13 Email Marketing Metrics You Should Be Tracking in 2025

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive customer loyalty and sales. Learn which key email marketing metrics to track for success in 2025.

Measuring email marketing campaigns is an important part of any brand’s marketing strategy. Email marketing metrics will tell you a lot about your campaign performance, including which email subject lines perform best, who’s clicking on what, and whether your emails are being read by their intended recipients.

When you track those email marketing metrics, you get useful insights into what works and what doesn’t. From there, you’ll be equipped with the tools to improve your email marketing strategy and avoid sending emails into the ether (or, worse, into spam folders).

In this guide, you’ll learn what the top email marketing metrics are, why they matter for your business, and how to calculate each metric.

What are email marketing metrics?

Email marketing metrics are numbers or percentages that indicate the success of an email marketing campaign. They provide information like how many people opened an email, how many people clicked through to your website from an email, and how many people unsubscribed from your mailing list.

Click here to start selling online now with Shopify

Email marketing metrics help you understand how subscribers engage with your content. They paint a picture of what content resonates with your readers, helping you improve future emails.

Platforms like Shopify Email automatically track email marketing metrics, making it easy to use these data points to improve your email marketing strategy.

The Shopify Email dashboard gives you an overview of your key email marketing metrics.

13 email marketing metrics you need to track in 2025

1. Deliverability rate
2. Open rate
3. Click-through rate
4. Click-to-open rate
5. Conversion rate
6. Unsubscribe rate
7. Bounce rate
8. Block rate
9. Spam complaint rate
10. List growth rate
11. ROI
12. Total orders and sales
13. Average order value

Here are the best email marketing metrics to track, plus how to calculate them:

1. Delivery rate

Delivery rate shows the percentage of sent emails successfully delivered to a recipient. A high delivery rate means your email list contains real, active email addresses.

Here’s how to calculate delivery rate:

Delivery rate = (Total number of sent emails / Number of emails delivered to recipients) x 100

Ninety-five percent and above is a good ecommerce email delivery rate. This indicates a clean, healthy mailing list. If your delivery rate is below 95%, it’s probably time to scrub your list of fake or expired addresses. And even if you maintain a delivery rate above this level, if you start to see negative directional changes over time, that could indicate technical or engagement issues that warrant investigation.

Maintaining a good delivery rate is vital for maintaining good email deliverability—meaning whether your emails arrive in subscribers’ inboxes (or designated folders) or go straight to spam. You can’t track email deliverability without the use of third-party apps (which provide estimates, not hard data), so keeping up metrics like delivery rate can help ensure you’re on the right track.

2. Open rate

One factor in email deliverability is open rate, which is the percentage of recipients who opened your email. A good open rate means your subject lines are compelling or you’ve cultivated a loyal subscriber base.

Here’s how to calculate open rate:

Open rate = (Number of emails opened / Number of recipients) x 100%

Generally, you’ll want to aim for an open rate of 20% to 40%. That said, ever since Apple started its Mail Privacy Protection program in 2021, open rates have been inflated. Apple’s service pre-loads emails, causing them to be counted as “opened,” whether the recipient actually opens them or not. With this in mind, monitoring trends in your open rate (is it rising or falling?) could inform the success of your emails in reaching their target audience.

“A lot of your email deliverability depends on how people are engaging with your email,” says Desirae Odjick, a product marketer who works on Shopify Email and Shopify Forms. “Are they not opening, are they bouncing, are they marking it as spam? Or are they opening, clicking, reading, engaging with your content?”

If your open rate is on the decline, audience segmentation can help boost it. Desirae suggests creating a segment of your most engaged subscribers—those who have opened an email in the past three months. “You should focus on the people who are most likely to take action from your email,” Desirae says. “For someone who hasn’t opened an email in the past three months, this isn’t going to be the magic one.”

Segmentation can boost your open rate, improve deliverability, and help you understand what kinds of emails resonate with your readers.

3. Click-through rate

Your click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link inside your email. This metric can help you have a big-picture view of the success of your email campaigns.

Here’s how to calculate CTR:

Click-through rate = (Number of people who clicked on a link in the email / Number of emails delivered) x 100

According to a Campaign Monitor study, the average email CTR is 2.3%, but this drops to 1.8% for marketing emails. You can improve your CTR by focusing on two things: The first, of course, is your open rate—you need subject lines that compel readers to actually open your emails and engage with their contents. From there, the quality of your copy (Is it an intriguing and engaging read?) and the visibility and appeal of your calls to action (CTAs) come into play. The more compelling your CTAs, the more likely your audience is to click.

