Author: Ilina Dobreva

With so many email types to choose from, email marketing can feel overwhelming, but it remains one of the most cost-effective marketing channels, offering an impressive ROI. It’s a powerful tool you can use to promote your business, project, or initiative.

In this guide, we’ll break down the 13 essential types of emails in a simple way. You’ll get a clear overview of the different types of emails, making it easy to decide which ones are right for your goals.

What Are the Different Types of Emails?

Here, we’ve compiled the most widely used and effective email types that businesses commonly use for their email marketing campaigns. Let’s check them out!

1. Welcome Emails

When a new subscriber joins your email list, welcome emails serve as your digital handshake – a critical first contact that goes beyond a simple subscription confirmation. This first message is a golden opportunity to establish trust, showcase your brand’s personality, and create a connection with your newest subscribers.

These initial communications also serve as an opportunity to build credibility. Customers expect welcome emails shortly after joining an email list (usually within 24 hours). Plus, welcome emails generate significantly higher open and click rates compared to the standard email campaigns.

Note that welcome emails can be categorized into two primary subtypes: a one-time introduction to the brand, which provides an immediate snapshot of who you are and what you offer, and an onboarding email series that guides new subscribers through a more comprehensive, multi-step journey of getting to know your brand, products, or services. These approaches differ in their duration of engagement, allowing you to tweak your initial communication to your marketing objectives.

Here’s one really good welcome email from the chocolate manufacturer Hotel Chocolat. It opens with a catchy, personalized subject line: “Mark, a world of chocolate happiness awaits 🍫” and combines all effective elements for a welcome email. Its minimalist, modern email design features a clear call to action (CTA), high-quality images, and concise yet engaging copy.

The personal note from the company’s CEO adds a thoughtful touch. Additionally, to incentivize new subscribers to make a purchase, the company has offered a 15% discount and placed it at the top of the email header. Notice that they’ve also included images and links to their key products to further prompt people to make a purchase – a smart approach you could also try in your welcome email campaigns.

2. Newsletter Emails

Newsletters are the core of many email marketing strategies, offering a consistent way to connect with your audience. These emails deliver regular updates about your business, share news, milestones, upcoming events, provide helpful tips, or offer educational content tied to your niche.

They’re not just informative, they’re also a way to remind subscribers why they joined your list in the first place. But their purpose goes beyond selling – newsletters can help you keep your audience engaged during the quieter moments between promotional campaigns.

Newsletters are typically sent weekly, biweekly, or monthly, helping you keep the balance between staying present in your audience’s inbox and avoiding the “unsubscribe” button. The best newsletters feel personal and conversational, as though they’re written with the subscriber in mind.

Check out this newsletter by Creative Mornings and take inspiration from their tactics to improve your own newsletter. It has several effective elements that make it well-designed and informative. First, it has a clear and engaging thematic focus. The content of the email is insightful and educational in an accessible way.

The creators have used an eye-catching header image that aligns with the surreal theme, plus the overall layout is clean and modern, making the newsletter easy to scan. The relevant content and call to action encourage readers to engage and support their community.

3. Curated Content Emails

Curated content emails are similar to newsletters – think of them as a focused bulletin designed to inform and educate. Unlike newsletters, which usually share a mix of updates specific to a business, curated emails spotlight news, articles, and other relevant content from both in-house and third-party sources that are relevant to your audience.

These emails often showcase your own insights alongside carefully selected resources from across your industry. The goal? To position your brand as a trusted expert while keeping your audience engaged with useful, topic-specific information in your field, even when you’re not actively promoting products or services.

4. Sales Promotion Emails

Sales promotion emails are designed to drive sales and spark immediate action from your audience. These emails are focused on promoting specific products, services, or special offers that create a sense of urgency and excitement.

Promotional emails have a clear goal: to convert subscribers into customers or to entice customers to buy more. They typically feature eye-catching announcements about sales, discounts, exclusive deals, or limited-time offers that compel recipients to take action. Here are some of the most common subtypes of promotional emails.

Product Launch Emails

Designed to generate initial sales for new offerings, these emails usually introduce new products with special pricing. The goal with them is to create an incentive for subscribers to be among the first to try your new product or service. A good approach is to offer exclusive early-access discounts to boost initial sales and reward your most engaged email subscribers.

