Are my email campaigns actually doing anything?

Why email metrics are misleading without revenue data

Mailchimp says your last campaign had a 28% open rate and a 4.2% click rate. That sounds healthy. Industry benchmarks say you are above average. But what did those clicks actually produce?

Out of 5,000 subscribers, 210 clicked through to your site. Of those 210, how many purchased? Your email platform does not know. It knows they clicked. It might estimate revenue if you have e-commerce tracking set up. But most small businesses do not have that configured properly, and even when they do, the numbers rarely match what shows up in the books.

Meanwhile, you are spending time every week writing emails, designing them, segmenting lists, and scheduling sends. If that effort is not translating to revenue, you are paying an invisible cost: the time you could have spent on something that actually moves the needle.

The email metrics that matter vs. the ones that do not

• Open rate (low value). Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates open rates by pre-loading images. A 30% open rate might really be 18%. This metric has become increasingly unreliable since iOS 15.
• Click rate (moderate value). Clicks mean someone was interested enough to visit your site. But a click is not a purchase. If your click-to-purchase conversion rate is 2%, a 4% click rate on 5,000 subscribers produces about 4 sales.
• Revenue per email sent (high value). Total verified revenue attributed to email divided by total emails sent. This is the number that tells you if email is worth the effort. But most email platforms either do not track it or track it inaccurately.
• Incremental revenue (highest value). Would these customers have bought anyway without the email? This is the hardest question and requires comparing email recipients to a holdout group. Almost nobody does this.

How to measure whether email drives real revenue (7 steps)

1. 1
   Log into Mailchimp (or your email platform)

   Go to Campaigns and select the campaign you want to evaluate. Click into the report. Note the total emails sent, open rate, click rate, and total clicks.

2. 2
   Check if e-commerce tracking is enabled

   In Mailchimp, go to Integrationsand check if your e-commerce platform is connected. If it is, the campaign report will show “Revenue” and “Orders.” If it is not, you will only see engagement metrics and will need to track revenue manually.

3. 3
   Export the list of people who clicked

   In the campaign report, go to the Clicked section. Export the list of contacts who clicked through. This gives you names and email addresses of people who showed interest.

4. 4
   Cross-reference clickers with actual customers

   Check your CRM, payment processor, or invoicing system. Did any of the people who clicked actually purchase within 7 days of receiving the email? Count the matches and note the total revenue from those purchases.

5. 5
   Pull your total monthly revenue from accounting

   In QuickBooks, run the P&L for the month. In Xero, do the same. Note Total Income. This gives you context for what percentage of total revenue email is potentially driving.

6. 6
   Calculate email's revenue contribution

   Revenue from email clickers / Total Revenue x 100. Example: if email clickers bought $3,200 worth and your total revenue was $52,000, email drove roughly 6% of revenue.

7. 7
   Compare the effort to the return

   If you spend 5 hours per week on email marketing and it drives $3,200/month in revenue, you are generating $160/hour from email. Compare that to your ad spend efficiency. Is email worth more or less than what you get from each dollar in Google or Meta?

How to cross-reference email performance with your books

Email is unique because the cost is mostly time, not dollars. Here is how to compare it fairly:

• Look at revenue on email send days vs. non-send days. Pull daily revenue from your accounting software or payment processor. Do you see a spike on days you send emails? If yes, email is likely driving purchases. If revenue is flat regardless of email sends, the emails may not be moving the needle.
• Check your Mailchimp bill against the return.Your Mailchimp subscription cost is on your P&L, probably under “Software” or “Marketing.” If Mailchimp costs $100/month and email drives $3,200 in revenue, that is a 32x return on the subscription cost (not counting your time).
• Compare email revenue to ad revenue contribution. If ads cost $9,000/month and drive $38,000 in revenue (4.2x) while email costs $100/month plus time and drives $3,200 (32x on dollar cost), email might deserve more investment: better templates, better segmentation, or more frequent sends.

What it takes to measure email ROI every month

If you have e-commerce tracking in Mailchimp, the basic metrics take 10 minutes to review. But verifying that Mailchimp's claimed revenue matches your books requires manual cross-referencing of customer lists, which takes 30 to 45 minutes.

Without e-commerce tracking (which is most service businesses and B2B companies), you need to manually match email clickers to purchasers. That can take an hour or more depending on your volume.

Or see if email is driving real revenue, automatically

Bottomline connects to Mailchimp (or your email platform) alongside your accounting software and payment processor. It matches email engagement data with actual purchases and shows you email's real revenue contribution.

No manual customer matching. No guessing whether opens translate to sales. Bottomline shows you exactly how much revenue each email campaign drives, verified against your books, every month.