After you send an email campaign, there are 10 metrics you can use to evaluate your campaign.
| Name | Definition | Typical value |
| “good metrics“: | ||
| Acceptance rate or Deliverable rate | Number of successfully delivered emails divided by the number of emails sent | 98%+ for academic list; 80% for industry list |
| Open rate | Number of unique opens divided by the number of delivered emails | 10%-20% |
| Click rate | Number of unique clicks divided by the number of delivered emails | 1% |
| Click-through rate | Number of unique clicks divided by the number of opened emails | 5%-10% |
| Reply rate | Number of unique email replies divided by the number of opened emails | Varies a lot. 0.01% – 5% |
| Active rate | Number of recipients who opened twice or more, or clicked | ~10% |
| Conversion rate | Number of goal achieves divided by the number of delivered emails. You have to define the “goal” first (e.g. a sale). | |
| “bad metrics“: | ||
| Bounce rate | Number of hard-bounced (bad) emails divided by the number of emails sent | less than 1%. High bounce rate will harm your sender reputation |
| Complaint rate | Number of complaints divided by the number of emails sent | less than 0.1%. High complaint rate will harm your sender reputation |
| Unsubscribe rate | Number of people who unsubscribe divided by the number of emails sent | <1% |
For the “good metrics”, you want higher values; for the “bad metrics”, you want lower values. You especially want the bounce rate and complaint rate to be low, otherwise you will run into the risk of being banned by your email marketing providers.
We also see the following abnormalities or special cases:
- Click rate higher than open rate, or click rate > 10%:
This is likely due to the recipients’ email servers scanning your emails and “clicking” the links - All emails to a single domain not opened
This is likely due to the recipients’ email servers blocking your emails or sending them to the spam folder - A single recipient opens your email ~10 times
He likely had forwarded your email to others - A recipient complaining he still receives your emails after unsubscription
He might have two email addresses in your list and he only unsubscribed one. You want to unsubscribe for him. - A recipient clicked your email but he never opened it
His email client (e.g. GMail) might disable image display which is required for open tracking.