To make a bold statement with your new product, take inspiration from the email below by Nissan. It has a sleek and modern design that aligns well with Nissan’s brand identity. The prominent display of their new model along with the bold caption “THE ICON HAS ARRIVED” immediately grabs attention and creates a sense of excitement around the new vehicle.

The personalized greeting adds a nice custom touch and the copy effectively highlights the key features of the car, encouraging the reader to be one of the first to experience the vehicle.

Discount and Sale Emails

With this type of email, you can inform subscribers about significant product or service price reductions, or highlight store-wide sales events. Again, focus your content on the key features your subscribers will get, how they will benefit them, and the value of the deal.

For reference, check out this sale email from Ren. It effectively promotes a 20% off sale on their product line. The design is visually appealing, with clean, minimalist styling and high-quality product imagery. The copy is concise and highlights the key benefits of their products to the customer.

The email also incorporates a strong call to action with the “Shop Now” button, making it easy for customers to take advantage of the limited-time offer. We highly recommend you also place a visible CTA when you feature a discount. The inclusion of a free gift with purchase as Ren did in their email, further incentivizes customers to buy.

Seasonal Email Campaigns

Seasonal email campaigns capitalize on holidays or special events to create themed content and time-sensitive offers. With these emails, you can use the natural excitement and anticipation surrounding specific times of the year, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and the back-to-school season.

The key is to create a sense of relevance that resonates with your audience’s current mood, and of course, shopping mood. Seasonal emails can take many forms – exclusive holiday campaigns with discounts, themed content deals, and more.

Steal some nice ideas from this stylishly crafted email by Ridge about their Cyber Monday sale. This holiday gift catalog showcases several effective marketing tactics. They have a short and sweet subject line: “🎁 Holiday Gifting Made Easy.” The clear call to action to “shop early, stress less” and the time-sensitive Cyber Monday sale create a sense of urgency.

Highlighting key product features like “premium materials” and “lifetime warranty” helps establish trust and value. The diverse product selection, including kits and men’s rings, caters to different customer needs. Overall, the design is visually appealing and the copy concisely conveys the product’s benefits, making this an engaging holiday marketing email.

5. Re-engagement Emails

Imagine subscribers who once eagerly opened your emails but have now faded into silence. We all have those moments! Re-engagement emails are what can bring them back. The goal is to reconnect with audience members who haven’t interacted with your content for some period, preventing them from completely dropping off your list.

Re-engagement emails should remind them about the value of your brand, often accompanied by a special deal or other incentive.

To create an effective re-engagement email, focus on emotional connection and clarity just like Spotify did below. Use a compelling subject line like their “We miss you…” that sparks curiosity or sentiment. Pair this with a conversational tone that acknowledges the customer’s past experience and invites them back warmly. Eye-catching visuals, like vibrant illustrations, can make the email memorable and engaging. Finally, include a clear call to action and a time-sensitive offer, such as a discount.

6. Drip Campaign Series

Drip campaigns, also known as email automations, are email sequences sent automatically over time, designed to deliver the right message at the right moment. They are used for different purposes – onboarding new customers, educating potential leads, or nurturing them through a sales funnel. Each drip email is timed and crafted to gradually build engagement. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular subtypes of drip campaigns.

Lead Nurturing Emails

Lead nurturing emails are designed specifically for potential clients who have shown initial interest in your product or service but haven’t yet made a purchase.

Your goal with it is to offer content that provides value, and gently guides prospects through their decision-making journey. For this purpose, lead nurturing campaigns are usually structured as a series of emails, gradually addressing the leads’ pain points.

These emails might include educational content, case studies, helpful resources, or tutorials on how your product works.

Customer Onboarding Series

The onboarding series aims to help new users smoothly transition from signing up to successfully using your product or service. They guide customers step-by-step through the setup process, offering additional tutorials or useful tips to ensure that they quickly start using your product or service and see its value.

As we mentioned in our Welcome emails section, a customer onboarding series usually begins with a warm welcome email. Then, you could add a clear call to action to get started, such as logging in, completing a profile, or exploring key features. The next emails may feature tutorials, best practices, or answers to common questions to keep users on track.

Check out how this company has broken down the onboarding process. The email provides a clear three-step process to guide users through publishing their first book using Lulu’s platform. It also includes links to helpful resources, such as a video tutorial, a blog post, a checklist, and a guide to support users through potential challenges. Their message is action-oriented and also includes a limited offer to encourage taking the next step.

7. Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are triggered by a user’s action such as a purchase or a registration. While their primary purpose is administrative such as confirming a purchase or shipping details, they’re also an opportunity to enhance the user experience. By crafting these emails in your brand’s unique tone of voice, you can maintain consistency and leave a positive impression. Let’s see some examples of transactional emails.

Order Confirmations Emails

Order confirmation emails are sent immediately after a customer places an order in your online store. These emails reassure customers that their transaction was successful while providing important details about their purchase.

Typically, they include the order number, product details, prices, delivery address, payment summary, and sometimes a downloadable invoice. Because customers expect these emails, they tend to have high open rates, making them a must.

Shipping Updates Emails

Shipping emails provide essential details like shipping confirmation, estimated delivery dates, and tracking numbers, ensuring that customers can monitor their orders at every stage. While practical in nature, shipping updates can also reflect your brand’s personality and tone of voice.

Password Reset Emails

We’ve all been there – forgetting a password or facing a potential security concern that locks us out of an account. Password reset emails are the key to resolving these moments efficiently. They usually include a clear link or instructions for resetting the password, as well as a way to report the email if the user did not request the reset.

While these emails are straightforward, it’s important to keep them concise and clear, making sure users understand their password hasn’t changed yet and that action is required. A clear reset link should be prominently displayed.

Here’s a nice, unconventional reset password email by Lingo. They use bold colors that align with their brand palette, a friendly illustration, and a calming, concise caption.

8. Event-Triggered Emails

Event-triggered emails are highly personalized messages sent automatically in response to specific user actions or milestones. These emails are tailored to a customer’s behavior, such as signing up, abandoning a cart, or reaching a key milestone like a birthday or anniversary. Let’s see some examples.

Abandoned Cart Emails

Abandoned cart emails remind users about the items they’ve left behind in their online shopping carts. Sent within 24 hours of cart abandonment, they act as a gentle nudge to complete the purchase.

These emails often feature images of the forgotten items, paired with persuasive messaging that reignites the customer’s interest. They might also include social proof, such as reviews or ratings.

For a successful abandoned cart email, take cues from Loftie’s approach. Start with a relatable subject line, like “Still not sure?” to empathize with the customer’s hesitation. Reinforce your product’s value with emotional messaging, such as “You deserve better sleep,” paired with a clear incentive like a discount offer. Use inviting visuals that reflect your brand’s purpose. Add trust-building elements, like third-party testimonials or reviews, to provide social proof and reduce hesitation.

Upsell/Cross-Sell Emails

Upsell and cross-sell emails are another subtype of event-triggered emails that leverage customer purchase history and interactions to recommend additional or improved products. Upsell emails suggest upgraded versions or premium alternatives to products a customer has already purchased while cross-selling emails pair complementary items that enhance the original purchase.

Milestone Emails

These are triggered emails that celebrate your customers’ or subscribers’ unique journeys and achievements, making the recipient feel seen and appreciated. They could mark a birthday, an anniversary of membership, or highlight their year’s achievements, simply showing that your business values individual customer experiences.

Milestone emails are characterized by a high level of personalization. You can send out milestone emails regarding clients’ most-listened music genres (like Spotify’s Wrapped), total fitness miles, shared rides, or membership duration.

Use an enthusiastic and warm tone that makes the recipient feel truly special and more connected to your brand.

If you’re looking to create milestone emails, take a cue from Grammarly’s approach. First, use data visualization to clearly showcase user progress, such as key metrics or milestones. Create a clean, visually appealing design that doesn’t overwhelm users. Try crafting original email copy, similar to how Grammarly provides an overview of their customers’ productivity, mastery, and vocabulary growth.

9. Survey & Feedback Emails

Survey and feedback emails are a powerful tool for businesses to gather valuable insights directly from their audience. These emails help companies understand customer experiences, preferences, and potential concerns, which can be used for business improvements and to refine customer satisfaction.

To incentivize more people to participate, you might offer a small reward such as a discount code, entry into a giveaway, relevant helpful content, or a promise to share the results of the survey.

10. Event Emails

These targeted emails inform and excite potential attendees about upcoming events such as webinars, conferences, meetups, workshops, and similar. Craft an email message that is concise, informative, and compelling from the very first line.

Communicate the event’s unique value proposition in the beginning, and highlight the most significant benefit attendees will gain, whether it’s exclusive insights or networking opportunities. Include all necessary details such as the exact date, time, location, event link (if virtual), and straightforward registration info. Additionally, don’t forget to send follow-up reminder emails to keep the event top of mind and boost attendance rates.

