Sending an email is only half the job. To truly succeed in marketing, you must understand how your audience reacts to your communication. Measuring effectiveness isn't just about counting opens; it’s about knowing which messages drive engagement, conversions, and revenue.
In User.com, you can track everything from basic delivery rates to advanced revenue attribution. This guide will help you interpret these metrics and use them to build high-performing campaigns.
Tracking email performance is essential for evaluating your marketing efforts. Email campaigns are no exception. By analyzing statistics, you can optimize content, timing, and targeting, while improving overall engagement.
In the current marketing landscape, "vanity metrics" like open rates have become less reliable due to privacy protections like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). While they are still useful for trending, modern marketers prioritize engagement and revenue.
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) is the gold standard for measuring the actual success of your email content. Unlike standard Click-Through Rate (CTR), CTOR tells you: "Of the people who actually opened the email, how many found the content interesting enough to click?" This is your truest measure of content quality.
Why CTOR is Superior to Open Rate or CTR:
It isolates content performance:
Open Rate measures your subject line and sender name.
CTOR measures your email body, design, and offer. If you have a high Open Rate but a low CTOR, it means your subject line made a promise that your email content didn't keep.
It ignores deliverability issues:
Standard CTR is dragged down if your emails land in spam or aren't delivered. CTOR ignores the people who never saw your message, giving you a pure look at how engaging your content is for the people who actually saw it.
It helps you fix specific problems:
High Open Rate, Low CTOR: Your subject line is great, but your content is not on the same level or the Call-to-Action (CTA) is hard to find. Fix: Improve the email design and offer.
Low Open Rate, High CTOR: Your content is great, but nobody is seeing it. Fix: Improve your subject line or send time.
In User.com you can find the CTOR directly in the email campaign profile. Use this number to A/B test your email designs.
While Open Rates and CTOR measure engagement, revenue measures success. For most businesses, the ultimate goal of an email is to drive a specific action (usually a purchase). User.com allows you to attribute revenue directly to specific email campaigns, letting you see exactly how much money each email generated.
Why tracking revenue matters:
True ROI: It moves you beyond "vanity metrics." You might have a campaign with a low OR that generates high revenue because it targeted high-value buyers.
Budget justification: It proves the value of your email marketing efforts to stakeholders by showing direct financial results.
Smarter segmentation: You can identify which segments of your audience are actually spending money, not just reading your content.
By monitoring these metrics, you can stop guessing which emails work and start doubling down on the campaigns that actually drive growth.
User.com connects your email data with your contacts activity data. You don't need complex external tools; you simply define what "success" looks like inside the application. Check “How to Count Revenue” [LINK] article to set it app in your workspace. The result will be shown directly inside the email campaign profile.
While CTOR and revenue measure your marketing success, the following stats measure your technical reputation. Ignorance of these numbers can lead to your emails landing in the spam folder for everyone.
Bounce Rate (Hard vs. Soft vs. Spam) Not all undelivered emails are the same. User.com breaks this down into three critical categories in the “Summary” section:
Hard Bounce: This indicates a permanent error (e.g. the email address does not exist or has a typo).
Soft Bounce: This indicates a temporary issue (e.g. the recipient's inbox is full or their server is down).
Spam Bounce: This number signifies that the recipient’s server rejected the email due to characteristics typical of unsolicited or unwanted content. (according to EmailLabs).
Unsubscribe Rate: Do not be afraid of this number. An unsubscribe is healthy, it’s a polite "no thank you" that protects your reputation, unlike a spam complaint.
All of these metrics and additional detailed views about links, clicks and open statistics you can find in User.com in “Campaigns” → “Email” section by entering each campaign profile.
To read more about each metric from the email campaign profile, please go to “Email Statistics” article.
Regular review of these metrics enables you to:
Validate Content Decisions: Use A/B testing data to determine if subject lines or specific content blocks perform better.
Maintain List Hygiene: Identify and remove contacts with recurring bounces to protect your sender reputation.
Target Follow-ups: Create segments based on user actions (e.g., "Clicked Link A" vs. "Clicked Link B") for more relevant follow-up automations.
Verify ROI: Use revenue attribution to identify which campaigns are driving actual business value versus those that only drive traffic.
