The Ultimate List of Email Marketing KPIs to Track

Do you know the open and clickthrough rates for your latest email marketing campaign? Or how well your emails are converting? If not, it's time to start paying attention.

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential for creating a successful email marketing strategy. But which metrics should you focus on, and what insights can they offer?

Let's dive into the most important email marketing KPIs you need to be watching.

Just a note that you'll likely encounter some new terminology here. Check out The Ultimate List of 125+ Email Marketing Terms to discover all the terms email marketers should know and understand.

What Are KPIs?

KPI stands for "key performance indicator." As the name suggests, these are key metrics that indicate how well parts of your email campaign are performing. If you're new to this, learning email marketing basics can provide a strong foundation for understanding KPIs and other concepts.

Email marketing KPIs matter because they create a holistic picture of what's working well in your campaigns and what needs tweaking. Understanding KPIs can help you fully leverage all of email marketing's benefits for your business.

This data also enables you to focus on the email marketing metrics that actually move the needle rather than vanity metrics that look good but don't mean much. Having a ton of email subscribers may feel like a win, but if none of them are opening your emails or clicking through to your site, that's a problem.

And KPIs enable you to course-correct when needed. If open rates dip, you can tweak the subject lines. If conversion rates drop, you can rework calls to action. KPIs transform guesswork into informed optimization. That's why we recommend conducting regular email marketing audits as part of your strategy.

Tips on How to Set KPIs for Email Marketing

Getting the most out of KPIs requires planning and effort. Simply tracking a metric because it sounds neat won’t cut it. To effectively leverage KPI data, you need a strategic approach.

Here's how to set meaningful KPIs for your email marketing campaigns:

Set Clear Objectives

As with most business initiatives, you need clearly defined goals and expectations to work towards. KPIs are no exception.

Setting objectives gives your metrics purpose and context. It frames how you'll track progress and define success.

For example, a goal could be:

"Increase email conversion rate from 2% to 5% in the next three months."

Whatever your goals are, make sure they're SMART:

• Specific: Well-defined and targeted
• Measurable: Quantifiable in terms of progress/achievement
• Achievable: Realistic given your resources and timeframe
• Relevant: Aligned with overall business objectives
• Time-bound: Have a deadline for completion

SMART goal-setting creates tangible targets to work towards. It also enables you to connect metrics back to broader objectives.

Choose the Right KPIs

Finding the right metrics to focus on takes some trial and error.

The key is to choose KPIs that directly align with the SMART goals you set, as well as your high-level business objectives. Start by considering which stage of the customer journey, or marketing lifecycle, you're trying to measure.

For a small business focused on list growth, open and sharing rates may be more helpful. An ecommerce site aiming to optimize conversions may emphasize clickthrough and post-click metrics instead.

We recommend starting with three to five KPIs from the list below, then testing, and iterating as you go.

Use Available Tools

The good news is you no longer have to manually track KPIs in a spreadsheet. There are many tools on the market that automate data collection and analysis, which eliminates a great deal of time.

Most email marketing software includes built-in, surface-level analytics on their dashboards, like open tracking, link tracking, and more. For more advanced insights, you can integrate your email software with web analytics tools or a CRM.

If you aren’t sure which email marketing software to use, Softailed can help you choose the right platform. Our comparison tool allows you to compare top email marketing solutions side-by-side.

We also analyzed more than 230 email software platforms to come up with our hand-chosen top picks for best email marketing software.

Stay Flexible

Your email marketing KPIs are not set in stone. As your goals evolve and your email program matures, the metrics you track may need to change.

Maintain flexibility and continuously evaluate which metrics are truly serving your team. If certain KPIs are no longer providing meaningful insights, don't hesitate to adjust, remove, or replace them with more relevant ones.

KPIs for Email Marketing: Here’s What to Track

There are dozens of metrics you can track to check how your email campaigns are performing. We recommend focusing on these core email marketing KPIs:

• Open Rate
• Clickthrough Rate
• Conversion Rate
• Bounce Rate
• List Growth Rate
• Email Sharing Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate
• Conversions
• Website Traffic
• Delivery Rate

We'll explain each one of these email marketing terms and how they can help you optimize your campaigns for better results.