11. Cold Emails (Outreach)

Cold emails are your first contact with a potential client who doesn’t know your business yet. These outreach messages introduce your company and open the door to a potential business relationship. Your primary goal when using them is to spark interest and create an opportunity for further conversation with the prospect.

Your success depends on understanding your target audience deeply. Who are they? What challenges do they face? The most effective cold emails are carefully researched and personalized, showing that you’ve taken the time to understand the recipient’s specific needs and context. This means avoiding generic, mass-produced messages and instead creating an original targeted message.

12. Thank-You Emails

Whenever relevant, use thank-you emails as they will help you build stronger connections with your audience. They show the human side of your brand, demonstrate good communication practices, and make customers feel valued. You can use them for various reasons – for a recent purchase, a new subscription, etc.

Below, Onyx Coffee Lab shows how you can create a short but sweet thank you email after a purchase was made by a client. The email is sent within 24 hours of the purchase, which is a great way to show appreciation while the experience is still fresh for the customer. Doing this, you not only make the customer feel valued, but you also keep your brand top of mind. The message below is warm and personal, highlighting the positive experience and ensuring that customers know their purchase matters.

13. Privacy Policy Emails

Privacy policy emails serve as official notifications to users, ensuring they are informed about important changes to your business’ terms of service. They help businesses maintain transparency and legal compliance.

Privacy policy communications should be clear, direct, and as short as possible. Avoid using marketing talk and legal jargon. Use simple, direct language that explains exactly what has changed and how it impacts the user.

To make it easily scalable, you can highlight the most important changes in a bulleted format. Remember that these emails are about building trust, not creating confusion.

Why Should You Send Different Types of Emails?

Each type of email plays a unique role, from nurturing customer relationships to boosting sales and building brand awareness. The right email at the right time can make all the difference. Understanding what each type of email is best suited for allows you to align your messages with your goals and engage your audience more effectively.

Before hitting “send,” take the time to clarify your email marketing strategy, though. Knowing your goals and audience will help you choose the right email formats and create campaigns that truly resonate. Yes, we’re talking less spammy, more awesome!

How to Send Marketing Emails Easy, Conveniently, and Fast

Successful email marketing isn’t just about crafting the perfect message, though! It’s about having the right tools at your disposal. Choose a reliable and user-friendly email marketing platform that simplifies your workflow.

To do this, the must-have features you need to look for are list-building and segmentation options, an intuitive email builder, and a library of ready-to-use and customizable templates. Mobile optimization is key, ensuring your emails look great on any mobile device. Perhaps most importantly, prioritize a platform with high deliverability rates. After all, the best-crafted email is useless if it doesn’t reach your subscribers’ inboxes! Last but not least, choose a platform that offers straightforward analytics and email metrics that help you understand and improve your campaigns.

Types of Emails FAQs

What Type of Email Is Best?

The best type of email depends entirely on your goal. A welcome email, for example, creates a warm first impression, while a promotional message or newsletter serves a completely different purpose as we explained above. To define which one will work for you, first define your specific goal.

How Many Types of Emails Are There?

Marketers generally use 10 to 15 core email types, including welcome emails, newsletters, drip campaigns, promotional offers, event invitations, and others. However, within these categories lie numerous subtypes, each tailored to specific goals and details, allowing for a more precise and impactful approach.

What Are the Different Email Styles?

Email styles range a lot – from formal business communications to friendly, conversational messages. The best style for your emails depends on your brand’s voice and the audience you’re addressing. Consistency is key though. For instance, a trendy fashion brand might opt for a playful, upbeat tone, while a healthcare provider would likely choose a reassuring and empathetic one. Remember, your email’s personality should reflect your brand’s voice, whether that’s warm and approachable or crisp and authoritative.

Every time someone joins your email list, it’s a valuable opportunity. Welcome emails are your first chance to connect and they’re critical. Often underestimated, these emails are one of the most effective ways to engage and retain new subscribers right from the start. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of using welcome emails, share key best practices, and provide templates for different business scenarios in order to help you get started. 

What Are Welcome Emails?

A welcome email is simply the first message you send to new subscribers after they’ve joined your email list. However, a welcome email is more than just a confirmation of their successful subscription or purchase! It’s your chance to make a strong first impression. This pivotal moment sets the tone for how subscribers will perceive your brand and marks the beginning of their customer journey. 

