or years, open rates were treated as the gold standard of email success. The more people who opened your message, the bigger the win. If 66% opened your shampoo promotion, you might think, “Great! This campaign worked.” But open rates are no longer reliable.
Better Metrics for Smarter Email Marketing: Moving Beyond Open
How do you measure the success of your email marketing campaigns? Do you track how many recipients opened a specific email and compare that number (or percentage) to the total emails delivered? If so, then you are evaluating your success using the open rate (OR), a performance indicator or KPI.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) in email marketing show your goals in measurable terms. They help you judge how successful a campaign is. The formulas for these KPIs are not fixed—you can set them based on your needs.
For a long while open rates were the standard measurement of email campaign success indicators. The more people that opened your message the bigger the win. It’s nice to know that 66% of your shampoo campaign was opened. You might think the “Why Wash Your Hair Once a Month email campaign, was a success. But was it?
With new email barriers, such as Apple Mail’s privacy updates, image-blocking, and email click bots, open rates are less and less reliable. And in some cases, an “open” only means the recipient glanced at the subject line in preview mode and never read the email.
Measure what matters
- Click Through Rates (CTR) – measures campaign success by tracking the percentage of recipients who opened your email and then clicked a link within it.
- Click-to-Open rate (CTOR) – is calculated as
ClickThroughRate ÷ Opens. CTOR uses unique opens and shows how effective your email content is. To calculate it, exclude unopened messages and use the results from your open and click-through rates.
As you chart your results and compare them with your open and click-through rates, you’ll see that CTOR provides a stronger measurement. It redefines success by showing how effective your email content is with the people who actually opened it. It redefines the success rate of your email based on:
- Message content
- Effectiveness of the offers presented
- Layout or theme used Links and location
- Image use
- User engagement
Use CTOR to compare customer segments across domains. It highlights which messages drive opens and clicks, giving clearer insights than open or click-through rates alone.
An email conversion rate measures the percentage of recipients who take the desired action after opening an email. The action is usually tied to a specific goal. For example, if your “Why Wash Your Hair Once a Month” email leads to a chart download, that download counts as a conversion. Conversion goals can include a purchase, a sign up for your email list, or another defined action.
The Revenue Per Email KPI measures the value of your email, how much revenue it brings in. The formula is simple, the total number of emails sent, divided by the revenue generated from the campaign you are measuring. It is not a measurement of profitability, or ROI. However, it’s useful to know which campaign generates the most bang for the buck.
The four Key performance indicators allow one to focus on deeper engagement. These metrics will help you build stronger campaigns and assist with marketing decisions.
At MailingListServices.com, we help you go beyond opens with the tools and support you need for better deliverability, tracking, and measurable results.
Ready to improve your email performance? Contact us today and let’s talk about your next campaign.
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