You can improve CTAs by using action words like “Buy” and “Explore” and by visually differentiating them from the rest of your email content. You can also offer an exclusive discount or hype a limited-time-only product to increase the likelihood of a click.

4. Click-to-open rate

Your click-to-open rate (CTOR) is the percentage of people who clicked on a link inside your email after opening it. This number will be larger than your CTR, since it excludes recipients who didn’t open your message. It can help you measure the quality of your content itself and the efficacy of your CTAs.

Here’s how to calculate CTOR:

Click-to-open rate = (Number of people who clicked on a link in the email / Number of people who opened the email) x 100

The CTOR average is 10.5% across industries, according to Campaign Monitor data. For advertising and marketing, specifically, the average is 9.0%.

5. Conversion rate

The conversion rate of an email is the percentage of subscribers who performed a specific action (such as making a purchase). This is one of the most important metrics of an email campaign, since conversion is likely one of the overall goals of your email marketing strategy.

Here’s how to calculate conversion rate:

Conversion rate = (Number of people who took the action / Number of emails delivered) x 100

Average email marketing conversion rates differ depending on the type of content. Automated messages have conversion rates of around 1% to 6% according to 2024 data, with back-in-stock and welcome emails converting the most subscribers, at 5.84% and 2.84%, respectively.

If you’re not reaching those numbers, you might add a discount offer to your subject line, check whether your email design is mobile-friendly (try a responsive web design template), and, again, use clear CTAs.

Keep in mind that website conversion rates in ecommerce are notoriously low—anything above 2.5% is considered good—and getting people onto your email list marks a success.

6. Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of subscribers who opted out of your mailing list after you sent an email campaign.

Here’s how to calculate unsubscribe rate:

Unsubscribe rate = (Number of people who unsubscribed / Number of emails delivered) x 100

The average ecommerce unsubscribe rate is 0.19%, so aim for less than that to get ahead of your competitors. To keep this rate low, make sure your content is digestible and relevant.

You can also try segmenting your list so that you’re sending relevant content to your readers. Desirae gives an example of a merchant who sells raw ingredients for shampoo as well as pre-made shampoo. People who buy one tend not to buy the other.

“If [the merchant] starts sending emails about raw ingredients to the shampoo buyers, they’re going to feel like the email is spammy or not relevant to them,” Desirae says. “They’re going to be more likely to unsubscribe or trash the email.”

7. Bounce rate

Bounce rate measures the number of emails that couldn’t be delivered to the recipient’s inbox. It counts the two types of email bounces: a “soft bounce,” which is a temporary block on a recipient’s inbox (for reasons including a full inbox or a server that’s down), and a “hard bounce,” which indicates an invalid or non-existent email address.

You’ll know your email has bounced if you receive an automated response from the recipient’s mailbox provider.

Here’s how to calculate bounce rate:

Bounce rate = (Number of bounced emails / Number of emails sent) x 100

A good bounce rate is 2% or less. While “soft bounce” email addresses may receive your emails down the line, you can improve your bounce rate by removing any addresses that have “hard bounced” from your email list. This will give you more accurate numbers for other metrics, like open rates and conversion rates (since you won’t be counting emails that are never received).

8. Block rate

Unlike bounce rates, block rates don’t have anything to do with the quality of your subscribers’ email addresses. Instead, they account for how internet service providers (ISPs) categorize the quality of your email address.

A high block rate might mean ISPs think your address is spammy or your content looks suspicious. As with a bounced email, you’ll receive an automated email if your message is blocked by any users’ ISPs.

Here’s how to calculate block rate:

Block rate = (Number of blocked emails / Number of emails sent) x 100

According to a Sendgrid benchmark report, the average email block rate across industries is 2.93%. Ideally, you won’t have any blocks, but if you do, it’s helpful to investigate why ISPs are blocking your messages.

9. Spam complaint rate

Spam complaint rate refers to the percentage of people who marked your emails as spam, as reported by subscribers’ email providers. A high number can be discouraging and detrimental to your email marketing strategy—the more spam complaints you get, the more likely it is that future emails will go straight to spam folders, as this number affects deliverability.