Why Welcome Emails Are Important for Your Business

Welcome emails are quite effective and offer a variety of benefits. Here are some of the most notable ones.

📬 Customers expect them: On average, 74% of people are expecting to receive a welcome email shortly after they join an email list. So, make sure you use welcome emails in order to meet the expectations of your recipients.

🫶 They help build credibility and set the tone: 

A welcome email is a powerful tool for showcasing your brand’s values and voice, helping you build credibility with customers who are new to your brand and may not yet know much about it.

🔝 They are extremely effective and boost engagement: Research shows welcome emails deliver impressive results, such as four times more opens (an average 50% open rate) and five times more clicks (an average 14.4% click rate) compared to regular email campaigns. Plus, subscribers who receive welcome emails show 33% higher engagement with the brand.

Best Practices for Welcome Emails in 2024

Now that we’ve covered what welcome emails are, why they’re important for your business, and why you should leverage them, let’s dive into the key elements every welcome email should include, and what best practices you need to follow. 

Send welcome emails right after the user joins your list

In email marketing, proper timing is very important. To maximize the impact of your welcome emails, make sure they’re sent immediately after someone joins your subscriber list, or within 24 hours at the latest. This helps keep your brand top of mind and significantly reduces the chances of them losing interest or even forgetting why they signed up for your email in the first place. It also shows that you are attentive and organized, which will help you build a positive impression of your brand. 

Personalize Your Emails

Typically, personalized emails perform much better than generic ones. That’s because people are more likely to perceive such content as more relevant to them, and therefore open it and engage with it. To personalize your welcome emails, use the recipient’s name in the subject line or in the greeting at the beginning of your email.

Also, create tailored content that resonates with your audience’s interests or the way they have subscribed. You can segment your audience into groups you find relevant and create different welcome emails for each of them. For example, if you’re a photographer, and you often have prospects interested in professional corporate photography, send them a welcome email including your top corporate photography pieces.

Use Compelling Subject Lines

Your subject line is one of the most important elements of your welcome email, as it is the first thing recipients see from you. To make it effective and attention-grabbing, keep it clear, short (especially for better display on mobile), and give a hint of what subscribers can expect from you. Also, whenever appropriate, consider using emojis, as they can make your emails more visually appealing and engaging. 😉   

Brand Identity and Consistency

One of the best practices for welcome emails is to craft them in a way that aligns with your brand’s identity and maintains consistency across all the different media you use. To do so, make sure to keep the same tone of voice as on your website, social media, and other channels. Use your logo, brand colors, style, fonts, and any other elements that your audience associate with your brand.

Set Clear Expectations and Give Next Steps

Now let’s talk about the content of your welcome email. It’s obvious that in your welcome email you would want to extend a warm welcome to your new subscriber. But you’re probably wondering “what else should I include?” 

As a general rule, don’t overwhelm your readers with too much information. Share only the essential details that they’ll need. People like to know what to expect, and whether spending time on your content will be worthwhile. Set clear expectations and guide your subscribers through their journey with your brand. 

You can outline the type of tips, news or offers they will receive in your email campaigns, and how frequently they can expect to hear from you. It’s also a good idea to include next steps, like exploring your website or directing them to a specific page or blog post.

Add Value

If you encourage subscribers to join by using  a lead magnet  – such as an eBook, guide, exclusive podcast episode, design sample, or discount code –  now is the perfect time to deliver on that promise. Adding the lead magnet to your welcome email will build trust and reinforce the value of being on your list. For example, if you are a style consultant, a subject line like: “Welcome aboard! Your free autumn style guide inside!” would work great. 

Integrate Your Social Media Channels

Welcome emails can be part of a broader, integrated marketing strategy. Use them to invite subscribers to connect with you outside email by integrating your social media channels to your emails. Encourage recipients to follow you for more news, updates, or promotions.

Effective and Clear CTA

Be sure your subscribers know what action you want them to take next by adding an obvious and straightforward call-to-action (CTA) button or hyperlinked text. Your CTA caption should be short and clear, like “Sign Up Today,” “Start Free Trial,” or “Get Your Free Sample.” 

It’s also a good practice to place it above the fold, so that readers can see it even if they don’t read your whole email. If your email is long, consider adding your CTA two or more times. 

Provide an Unsubscribe Option

Even though unsubscribing is probably the last thing you want recipients to do, it’s essential to add it to your welcome emails. It shows that you are transparent, and it’s also an effective way to ensure that your subscriber list contains only recipients who are truly interested in your content. Moreover, the unsubscribe option is important to comply with international laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM.   

