Passed on 22 May, 2025
5. Measuring success in email marketing
Understanding the performance of your email campaigns is essential for refining your approach and driving continuous improvement. This lesson explains why email metrics matter and introduces five key metrics to help you evaluate performance. You’ll also learn how to draw insights from the data you collect.
✅ Learning objectivesBy the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:Outline why email metrics are important in evaluating campaign success.Understand how to use five useful metrics to measure your email performance.Gather and draw insights from email metrics.
Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:
Outline why email metrics are important in evaluating campaign success.
Understand how to use five useful metrics to measure your email performance.
Gather and draw insights from email metrics.
Understanding email performance
When it comes to managing the performance of your email campaigns, understanding your audience's behaviour is essential.
Email metrics
Utilising email metrics can be a powerful addition to your marketing toolbox. These insights help you understand how your audience interacts with your emails and refine your strategy for better results.
Example
Imagine you own a pet supply shop and have built a strong email marketing list of dog and cat owners. You send a seasonal email promoting a discount on grooming products and accessories.
Open rate
An email campaign open rate is simply the ratio of people who’ve actively opened the email versus the total number of people who received your email.
What to do with open rates
Open rates are useful for understanding the effectiveness of your email subject line.
Suppose you send two emails and you want to compare the open rates.The one with the subject line ‘Things We Love About Our Pets’ gets a higher open rate than the one with the subject line ‘Discounts and Offers on Pet Food’.
The one with the subject line ‘Things We Love About Our Pets’ gets a higher open rate than the one with the subject line ‘Discounts and Offers on Pet Food’.
The one with the subject line ‘Things We Love About Our Pets’ gets a higher open rate than the one with the subject line ‘Discounts and Offers on Pet Food’.
Make the most of open rates
Open rate reports provide valuable insights into your audience’s preferences. Use this data to test different ways to engage them. While open rates are useful, A/B testing can also help refine other elements of your emails, like content, design, and call-to-action buttons, to improve results.
A/B testing is an ever-evolving process, each test should refine findings from the last.
You can use insights from your open rates reports to guide your A/B testing.
When you know your audience’s preference, A/B test versions that align with those.
Click through rate (CTR)
The click-through rate (CTR) measures how many people clicked on a link in your email out of the total emails sent. It shows the overall engagement level with your email content.
Getting to know CTRs
A high CTR indicates your audience is engaging with your content and finding it relevant. While it doesn’t guarantee the next step, such as making a purchase or signing up, it shows interest and helps you gauge what resonates with audiences.
What CTRs show
A high CTR means your audience is interested, giving you an idea of how likely they are to take the next step—like making a purchase or signing up.
CTR percentage
CTR is shown as a percentage, and it’s normal for this number to be small—most fall between 2% and 5%.1But don’t worry! A CTR in this range is completely normal, and anything higher is a fantastic result.You should also explore CTR averages in your industry as you may find these differ from the 2–5% average.
You should also explore CTR averages in your industry as you may find these differ from the 2–5% average.
You should also explore CTR averages in your industry as you may find these differ from the 2–5% average.
What drives CTRs?
CTRs increase when recipients engage with elements in your emails, like images, links, and calls to action (CTAs). Your CTR depends not only on clickable elements but also on content relevance and design. Here are three ways to encourage clicks.
Click-to-open rate
The click-to-open rate (CTOR) shows the percentage of people who opened your email and clicked a link. It’s different from CTR, which measures clicks based on all the emails you sent, not just the ones opened.
How CTOR works
Click-to-open rate looks at the number of clicks compared to emails that were opened. It’s a great way to see how well your content connected with your audience—if they opened your email and clicked a link, you’re clearly on the right track!
Conversion rate
The conversion rate for emails measures the percentage of recipients who completed a desired action after clicking a link in your email. This action could be making a purchase, signing up for an event, or downloading a resource. Some email marketing tools let you set specific goals, though this may require a more advanced technical setup.
Clicks to conversions
The ideal outcome of your email campaign depends on your goal. For some, this might mean a high conversion rate, like making a sale. For others, success could be building a community or driving engagement with your content.
Say you have a free pet grooming workshop coming up that you advertised in your email.Your email has the date, the time, and the cost of joining the event. Your email also has a ‘Sign up now’ button for people to join in on the event.
Your email has the date, the time, and the cost of joining the event. Your email also has a ‘Sign up now’ button for people to join in on the event.
Your email has the date, the time, and the cost of joining the event. Your email also has a ‘Sign up now’ button for people to join in on the event.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate shows the percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered and were returned to you. It’s a useful metric for assessing the quality of your contact list and identifying issues like outdated or invalid email addresses.
Soft and hard bounces
Sometimes, emails ‘bounce’ back. The bounce rate is the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to subscribers and were sent back.There are two kinds of bounces to be aware of.
