Ever wonder if your emails are actually hitting the mark? Tracking trends and metrics in email marketing isn’t just about glancing at open rates—it’s about spotting patterns, understanding what makes your audience click, and tweaking your strategy to keep things fresh.
By keeping an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) and long-term patterns, you’ll know what’s working, what’s not, and how to level up your email game.
You will also be able to identify opportunities for growth and address potential issues. It ensures your email marketing strategy evolves with your audience’s preferences and behaviors.
Why should I even track trends and metrics?
Because guessing isn’t a strategy! Keeping tabs on your email performance helps you stay ahead of the game instead of just hoping for the best. Here’s why it matters – you can:
Optimize Campaign Performance
Want to know which emails are actually driving clicks, conversions, and revenue? Tracking performance helps you double down on what works and tweak (or ditch) what doesn’t. Plus, if your engagement starts slipping, you can pivot fast instead of watching your numbers drop.
Spot Long-Term Trends
Are open rates improving or declining over time? Are subscribers engaging more with certain content or offers? Looking at long-term trends helps you send more of what your audience actually wants—before they lose interest.
Improve ROI
No one wants to waste time on emails that aren’t delivering. By focusing on what’s actually driving results, you can put your energy (and budget) into campaigns that move the needle. More wins, less guesswork!
Stay Compliant
Monitoring unsubscribes and spam complaints ensures you maintain a good sender reputation.
What key metrics do I need to track?
Not all numbers are created equal! If you want to send better emails, here’s what you should be tracking.
Engagement Metrics: Are People Actually Paying Attention?
Open Rates: Your open rate tells you how many people are opening your emails, and it’s a great way to measure the impact of your subject lines. If your open rates are low or dropping, it might be time to experiment with different styles or test personalization.
A good benchmark is around 20-25%, but it depends on your industry. Use this insight to help you tweak your subject lines, test different sending times and continue to experiment to boost open rates.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): The CTR shows how many people clicked a link inside your email. If your CTR is low your call-to-action might not be strong enough—or maybe your content just isn’t hitting the mark.
You want to aim for at least 2-5% of your readers to click through, but this varies by industry. You can use this information to see which button design, messaging and more help to encourage more clicks.
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): CTOR measures how many people clicked on a link after opening the email. This helps you see if your content is relevant and engaging. If your CTOR is low, your email might be getting attention but not delivering what readers expect.
Using these stats, you can refine your email design, make your messaging more compelling, and ensure your content aligns with your subject lines.
Bounce Rate: A bounce rate tracks undelivered emails, which can indicate problems with list quality or email settings. A high bounce rate could mean you need to clean your list and remove invalid addresses.
Regularly monitoring this helps you keep your email list healthy by removing outdated contacts and ensuring better deliverability.
Unsubscribe Rate: This can track how many people have unsubscribed from your email list. If too many people are opting out, something’s wrong.
Maybe you’re emailing too often, or maybe your content isn’t resonating. Keep an eye on sudden spikes to catch any issues early. By analyzing unsubscribe trends, you can adjust your email frequency and tailor your content to keep subscribers engaged.
Spam Complaint Rate: If too many people mark your email as spam, your sender reputation could take a serious hit, making it harder to reach inboxes in the future. You want to make sure that this rate is under 0.1%.
Revenue Metrics: Is Your Email Making You Money?
Conversion Rate: Your conversion rate measures how many people complete a goal—whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for an event, or filling out a form. If people are opening and clicking but not converting, you might need to rethink your offer or landing page experience.
By tracking conversions, you can test different offers, optimize landing pages, and fine-tune your messaging for better results.
Revenue per Email (RPE): RPE tells you how much money each email is bringing in. If certain campaigns consistently outperform others, it’s a sign you should double down on that approach. Use this data to prioritize high-performing campaigns and adjust your email strategy for maximum profitability.
List Health Metrics: What’s Going On With Your Audience?