Use Modern, Mobile-responsive Design

It’s essential that your welcome emails are optimized for mobile devices. Choose an email marketing platform that provides mobile-friendly templates that automatically adjust to smaller screens. As a general rule, keep your email content as short as possible so it looks good on mobile devices, opt for a single-column design if possible, and avoid overloading your email with too many images.

Welcome Email Templates and Examples

Now let’s explore some welcome email templates that could serve as  inspiration for what you can create in different scenarios. If you like one of them, you can use it yourself via the SiteGround Email Marketing platform, and easily adjust it to fit your brand’s style.

Welcome Email for New Clients

A well-crafted welcome email can start off your relationship with new subscribers on the right foot. Make it more personal by incorporating a warm message from the business founder. You can tell more about the inspiration behind the brand and its values.

Continue by offering additional resources, product lines or anything else that you think will be suitable to entice subscribers to explore more. Add a clear call to action (CTA) to drive engagement, and include social proof to build trust.

Newsletter Signup Welcome Email

When a person joins your newsletter but hasn’t yet made a purchase, it’s a good idea to immediately engage and deliver a special offer or a discount code to encourage them to make their first purchase. This combination of a welcome message, personalized exclusive offer, and clear call to action is an effective way to make subscribers take the first step with your brand.

Welcome Email for Onboarding Subscribers

Here’s another welcome email example that greets a new subscriber while also explaining onboarding steps. If your business or project has a mission, be sure to mention it in your welcome email. Along with this, you could add authenticity by including a note from the founder, and encourage action with a visible CTA. When crafting an onboarding email, make sure to encourage subscribers to interact with your brand – guide them to specific products, send them helpful articles, make them add a reminder for upcoming event, etc.

Community or Loyalty Program Welcome Email

If you have a community, loyalty, or rewards program, your welcome email could include simple steps with what the members will get from it, its benefits, how it works, and a clear call to action.

Event Registration Welcome Email

For businesses hosting events, whether online or in-person, a good welcome email practice is to provide a highlighted section with visible information about the date and time of the event and a call to action to save the date to your calendar. After that, you could add any other relevant information – more details about the event, useful links to resources, social media links, etc.

Welcome Email Template for Delivering a Freebie

If you build your email list with a lead magnet like a free guide or course, the welcome email should deliver the promised free downloadable content right away. To make it straightforward, add a button or a visible link in the beginning of your welcome email, thank the subscriber for their interest, and give more details about how the free piece of content will benefit them. It’s a nice touch to also suggest more relevant resources. This might help you drive further engagement.

Content/Blog Subscription Welcome Email

When a person signs up for your blog, it’s a good practice to briefly explain what they can expect from it in the future. You could add information about the themes and topics you plan to write the most, how often they can expect new content from you, and a few popular posts to get them started. This email is also a great opportunity to invite them to follow your social media channels.

Get Started with Welcome Emails Today

We hope the best practices and tips we’ve shared above will help you easily create your welcome emails and set the foundation for a successful and lasting relationship with your subscribers. Ready to take the next step? Go ahead and give the SiteGround Email Marketing platform a try –  it’s free for the first 30 days! 

Looking to boost your business or project’s results through email marketing? If you’re already on this journey, this article will be quite useful for assessing the success of your email campaigns and determining if they are helping you achieve your goals. We’ll cover the essential email marketing metrics and KPIs, explore what insights they can provide, and explain how you can use them effectively.

What Are Email Marketing Metrics and KPIs?

Email metrics are simply data points that demonstrate how your email marketing campaigns are performing. Think of them as email analytics that inform you about how many people read your email, how many unsubscribe, how many you convert into clients, and much more. 

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), are also measurable values used by businesses to evaluate their success in achieving important business objectives. They differ from metrics even though the two are often used interchangeably.

KPIs help track progress, identify areas for improvement, and guide decision-making. They vary depending on the industry and specific goals but typically focus on critical aspects of business performance such as revenue, customer satisfaction, or operational efficiency.

Below, we will describe which are the most important email marketing metrics and what they show. Under each explained metric, we will also give an example of the business insight it could reveal, as well as some tips for improvement. 

We’ll also go over the most common goals business owners have nowadays and give suggestions about which KPIs could be helpful for you to monitor. But remember: you know your business best, so it’s your choice to determine which metrics and KPIs will   best help you reach your goals.

