The Email & SMS KPIs That Actually Matter
Open rates are a vanity trap. Learn the retention metrics that predict revenue, the benchmarks to hold yourself to, and which numbers to ignore.
Why Open Rate Stopped Mattering
You are probably tracking the wrong number.
Open rate feels like the pulse of your program. It stopped telling the truth in 2021.
The Apple Problem
When Apple shipped Mail Privacy Protection, it started pre-loading images for every message opened in Apple Mail. That fires your tracking pixel whether or not a human ever saw the email.
More than half of your list likely uses Apple Mail. So your open rate is now inflated by opens that never happened.
Post-Apple, open rate is noise at best. Use it to compare subject lines within a single send, or to catch a sudden drop that flags a deliverability problem. Never use it to judge whether your program makes money.
The Metrics That Predict Revenue
These are the numbers that move with your bank account. Track them every week.
- Percent of total revenue from email and SMS. The single best health score. Pull attributed revenue and divide by total store revenue.
- Revenue per recipient. Attributed revenue divided by emails delivered. It rewards relevance, not list size, and it survives the Apple mess untouched.
- Click rate. A real action a human took. This is the engagement signal open rate used to be.
- Conversion rate. Of the people who received the send, what share bought.
- List growth net of churn. New subscribers minus unsubscribes, bounces, and manual cleaning. Growth on paper means nothing if churn eats it.
- Repeat purchase rate. Retention marketing exists to turn one order into three. If this is flat, your flows are not doing their job.
Flows vs Campaigns: Split Everything
Blended numbers hide the truth.
Automated flows and one-off campaigns behave nothing alike. Report them separately or you will optimize blind.
- Triggered by behavior, always on
- Should drive 70%+ of email revenue
- Revenue per recipient of $1 to $12
- Build once, earn for years
- Manual sends to a list or segment
- Fill the remaining revenue
- Revenue per recipient of $0.10 to $0.50
- Drive volume, offers, and launches
If flows are under half your email revenue, you have a flow gap, not a campaign problem. Fix the automations first.
Core Benchmarks
Hold yourself to these. They assume an engaged, well-cleaned list.
Anything in the "Needs Work" column is a lever, not a life sentence.
| Metric | Needs Work | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email % of Revenue | Under 15% | 20-30% | 30-40% |
| SMS % of Revenue | Under 2% | 3-5% | 5-10% |
| Revenue per Recipient | Under $0.08 | $0.10-0.15 | $0.20+ |
| Campaign Click Rate | Under 1.5% | 2-4% | 5%+ |
| Campaign Conversion | Under 0.5% | 1-2% | 3%+ |
| Flow Revenue Share | Under 50% | 60-70% | 70%+ |
| Unsubscribe Rate | Over 0.5% | 0.2-0.4% | Under 0.2% |
| Spam Complaint Rate | Over 0.1% | 0.02-0.08% | Under 0.02% |
Unsubscribe and spam complaint rates are guardrails, not growth targets.
When either one climbs, you are sending too often or to people who never wanted it. Deliverability is the next thing to break.
SMS Has Its Own Scoreboard
SMS has no open rate to argue about, which makes it cleaner to read.
Watch three numbers.
| Metric | Needs Work | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Click Rate | Under 3% | 5-10% | 12%+ |
| Opt-Out Rate | Over 3% | 1-2% | Under 1% |
| Revenue per Send | Under $0.05 | $0.08-0.15 | $0.20+ |
SMS costs money on every message, so revenue per send matters more here than anywhere in email.
A high opt-out rate is your loudest warning that frequency or targeting is off.
Attribution, Honestly
Klaviyo and every SMS platform claim credit generously.
A last-click model hands your email full credit for a sale the customer was already going to make. That is fine, as long as you stay consistent and read the trend instead of the absolute dollar.
Compare your platform's attributed revenue against your true store lift over time. Watch the direction, not the headline number.
Never stack email attribution and paid ads attribution and expect them to add up to 100 percent. Both are claiming the same buyers.
Common Mistakes
- Optimizing for opens. Chase click rate and revenue per recipient instead. Opens are noise now.
- Reporting flows and campaigns as one number. Split them, or you will never see which half is broken.
- No health guardrails. Track unsubscribe and spam complaint rates every week before deliverability forces you to.
- Judging list growth gross. Measure net of churn, or you are celebrating a leaky bucket.
- Trusting attribution as absolute truth. Read the trend against real store revenue, not the dollar figure alone.
- Ignoring repeat purchase rate. It is the whole point of retention. If it is flat, your flows need work.
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