Space CRM / Blog
Email Marketing Metrics: The Only Numbers That Actually Matter
Cut through vanity metrics. Focus on the email KPIs that directly predict revenue: reply rate, conversion rate, and revenue per email.
Why open rate is no longer reliable
Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection (iOS 15), open rates are inflated for any list with iOS Mail users. Apple pre-fetches email content, registering opens even when never read.
Open rate is still useful as a relative metric comparing campaigns to each other but unreliable as an absolute number.
The 3 metrics that matter
1. Reply rate for cold outreach — benchmark: 5-10% good, 15%+ excellent. 2. Click-to-open rate for campaigns — benchmark: 15-25%. 3. Revenue per email sent — total revenue divided by emails sent.
Track these weekly, not just per campaign. Trends reveal whether list health and content quality are improving or declining.
Benchmarks by campaign type
Cold outreach: 30-50% open, 5-15% reply. Newsletter: 25-40% open, 2-5% click. Transactional: 50-70% open. Re-engagement: if below 5% open, suppress non-openers.
Use SpaceCRM's analytics to track all metrics per campaign, per sequence, and per contact.