There are two kinds of bounces to be aware of.
There are two kinds of bounces to be aware of.
Soft bounce
These are emails rejected due to a full inbox or size limit restriction on your audience's email server.
Hard bounce
This happens when your emails are blocked or the email address is incorrect. A breakdown of hard bounces can show you which email addresses to remove, saving you time and effort for your next campaign.
Reducing your bounce rate
There are several strategies to help reduce your bounce rate for email campaigns.
Review your contact lists
Remove invalid or outdated emails to improve the success rate. Start with a double opt-in process, which sends a verification email that users must confirm to ensure valid signups. Then, use verification tools to check your list and flag addresses likely to bounce.
Consider automated winback flows
Before removing soft bounces, consider winback flows—automated emails to reconnect with inactive customers. These emails can ask if they’d like to keep receiving updates or offer incentives to encourage them to re-engage.
Top tips
Keep these essential do’s and don’ts in mind to make your email marketing campaigns more effective.
Elapsed time
Total
Transcript
Transcript
Learning from your inbox
Your inbox likely contains a variety of marketing emails. These emails are full of valuable lessons, offering examples of what works in email marketing and what to avoid.
✅ ActivityTake a moment to open your personal email account and check your inbox.Check the items off as you go.Find a promotional email in your inbox and open it.Can you easily find a link to the sender’s website or the action they want you to take?Hint:If you can’t see a hyperlink in text or a CTA like a button, hover your cursor over images, or buttons to see the link in the bottom left-hand side of your screen. This works best on a laptop or desktop.Does this link open quickly and take you to where you were expecting?Hint:Website landing pages should open quickly when linked from emails, otherwise you might lose subscriber interest meaning they won't stay long enough to become customers (conversions).
Activity
Take a moment to open your personal email account and check your inbox.
Find a promotional email in your inbox and open it.
Can you easily find a link to the sender’s website or the action they want you to take?
Hint:If you can’t see a hyperlink in text or a CTA like a button, hover your cursor over images, or buttons to see the link in the bottom left-hand side of your screen. This works best on a laptop or desktop.
Does this link open quickly and take you to where you were expecting?
Hint:Website landing pages should open quickly when linked from emails, otherwise you might lose subscriber interest meaning they won't stay long enough to become customers (conversions).
Check your knowledge
Answer these quick questions to see how much you remember and where you can improve!You must complete the knowledge check to move to the next lesson.
You must complete the knowledge check to move to the next lesson.
You must complete the knowledge check to move to the next lesson.
Question 1 of 2
Imagine you’re a marketing assistant at a big clothing brand. You’ve sent out your first email marketing campaign and are reviewing the click-through rate (CTR). This metric shows the percentage of recipients who clicked on links in the email.What does CTRnottell you?
What does CTRnottell you?
What does CTRnottell you?
CTR won’t show you the total number of clicks on the email’s links
CTR won’t show which specific website page subscribers are clicking through to
CTR won’t explain why recipients clicked on the links or why they didn’t
CTR won’t show which recipients clicked on a link in your email
Submit
Submit
Yes.The CTR is great as it shows you the number of times someone has clicked on a link and gone through to your website but it doesn't tell you why recipients clicked on the links or why they didn’t.This is where further testing and checking your other metrics comes in. It’s important to check metrics together to get a full picture.
The CTR is great as it shows you the number of times someone has clicked on a link and gone through to your website but it doesn't tell you why recipients clicked on the links or why they didn’t.This is where further testing and checking your other metrics comes in. It’s important to check metrics together to get a full picture.
This is where further testing and checking your other metrics comes in. It’s important to check metrics together to get a full picture.
This is where further testing and checking your other metrics comes in. It’s important to check metrics together to get a full picture.
Question 2 of 2
If the open rate of your emails seems low, which of the following could help you fix that?
Redesign your website
Change the colour of the buttons inside your email
Send your emails to more contacts
Adjust the subject line of your email
Submit
Submit
Correct.The first impression you make with your emails is with the subject line. It’s important to refine your email subject lines to help boost open rates.
Lesson complete
Great job!You’ve completed the module onEmail. Now you know about creating, managing and measuring your email marketing campaigns.Head to the next set of lessons to keep on building those digital marketing skills!
You’ve completed the module onEmail. Now you know about creating, managing and measuring your email marketing campaigns.Head to the next set of lessons to keep on building those digital marketing skills!
Head to the next set of lessons to keep on building those digital marketing skills!
Head to the next set of lessons to keep on building those digital marketing skills!
1Backlinko:We analyzed 4 million Google Search Results: Here's What We Learned About Organic Click Through Rate
1Backlinko:
We analyzed 4 million Google Search Results: Here's What We Learned About Organic Click Through Rate
Next Path
Create engaging videos for your customers