The Right Success Metrics? Depends on Your Email Marketing Business Model

As frustrating as it is to hear “It depends” when you need an answer, it’s far worse to get an overly simplified answer that flattens all the nuance out of a situation. Often, that’s the case with email marketing success metrics.

Email opens? Clicks? Revenue? Chances are you’ve seen those held up as the end goal for email programs. And they may be for you. However, they’re most likely not. And even if one or more of those metrics are, they’re likely not the only metrics you should care about.

That’s because every industry is unique, and that uniqueness should be reflected in the overall mission of your email program, as well as your key performance indicators. That said, there are some commonalities. In the fourth edition of my book, Email Marketing Rules, I discuss four buckets that companies’ email programs tend to fall into:

1. Revenue-driven email programs
2. Lead-driven email programs
3. Retention-driven email programs
4. Engagement-driven email programs

Each of those types of programs have their own goals, and therefore their own KPIs. Let’s talk about each one.

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