Start with revenue per recipient and click rate. Watch spam complaints and unsubscribes for warning signs. Treat open rate with suspicion, because Apple Mail marks many emails as opened whether or not anyone read them.
If a term here is unfamiliar, the glossary explains it in a line or two.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads email images in the background for many Apple Mail users. The platform sees the image load and records an open, even if the email was never looked at. A list with lots of iPhone users can show open rates that look excellent and mean very little.
Open rate is still a reasonable signal when you compare two subject lines sent to the same list on the same day. It is a poor signal for comparing this month with last year, or your shop with an industry average.
A click is harder to fake. Click rate (clicks divided by emails delivered) tells you whether the email made people want to do something. Click-to-open rate (clicks divided by opens) tells you whether the content worked for people who opened, but it inherits the open rate's problem.
If click rate falls steadily while you send the same amount, the content has gone stale or you are sending to people who stopped caring. Both have fixes. The second is covered in how often to send.
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Get the free auditSee pricingTotal revenue from a campaign depends mostly on how many people it went to. Revenue per recipient removes that, so you can compare a send to 800 people with a send to 8,000.
A campaign goes to 4,000 people and the platform credits it with £600 in sales. That is £0.15 per recipient. Next month a smaller campaign to 1,500 recent buyers earns £375. That is £0.25 per recipient. The smaller send did the better job, and it is a reason to segment more.
Flows are compared the same way. A welcome series usually earns far more per recipient than a campaign, which is why it gets built first. The reporting service puts these on one page each month.
Gmail's guidance for bulk senders is to keep the complaint rate below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%. Above that, more of your email lands in spam. The details are in the sender requirements guide.
Some unsubscribes on every send are normal and healthy. A sudden jump after one email, or a steady climb over several, is the signal to look at what changed.
A high hard bounce rate usually means old or poorly collected addresses. Clean them out and check where they came from.
Platforms credit a sale to an email if it happens within a set time after someone opens or clicks it. That window varies by platform and can usually be changed. Some count opens, which makes figures higher than they really are for the reason above.
Attributed revenue is a fair way to compare one email with another inside the same platform. It is not the same as extra money you would not otherwise have made. Check it against your shop's own sales figures now and then.
Five checks, one page. Anything longer tends not to get read.
It varies by list and industry, so averages are a weak guide. Track your own trend and compare emails with each other.
Probably Apple Mail Privacy Protection recording automatic opens. Look at clicks and revenue instead.
Keep it under 0.1%. Gmail treats a sustained rate at or above 0.3% as a serious problem.
For comparing emails, yes. As a measure of extra sales, treat it as an upper estimate and check it against your shop figures.