Open Rate

Open rate is arguably the most fundamental email marketing KPI. It may seem obvious, but the primary goal of sending an email is to get the recipient to actually open and read it.

Your email open rate indicates the percentage of subscribers who opened a particular email campaign. If your open rates are low, you're wasting time and money creating emails that largely go unseen.

For startups especially, optimizing open rate is crucial to expand reach and grow subscriber lists. Established companies with greater brand recognition tend to have naturally higher open rates.

According to data collected by Mailchimp, the average open rate across industries is 35.63%.

Open Rate Formula

How to Optimize Open Rate

• Write clear, compelling subject lines
• Send from names recipients recognize
• Target emails based on user preferences
• Test different subject lines
• Use urgency in subject wording

Clickthrough Rate

While open rates indicate initial email visibility, clickthrough rate (CTR) shows genuine engagement. CTR tracks how often recipients click links within emails to visit your website, make a purchase, or take other desired actions.

According to Mailchimp, the average CTR is around 2.62%. However, for campaigns focused on driving conversions, CTRs between 1%-5% are common depending on factors like industry and audience.

This metric should be carefully monitored by sales teams, as it directly impacts revenue potential. High CTR shows that your calls to action are compelling.

A low CTR may indicate that issues with your copy or design are preventing user engagement, even if your open rate is high. Adjusting elements such as the placement of your call-to-action can improve how your emails perform.

Clickthrough Rate Formula

How to Optimize Clickthrough Rate

• Write action-focused copy and subject lines
• Place CTAs in prominent locations and use buttons rather than hyperlinks
• Test the wording on calls to action (CTAs)
• A/B test different CTAs, button colors, and link placement

Conversion Rate

If clicks indicate users taking action, the conversion rate shows how often that action drives desired results. It calculates the percentage of clickers completing a target goal. This varies based on campaign objectives, from email signups to product purchases and more.

For example, an ecommerce site may consider conversions to be add-to-carts, while a blog may track newsletter signups instead. Identify the user action that's most important for your goals.

Many email marketers consider conversion rate to be the single most important metric to track, and for good reason. Improving the conversion rate can drastically increase customers and revenue. It also helps you understand the ROI of your email marketing strategy.

Across industries, the average email conversion rate hovers at around 1%.

Conversion Rate Formula

How to Optimize Conversion Rate

• Ensure emails are mobile responsive
• Add trust signals like security badges
• Segment your list to promote offers that align with subscriber interests
• Reduce steps/fields to convert
• Create dedicated post-click landing pages for your email CTAs

Bounce Rate

An email bounce is when a sent email can't be delivered to the recipient's inbox. There are two types of bounces:

1. Soft bounces are temporary delivery failures that can happen when a recipient's mailbox is full, the server is down, or the message is too large. Most email service providers will attempt to redeliver soft-bounced emails for a period of time before finally classifying them as hard bounces.

2. Hard bounces happen when an email address is invalid, doesn't exist, or has blocked delivery. Unlike soft bounces, hard bounces cannot be delivered successfully in the future.

Why does bounce rate matter? Two words: deliverability and reputation.

If too many emails bounce instead of reaching inboxes, spam filters and email service providers will start seeing your messages as suspicious. That can hurt your sender reputation and email deliverability over time.

Even worse, you could get your email domain blocklisted entirely, which will make it impossible for your emails to reach anyone.

As such, list managers should monitor bounce rates carefully to ensure quality data. Identify bad addresses triggering hard bounces to maintain list accuracy. Letting your email list "go stale" with too many bounces is a fast track to email marketing trouble.

The average (hard) bounce rate is around 0.21%, although it can vary from industry to industry.

The Bounce Rate Formula

How to Reduce Bounce Rate

• Practice good email list hygiene by removing inactive or invalid emails
• Use a double opt-in process for new subscribers
• Monitor ESP sender reputation
• Send emails consistently to keep your list "warm"

List Growth Rate

List growth rate measures how quickly your email list is growing over time. But it's not just about your total number of email subscribers. It's about how fast that number increases month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter.

