more significant email campaigns to avoid any kind of expensive mistakes in the future.
Here in this blog, you will get to know 5 email metrics that you should keep in mind while making any decision related to email marketing
What are the metrics of email marketing?
A lot happens in the process of creating professional email templates until the emails reach your recipients' inboxes, awaiting their potential clicks.
Email analytics monitors data related to sending and interacting with emails at each step of this process. These data points that tell you how your email campaigns perform are called email marketing metrics.
Metrics show you if your emails stand out in the busy inbox. If they are compelling enough to garner engagement from subscribers. And, of course, whether they hit their revenue targets.
Company goals at all levels usually consist of three essential objectives: elevating marketing performance, keeping loyal customers engaged, and attracting new ones.
Email metrics show the route toward achieving each of the three desired outcomes.
Email analytics can convert subscriber's actions into significant insights because of its inherent ability to extract valuable information from users’ actions. This tells you which emails grab eyeballs, what falls through, and where opportunities lie.
A stellar metric performance is the indicator that you are in the right direction, so preserve this positive trajectory. Signs of trouble from metrics signal you to pivot and experiment before you achieve your desired email marketing outcomes.
As Seth Godin puts it, "When you measure the wrong thing, you get the wrong thing. Perhaps you can be precise in your measurement, but precision is insignificant. On the other hand, when you can expose your work and your process to the right thing, to the metric that matters, good things happen. We need to spend more time figuring out what to keep track of and less time obsessing over the numbers we are already measuring.”
Several other key performance indicators illustrate the impact of running an email marketing campaign that can help your overall marketing purpose.
5 Email Marketing Metrics to Track in 2025
1. Click-through rate (CTR)
We live in times when Mail privacy protection can make open rates relatively less reliable for email metrics. While you can track an email open with it, it does not guarantee that the recipient engages with the content.
For the same reason, click-through rates are a more definitive email metric of engagement. When any user reacts to your message, you get a click to your email. Hence, making CTR a direct indicator of email effectiveness.
Your CTR is calculated simply: Email CTR = (Unique clicks / Delivered emails) x 100%
If you’re seeing low CTR, try the following tactics:
- Natural placement of relevant links throughout your email content.
- Create catchier CTA buttons that grab viewer attention.
- Optimize email design for an easy-to-understand email layout.
2. Deliverability Rate
The deliverability rate reveals the percentage of sent emails that reach the inbox instead of the spam folder. While a "delivered" email might land in either location, the deliverability rate specifically tracks inbox placement.
Calculate it like this:
Deliverability rate = (non-junked emails delivered / total emails delivered) x 100
A solid deliverability rate assures you of a healthy email list, confirming that your messages are landing in the inboxes of the intended audience. But if the deliverability rate is dipping, it’s an alarm that maybe your emails are being marked as spam or being sent to invalid addresses.
As Kate Nowrouzi, VP of Deliverability at Sinch, emphasizes, "Prioritizing deliverability through email authentication and compliant list building is an excellent way to future-proof your email program."
To maintain high deliverability:
- Build and maintain a clean subscriber list.
- Purge inactive and invalid addresses every once in a while.
- Establish your credibility with ISPs with authentication methods like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Send relevant, valuable content.
3. Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate shows how many subscribers opt out of your emails.
This email metric is calculated as follows:
Unsubscribe rate = (Unsubscribes / Emails delivered) x 100%
While seeing subscribers leave can sting, keeping this metric under 0.5% is optimal. If it gets higher than this rate, then it indicates that there is a disconnect between your content and the expectations of your audience, which might depend on factors like frequency of email, relevancy, or shifting interests.
To minimize unsubscribed:
- Test and optimize your sending frequency.
- Segment your list for targeted content delivery.
- Try to maintain the relevancy of your email.
Let us shift your perspective: If you think carefully, unsubscribes are not always bad news. It’s way better to let go of disengaged subscribers than keep them on your email list, only for your emails to end up in spam.
That’s why making it easy to opt out is a best practice brands vouch for. It maintains trust and reduces the chances of disengaged recipients distinguishing your emails as spam. This approach cultivates confidence while preventing unresponsive contacts from labeling your emails as spam.
4. Spam Rate
Spam rate = (Spam reports / Total emails sent) x 100%
A high spam rate is a reason to worry because it is a warning sign that recipients find your emails irrelevant or annoying.
Unlike delivery failures, spam reports come directly from your audience. A consistently high spam rate damages your sender's reputation and future deliverability.
You see, email service providers take spam reports seriously. High spam complaints may cause them to suspend your account. So, monitor this metric regularly if you are serious about protecting your sending reputation and maintaining campaign effectiveness.
- Keep your spam rate low by:
- Auditing email content for spam triggers. 6
- Removing suspicious links or misleading elements.
- Ensuring images and formatting enhance readability.
- Testing emails across different devices and clients.
Revenue Per Recipient
Revenue Per Recipient (RPR) directly connects your email efforts to business results by measuring how much revenue each subscriber generates.
RPR = Total email revenue / Total emails delivered
This email metric helps you see through engagement statistics to discover the monetary value of your email list. RPR measures how well your email strategy converts subscribers into paying customers.
- Boost your RPR by:
- Refining list segmentation for targeted offers.
- Testing different promotional strategies.
- Sending personalized product recommendations.
- Eliminate inactive subscribers who dilute your metrics.
Wrapping Up
The stories that lie in your email metrics are worth listening to. From click-through rates revealing true engagement to revenue per recipient showing the impact on the bottom line. Tracking these email analytics metrics should be part of your email strategy from day one.
But if you haven't started yet, the best time is now. These observations will guide you to make decisions, impact your approach, and assist you in giving only those contents to your subscribers that they actually want to read in their inbox