When you're just starting out with email marketing, it can feel like you're just starting out learning how to drive.

Ok – so you hit the [Send] button and **POOF** off into the unknown.

Now what?

What if there was a way to know exactly how your emails are performing?

That’s where email metrics come in.

Think of it like checking your car’s dashboard: speed, fuel, and oil levels let you know if everything’s running smoothly.

In email marketing, metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates are your dashboard indicators. They show you if people are reading your emails, clicking the links, and acting.

By understanding these numbers, you can tweak your strategy and make each email campaign better than the last.

Ready to start driving results? Let me break down for you the eight most basic email metrics so you can start optimizing your emails for success.

Spam complaint rates are THE MOST important metric you need to be aware of.

Becha didn’t know that, eh?

A spam complaint occurs when someone REALLY HATES your email and tells their mailbox provider about it.

Complaint rate is the number of spam complaints expressed as a percentage of total emails accepted by the mailbox providers.

If your email causes any spam complaint that is more than a tenth of a percent (0.1%), then mailbox providers take note. They have almost a zero-tolerance when it comes to spam complaints.

Any email that causes a spam complaint rate above 1 percent is a YUUUGE red flag.

Mailbox providers are known to refuse to accept any further emails from you if your spam complaint rate is high. That's why spam complaint rates affect every other email delivery and response metric.

Typical reasons why you’d get a spam complaint include:

A “delivered email” means an email accepted by a mailbox provider.

Delivery rate is the number of emails that mailbox providers accepted expressed as a percentage of the emails that you sent them.

A delivery rate above 90% is a good thing. Top email marketers consistently hit above 98% delivery rate.

Anything below 90% means that mailbox providers have a trust issue with you.

Sorry. I’m just being real. ☹️

Typical reasons why you have a low delivery rate:

Open rates tell you if people care enough about you to read your emails.

Open rate is the number of emails read expressed as a percentage of the emails delivered.

Before 2021, email open rates had meaning. Post-2021, not so much.

What happened in 2021, you ask?

That’s when Apple introduced its “mail privacy protection” feature when they rolled out iOS 15 and MacOS Monterey. “MPP” as it’s called, was meant to purposefully hide where and when a person reads their emails on an Apple device.

The end result was artificially inflated open rates. As the years have rolled by, I’m seeing an uptick in open rates typically 10% to 15% higher than they used to be.

If you’re getting email open rates above 20% to 30% then you’re doing good. But just because you sent a campaign with less than 20% open rate, that doesn't mean necessarily that you blew it.

Sometimes, there are things outside your control that cause people for one reason or another to skip a day or two of reading emails. And by then, the email you sent is buried at the bottom of everyone’s email folder.

Typical reasons why you have low open rates include:

Oh, BTW -- there’re two flavors of open rate: “total open rate” and “unique open rate.”

Total open rate is based on the total times an email was read. The count includes all the times the same person read the same email multiple times.

Unique open rate is based on the total subscribers who read your email at least once.

Experienced email marketers care more about 10 people who read an email at least once and less about one person reading the same email 10 times.

Click rates tell you if the offer you presented in your email was compelling enough.

The whole purpose of your email is to get your reader to click a link and go to a website to either get more information or to make a purchase.

Long gone are the days back when emails were the electronic version of newsletters and flyers that we got in our postal mail box.

Nobody reads emails any more anyway.

Instead, people SCAN their emails. Modern email copywriting keeps emails short and easily scanned by our eyes. You want your email copy just to get your reader interested enough that they’ll click through to your web site to learn more about your offer.

Similar to open rate, click rate is the number of times links in an email were clicked expressed as a percentage of emails delivered.

And oh BTW again -- just like open rate, click rate comes in two flavors: “total click rate” and “unique click rate.”

Now, not everyone who reads an email is going to click any of its links. So don’t be crushed if your email’s click rate is way lower than its open rate.

Typical reasons for low click rate include:

This metric also measures whether the offer you presented in your email was good enough.

But it’s calculated differently than click rate.

Click-to-Open Rate is the number of people who clicked at least once in an email expressed as a percentage of the number of people who read the email at least once.

Expert email marketers prefer the click-to-open rate more than the click rate. The obvious question, they ask, is “how can you click a link in an email you’ve not read?”

By considering only people who actually read the email, the click-to-open rate is a much more accurate measure of how compelling your offer was.

A “bounced email” is the opposite of a “delivered email” – it’s an email that the mailbox provider rejected.

If you want a plus-90% delivery rate, then that means you want a sub-10% bounce rate.

There’re two flavors of bounces: “soft” and “hard”.

A soft bounce is a temporary rejection like:

Don’t be afraid of this metric! You don’t want to send your emails to anyone who doesn’t want them. You’re wasting your time and your money if you do.

As a matter of fact, you WANT people to unsubscribe from your emails if they don’t want them anymore.

Better an unsubscribe than a spam complaint!

And though you may be sending fewer emails, you’re sending them to people who actually want them. So, your open rate goes up (GOOD!) and your click rate goes up (GOOD!) and your click-to-open rate goes up (EVEN GOOD-ER!)

I’ve save this one for last because “conversion” is a chameleon of many colors.

“Conversion” just means, “did your reader do what you wanted them to do?”

As I mentioned in my course and eBook, “Send Your Best Emails in 3 Easy Steps,” never send an email just for the sake of sending an email.

You always want your email to motivate your reader to do something.

Maybe it’s to call your office to book an appointment. Maybe it’s to go to your web site and download a lead magnet. Maybe it’s to go to your webstore and buy something.

It could be anything. And that’s why it’s hard to pin down.

As long as you have a way to track a desired action and tie it back to the email, then you can measure Conversion Rate.

Understanding your email marketing metrics is the key to unlocking success.

Pay attention to the metrics I’ve just shared with you. They help you to see what's working—and what's not.

Just like a dashboard helps you know if you’re going to get to where you want, these metrics help you steer your campaigns.

Don't be afraid of numbers—they’re your allies, guiding you to better results with each email you send.

So, start tracking today and watch your email marketing go from "driving blind" to "cruising smoothly."

Ready to hit the road?