Howdy! OK, so we all know (and hopefully use) the basic email marketing values: Sent, Opens, Clicks, Orders, Bounces, Unsubscribes, with their respective email marketing metrics - Open rate %, CTR%, etc. etc. These can all be used to tell you lotsa nifty stuff about your email campaigns, like how strong was you subject line? Look at your open rate. Was my content compelling? Look at your click through rate. Did I have a great, targeted offer? Look at your orders response rate. Is my list getting dirty? Bouncy, bouncy. And last but not least, am I over-mailing or sending irrelevant messages? That’ll show up in your unsubscribe rates.

But here’s the one email marketing metric we’ve always loved, but for some reason is largely ignored by many marketers:

Revenue per email sent ($/email sent). Bam! Because at the end of the day, it’s about driving sales and value. Just take the revenue your campaign generated divided by the number of emails you sent in that campaign. Here’s an example:

Look at ‘revenue per email sent’ as an email marketing metric!

So as you can see here, the ’3-Day Only Special’ looks stronger from open rate (better subject line), pretty much a dead heat from a CTR perspective (content and calls to action may be similar). But look at our friend, ‘revenue per email sent‘ for a clear picture. ‘Campaign ‘Spring Sale!’ performed 37% better at driving dollars from each recipient.

Disclaimer: Of course these 2 campaigns weren’t head-to-head tests. They were sent at different times and not to the exact same audiences, and had different products offered. So don’t start drawing broad conclusions, and use this email marketing metric as you would with others, as an additional KPI that help you make better decisions with data!

Most ESPs don’t include this KPI in their reports. Hey, we smell a new Dasheroo Business Dashboard Insight coming!