To generate more opens, clicks, and conversions from your email campaigns, you need to continuously grow your email list with new, qualified subscribers.

Consistently adding fresh subscribers helps keep your audience engaged and your content relevant. To achieve this, focus on attracting new subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content and offerings.

According to Shopify, good list growth is 2.5%, so aim to meet or exceed this benchmark to ensure sustained email marketing success.

List Growth Rate Formula

How to Optimize List Growth

• Use lead generation techniques such as lead magnets in exchange for signups
• Highlight subscription value in emails
• Target lookalike audiences
• Advertise your list on social media

Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

The email sharing or forwarding rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on a "forward" button or a link to share your email content with others, either via social media or by directly forwarding the email to a friend.

If your subscribers find an email valuable enough to share with their own network, that's a massive vote of confidence in your brand. As such, your sharing or forwarding rate is a great way to measure just how effective your email (and overall) marketing strategy really is.

After all, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other type of advertising.

Plus, each forward or share expands your reach. A single email could gain exposure to hundreds or thousands of new contacts thanks to recipients' networks.

Although a good average email sharing rate is only 0.5-2%, this small number can have a big impact.

Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate Formula

How to Boost Forwarding/Sharing

• Add visible social sharing buttons
• Create interactive or gamified content
• Create incentivize referrals
• Target influencers and advocates

Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate indicates the percentage of subscribers choosing to opt-out of your email list over a specific period. According to Mailchimp, the average unsubscribe rate is around 0.2%, but anything consistently above 0.5% should be investigated.

While some reasons for unsubscribes may be beyond your control, a rising unsubscribe rate could signal issues with your email content's relevance, frequency, or deliverability.

Monitoring this metric is vital to ensuring your content aligns with subscriber preferences. A few unsubscribes are normal and expected, but a growing rate of opt-outs can negatively impact your list's health and effectiveness.

Unsubscribe Rate Formula

How to Improve Unsubscribe Rate

• Carefully manage send frequency and monitor its impact
• Make sure your content matches subscriber preferences
• Add easy one-click preference management
• Survey unsubscribers to find out why they're leaving

Website Traffic

Website traffic measures how many people visit your website from an email. With tools like Google Analytics, you can view traffic data segmented by source, including email campaigns, so it's easy to monitor the impact of your emails on site visits.

This metric can be important for meeting your goals. Just keep in mind that attribution can get tricky if people visit your site later through their browser instead of directly from an email link.

How to Boost Website Traffic from Email

• Promote your best website content to your email list
• Share evergreen resources
• Send follow-up/re-engagement emails
• Show email subscribers exclusive content

Delivery Rate

While not directly tied to conversions or revenue, email delivery rate is still a critical metric for the overall health and performance of your email campaigns.

It measures the percentage of campaigns that successfully reach subscribers' inboxes. Having a strong delivery rate ensures your messages have the best chance of being seen, read, and acted on.

While a 100% delivery rate is ideal, a good benchmark to aim for is a delivery rate of 95% or higher.

There are a number of factors that can impact email delivery, from the quality of your email list to the content and design of your emails. ISP algorithms are constantly scanning incoming emails for signs of spam or malicious content, so it's important to follow email best practices to avoid deliverability issues.

Delivery Rate Formula

How to Optimize Delivery Rates

• Proactively confirm and clean lists
• Ensure compliance with email regulations
• Authenticate your email domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records
• Monitor sender reputation and work to improve it

What Now?

KPIs are just one of the many moving pieces in email marketing, but they're a key part of any email marketing success story. By learning what to track, how to calculate and interpret metrics, and how to take action on the insights, you can boost your email marketing performance.

To get started measuring KPIs for your unique campaigns, compare email marketing software to find some of the best options out there. Our list of top picks for best email marketing software even breaks down our top picks based on features like analytics, A/B testing, and the ability to connect to a CRM.

Good luck!