You can track spam complaint rates with Shopify Email’s analytics, but know that Gmail, specifically, doesn’t share these rates with Shopify. You’ll need to track Gmail spam complaint rates through Google’s Postmaster Tools.

Here’s how to calculate spam complaint rate:

Spam complaint rate = (Number of people who reported an email as spam / Number of emails sent) x 100

What’s a good spam complaint rate?

Aim for a spam complaint rate of less than 0.1% to prevent email providers from filtering your messages into spam folders. Keep your spam complaint rate low by making your unsubscribe link visible and accessible, enabling a double opt-in, avoiding spammy subject lines, monitoring your email frequency, and making sure your content is relevant to your subscribers.

10. List growth rate

List growth rate refers to how quickly you’re gaining new subscribers. The more people you have on your list, the more potential customers and sales opportunities you have.

Here’s how to calculate list growth rate:

List growth rate = [(Number of new subscribers – unsubscribers in a given time period) / Number of people on your list] x 100

Aim for a list growth rate of 2.5%. You can accelerate that growth rate by using clear list sign-up CTAs on your website landing pages, providing an incentive (e.g., lead magnets, promo codes) for people who subscribe, and placing sign-up forms on your website with links on your key marketing channels.

As for sign-up incentives, Desirae says discounts (like the standard “10% of your first purchase”) don’t work for every brand. “Think about what it is you can actually deliver,” she says. “Some of our most effective sign-up forms are for brands that do limited-time drops. Their form says you have to be on the list to find out when these things get restocked.”

11. ROI

ROI stands for return on investment and measures the revenue or sales of a campaign against how much you spent on it.

Here’s how to calculate ROI:

ROI = (Total revenue of campaign / Total spent on campaign) x 100

On average, email campaigns generate $36 for every $1 spent, according to HubSpot data—that’s an ROI of 3,600%. But don’t beat yourself up if you’re not hitting those numbers. The goal is to get a higher return than your investment. You can improve ROI by implementing conversion optimization strategies, A/B testing subject lines and content elements, experimenting with CTAs, and adding an incentive to your email sign-ups.

12. Total orders and total sales

Total orders measure the number of purchases customers made after receiving your marketing emails. Total sales refer to the dollar value you received from those customers.

Shopify Email’s default way to measure these two metrics is via last-direct click. That means the last channel a customer interacts with before purchasing gets 100% of the credit for that conversion. In practice, this means that if a customer clicks a link in your email and then makes a purchase, the email will get credit for that conversion.

Calculating total orders is straightforward—just count up the number of purchases. There’s no need to manually count if you’re using Shopify Email: You’ll receive this metric in your performance report.

Calculating total sales, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated.

Here’s how to calculate total sales:

Total sales = Gross sales generated from your email – Returns

Good total order and sales numbers vary depending on the type of business you run, the type of email you’re sending, and your goals for that email. For example, a newsletter that seeks to develop audience trust might not convert as many customers as an email about a flash sale, but that doesn’t mean the newsletter didn’t help you reach your longer-term goals.

13. Average order value

Average order value tells you how much, on average, customers spent after receiving your email. This metric is expressed as a dollar value, and if you’re using Shopify Email, you can find it in your performance report.

Here’s how to calculate average order value:

Average order value = Total order value / Total orders

A good average order value will depend on the type of email you’re sending and the types of products you’re promoting. If you want to increase your average order value, you can try tactics like instituting a minimum spend for free shipping or creating product bundles.

Email marketing metrics FAQ

What metrics should you track with email marketing?

1. Delivery rate

2. Open rate

3. Click-through rate

4. Click-to-open rate

5. Conversion rate

6. Unsubscribe rate

7. Bounce rate

8. Block rate

9. Spam complaint rate

10. List growth rate

11. ROI

12. Total order and total sales

13. Average order value

What are the KPIs for email marketing?

The most important and common key performance indicators (KPIs) for email marketing are open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. You can also track metrics like deliverability rate, unsubscribe rate, and list growth rate to understand what your subscribers want and need.

What are some email metrics?

The email metrics you track will depend on your goals and the type of campaigns you’re running. Common email metrics include deliverability rate, open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, and return on investment (ROI).

What are the 5 most common marketing metrics?

The five most common marketing metrics for email are:

1. Deliverability rate

2. Open rate

3. Click-through rate

4. Conversion rate

5. Unsubscribe rate