Growth Rate: A growth rate helps you see if you’re gaining more subscribers than you’re losing. If unsubscribes and bounces are outpacing new sign-ups, you’ll need to focus on list-building strategies. This metric helps you refine your lead generation efforts, improve onboarding sequences, and keep your list growing.
Engagement Segments: This shows how many of your subscribers are actively opening and clicking, and how many haven’t engaged in months.
The goal is to keep your engaged audience growing while re-engaging or removing inactive subscribers to maintain a strong, healthy list. With this insight, you can create targeted re-engagement campaigns, segment your list, and personalize content to boost engagement.
How to track email trends like a pro
Analyze Campaign Performance Regularly
Don’t just hit “send” and hope for the best—dig into your numbers after every campaign. Look at key metrics like open rates and CTR to see what’s working (and what’s flopping).
Compare similar campaigns—are your promotional emails getting more clicks than your educational ones? Is one subject line style performing better than another? Reviewing these insights helps you fine-tune your approach for better results.
Use Historical Data
Always be on the look out for patterns! Look at your past campaigns to see if certain times of year (like holidays or big sales) bring spikes in engagement. Are your subscribers more active on specific days of the week? If you notice engagement dropping at certain times, you can adjust your send schedule or experiment with different content to keep momentum up.
Trigger Against Industry Standards
It’s easy to get lost in your own numbers, but how do they compare to others in your industry? Retail emails might have an average open rate of 18%, while nonprofits hit around 25%. If your rates are way below industry standards, it’s a sign that something needs tweaking—maybe your subject lines, targeting, or content strategy.
Segment Data
Not all subscribers engage the same way, so don’t treat them like one big group. Segment your data based on audience (age, location, past behavior), campaign type (welcome emails vs. sales emails), and even device type (mobile vs. desktop). This helps you see what works best for different segments, so you can personalize your emails and drive better engagement.
Automate Reporting
Manually tracking trends is a hassle—so let automation do the heavy lifting. Tools like Google Analytics generate weekly or monthly reports, making it easier to spot patterns without the guesswork. Automated reporting keeps you informed so you can react quickly to changes.
What to do when email trends go sideways
Declining Open Rates
- Test new subject lines, send times, or sender names.
- Reassess list segmentation to ensure emails are relevant.
Low Click-Through Rates (CTR)
- Experiment with CTA placement, copy, or design.
- Simplify email layouts to focus attention on the key action.
High Unsubscribe/Spam Complaint Rates
- Ensure your email content matches the expectations set during sign-up.
- Reduce email frequency if complaints are tied to “over-sending.”
Revenue Trends
- Focus on campaigns or offers with the highest conversion rates.
- Double down on upsell/cross-sell opportunities in post-purchase emails.
How can Groundhogg help?
Groundhogg makes it easy to track email trends and metrics, automate reporting, and fine-tune your campaigns for maximum impact.
Built-in Email Analytics – Get clear insights into open rates, click-through rates, and conversions without switching between tools. Easily spot trends and adjust your strategy on the fly.
Advanced Segmentation – Break down your audience based on behavior, location, or past engagement. Send hyper-targeted emails that actually resonate instead of blasting generic messages.
Reports & Insights – Stay ahead of performance shifts with real-time reporting. No need for manual tracking—Groundhogg keeps you informed so you can focus on strategy.
Seamless CRM & Email Integration – Connect email performance with your CRM data for a full picture of customer behavior. See who’s engaging, who’s converting, and who needs a nudge.
Other tools for tracking email trends and metrics:
Google Analytics – See how much traffic and conversions your emails drive to your site.
Third-Party Reporting Tools – Litmus, EmailAnalytics (for deeper insights and advanced tracking).
Get started with Groundhogg:
To get started with Groundhogg, you can:
- Start a 14-day demo.
- Purchase a plan.
- Take the free quickstart course.
- Keep reading!
Have questions? Don’t hesitate to shoot us a message!