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Why Is It Important to Track Metrics in Email Marketing?

We all know the satisfying feeling of crafting an email campaign with great design and all the crucial information you want to share with your subscribers. But let’s be honest – it’s not just about hitting “send” and hoping for the best. Evaluating your campaigns is equally important, as it reveals how they impact your business and marketing efforts in the following aspects:

📊 Campaign performance: analyzing email marketing metrics goes beyond assumptions, offering a concrete overview of the campaign performance and its impact on your subscribers.

🥇 Campaign optimization opportunities: metrics help you find out what aspects of your emails could be changed and optimized for better results.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Audience insights: by reading your metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your audience, such as what types of emails and content they prefer, what time of day they are more likely to open an email, and what they might potentially buy from you.
🎯 Strategic planning: observing your email campaigns will help you make informed decisions in the future (like what’s the perfect time to do a promotional campaign), and tweak your email marketing strategy accordingly.

📅 Reporting: evaluating email marketing metrics is crucial for keeping everyone informed, whether you’re working on a team, as a freelancer, or even independently. It helps you and your colleagues, clients, or managers stay up-to-date on all communications sent to subscribers and understand how they are performing.

What Are Your Goals for Email Marketing?

Before we explain the most important email marketing metrics and KPIs, ask yourself what you want to achieve. Define what your biggest goal with email marketing is and don’t skip setting specific objectives for every email campaign you work on. The metrics you need to measure depend on the exact goals you have. They could be increasing your leads, driving traffic to your website, driving sales, etc. 

Email Marketing Metrics to Track & Monitor

Here are the essential metrics that every business owner and email marketer should know and have in mind when working on an email campaign.

Open rate

Open rate is one of the most common email metrics, and it shows the percentage of recipients who opened your email campaign. However, despite its popularity, the open rate is often seen as a vanity metric, and many marketers even consider it unreliable for several reasons.

Generally, most tracking systems count an email as “opened” only when the email software receives a tiny transparent image (aka tracking pixel) embedded in the email for tracking purposes. However, some email apps block images by default, so unless the recipient manually enables them, the email may not be recorded as opened, even if it was. 

Also, with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, which was introduced several years ago, the content of emails in Apple Mail gets preloaded (including tracking pixels) regardless of whether the user actually opens the email. All these things make open rate not a very accurate and reliable metric for your business, so don’t focus too much on it. 

📍 Formula: open rate = (total emails opened / total emails delivered) x 100​​

💡 Business insight: even if not 100% accurate, an open rate can give you an idea about the effectiveness of your subject line, whether it was interesting and compelling to the recipients or not. It also hints at whether recipients are interested in your content. Beyond individual campaigns, though, reviewing changes in your open rate between multiple sends can offer crucial insights, especially if you’re reaching the same audience. Monitoring the shifts can help you identify patterns in engagement. 

Curious if your open rate is good? An average open rate for small businesses using email marketing is around 36%, based on data reported by SiteGround. If your open rates tend to be much lower, consider applying the following tips.  

🚀 Ideas for improvement: if you want to improve your open rates, make sure to write emails that people will read – experiment with the length, style, and tone of your subject lines. Use personalization in the subject line, as well as emojis, and try different sending times to find out what time of day your subscribers are most active and more likely to open an email.  

Click-to-open rate

The click-to-open rate is another popular email metric that reveals how many people clicked on any links inside your email. If, for example, you have included a link or button to a special discount, the click-to-open rate will indicate what percentage of your recipients clicked on it to learn more about your offer. To determine if your click-to-open rate is good enough, you should track it for each email campaign and analyze the trends over time. Based on data provided by SiteGround, the average click-to-open rate for small business owners is approximately 6.4%.

📍 Formula: click-to-open rate = (number of clicks / number of emails opened) x 100

💡 Business insight: The click-to-open rate is a crucial metric for revealing the effectiveness of your email content and whether it speaks to the subscribers. It tells you whether it is compelling and engaging. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: to improve this rate, first make sure that your email campaign is well-structured, has relevant and helpful content, and has a catchy design. Boost your click-to-open rate by making your call to action visible and clear. 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is an email marketing metric that shows the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to your subscribers for some reason. This happens when your email gets rejected by the recipient’s email servers and returns to the sender with an automated message indicating a delivery error. It’s important to monitor that metric as a high bounce rate can affect your sender reputation and, in time, even lower your campaigns’ reach. 

