Clicks Don’t Lie: 5 Metrics to Make Your Emails Shine
- Jessica Ramirez
- Jul 9
- 4 min read
Email isn’t just about sending messages—it’s about inspiring action. But how do you know if your campaigns are actually working?
With every campaign generating a flood of metrics, it can be hard to tell which numbers actually matter. Whether you're launching from a new IP or scaling a seasoned program, success ultimately boils down to just five core indicators. The rest? Mostly noise.
As we’ve shared in previous pieces on email deliverability, staying ahead of shifting standards from inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo is part of our DNA. What hasn’t changed is this: there are five key metrics that truly determine your sender reputation and long-term email performance:
Bounce rates
Open rates
Click rates
Complaint rates
Unsubscribe rates
Each tells a different story about how inbox providers—and subscribers—perceive your emails. Let’s break them down.
Bounce Rate: Your Check Engine Light
A high bounce rate is an early warning sign. It signals to Email Service Providers (ESPs) that something’s off, which can hurt your sender reputation before your message even hits an inbox.
Hard bounces are permanent (ex. invalid or non-existent addresses).
Action: Remove these immediately. Repeated hard bounces damage your IP reputation and signal poor list hygiene.
Soft bounces are temporary (ex. full inboxes, server issues, oversized messages).
Action: Monitor closely. If soft bounces remain high, slow down your sending cadence, reduce email size, or adjust timing.
Try to keep your bounce rates below 0.5%. Anything higher means your list hygiene needs work, and, if left unchecked, it can drag down your deliverability. Make a habit of reviewing list quality and cleaning out invalid or inactive addresses on a regular basis.
Total and Unique Open Rate: Useful, With Context
Open rates used to be the go-to metric for measuring subscriber engagement, but not all opens are created equal. While they’re still helpful, they’ve become a bit trickier thanks to privacy features like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). MPP pre-loads emails and images—making it look like your email was opened, even if it wasn’t.
That’s why you’ll want to track:
Total open rate includes multiple opens by the same recipient, capturing return engagement.
Unique open rate shows how many individuals opened your email, regardless of how many times.
Lower open rates might signal issues with your subject line or timing. Strong open rates generally fall between 17–28%, depending on your industry. Use A/B testing to optimize subject lines and send times, but always pair open data with other engagement metrics.
Click Rate: The Engagement Truth Teller
Clicks are a clear signal of user intent, they reveal who engaged with your email. A click is an intentional action, your reader saw something they liked and took the next step. That said, not all emails are designed to drive clicks – think transactional messages (like receipts or confirmations). For campaigns meant to drive action use this metric to:
Gauge content relevance
Identify your most compelling CTAs
Compare performance between across message types
If click rates are falling flat on emails meant to drive action, try tweaking CTA position, tightening the offer, and making the path to click as clear as possible.
Complaint Rate: A Silent Reputation Killer
Spam complaints are bad news and one of the fastest ways to hurt your sender reputation. Just a handful can tank your deliverability across your whole list—not just for the complainers.
A high complaint rate signals to ESPs that your emails may be unwanted or irrelevant, which can lead to serious deliverability issues and chips away at your credibility. As those negative complaints add up, ESPs like Gmail and Yahoo! may begin filtering or outright blocking your emails, resulting in:
Lower inbox placement
Long-term reputation damage and blacklisting
Reduced marketing ROI
Keep your spam complaint rate under 0.1%. If it climbs, you will start seeing deliverability issues. The only defense is prevention. One sure strategy is to suppress complainers to prevent repeat offenders.
Unsubscribe Rate: Feedback in Disguise
While unsubscribes are less harmful than spam complaints, they still offer valuable insight into how your audience is engaging (or not) with your content. An opt out often means your emails aren’t meeting expectations or needs of the subscriber. High unsubscribe rates can reveal:
Content fatigue - recipients are overwhelmed or no longer finding value
Misaligned targeting - the content doesn’t reflect their interests or stage in their journey
List quality issues - contacts may not have genuinely opted in or aren’t the right audience
Sometimes an unsubscribe is actually good—it means you're refining your list to those who are truly interested. . However, patterns of disengagement are worth digging deeper. It may be time to evaluate your messaging content, relevance, and frequency to meet the needs of your audience.
Final Thoughts: Play the Long Game
Forget vanity metrics. Real email success is built on trust, relevance, and consistency. The most effective email strategies use meaningful data to improve engagement, refine deliverability, and build long-term audience trust.
Want to make every email count? Check out our other article, Send with Purpose: Email Tactics That Convert, and to learn how to turn emails into results—not just notifications.