📍 Formula: bounce rate = (bounced emails / emails sent) x 100%

💡 Business insight: Along with hurting your sending reputation, a high bounce rate can hint that there will be a potential drop in your open and click-to-open rate, as they depend on actually reaching recipients. It could also suggest problems with the quality of your subscriber list or issues with your email server. A bounce rate under 2% is generally considered a strong performance.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: to lower your bounce rate, ensure that your recipient list is of high quality. Regularly clear it from unengaged and inactive subscribers. Don’t buy email lists and never use spammy tactics in your email campaigns, as this can lead to lots of spam complaints and serious consequences to your sender’s reputation. 

It’s a good practice to implement a double opt-in to ensure that each subscriber is truly interested in receiving your content. 

Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate measures the percentage of recipients who opt to leave your list after receiving an email. Even though seeing recipients unsubscribe from your emails can be discouraging, it’s also beneficial, as it’s a good way to efficiently clean your subscriber list. Providing your recipients with the option to cancel their email subscription is a way to ensure good email deliverability, as this is a requirement in various spam laws worldwide.  

📍 Formula: unsubscribe rate = (number of unsubscribes / number of emails delivered) x 100

💡 Business insight: The unsubscribe rate, if high, can reveal that your email content is not relevant, useful, or interesting to your target audience. It could also suggest that your subscriber list is not well-segmented or that your emails are being sent too frequently. To get meaningful feedback about your content, consider sending a confirmation email to unsubscribers, asking them to provide more information on why they decided to leave your email list. Based on our experience with small business clients using the SiteGround Email Marketing tool, a good unsubscribe rate is below 0.5%.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To minimize unsubscribes, consider implementing a double opt-in, segmenting subscribers into different lists based on various criteria, and focus on providing them with valuable and interesting content. It’s also a good practice to give recipients the option to choose how often and what type of emails they want to receive.  

Spam complaint rate

This metric shows the percentage of people who mark an email as spam after receiving it. This is critical data to monitor, as it reveals that recipients perceive your message as irrelevant, annoying, or even inappropriate. However, note that the spam rate does not account for emails that get rejected at the network level by spam filters, so this metric may not fully capture all spam-related issues. 

📍 Formula: Spam complaint rate = (number of spam complaints / number of emails delivered) x 100

💡 Business insight: Similar to the bounce rate, a high spam complaint rate can damage your sender reputation. It is also a red flag that there’s a problem with your email content (frequency, relevancy, or quality). Keep in mind that the acceptable standard spam complaint rate is less than 0.1%. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: We have a detailed article that gives you all the tips and tricks on how to avoid your emails going to spam. Generally, to reduce the spam complaint rate, it’s important to only send emails to people who have opted in to receive them, and to avoid sending emails too frequently. Additionally, always include an unsubscribe option in your email campaigns. People often report messages as spam when they get frustrated by not being able to find an unsubscribe link. 

Focus on building your email list organically and improving it by incorporating double opt-in signup. Also, authenticate your sender domain as it is an effective way to prove your emails come from you.  

Delivery rate

Email delivery rate indicates the percentage of emails successfully delivered to the recipients without bouncing or being reported as spam. That means they have passed all the email filters and reached your intended audience.

📍 Formula: delivery rate = (number of successfully delivered emails / number of emails sent) x 100

💡 Business insight: A high delivery rate is important as it is proof that your sender reputation is intact. It could also reveal to you that your email and its content are relevant to your audience as it is not reported as spam. However, a low delivery rate might suggest problems with the quality of your email list hygiene and issues with your server sending infrastructure. Consider that the average delivery rate typically ranges between 90% and 98%. Remarkably, data provided by the SiteGround Email Marketing tool shows an average Delivery Rate of 98.8%, ensuring your messages consistently reach their intended recipients and maximizing your potential for engagement and conversions.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To boost your delivery rate, regularly clean your email list, and remove inactive or unengaged subscribers. Improve your sender credibility by using a reputable email service provider that maintains a good sender reputation for their servers. 

Also, be mindful of how often you send email campaigns: don’t do it too frequently, as it might lead to overwhelming your recipients, and therefore result in more complaints, unsubscribes, and even spam reports. For further help on this topic, we have a great article that explains in detail how to ensure high email deliverability.

Forwarding rate 

This rate (also quite similar to ”email sharing”) measures the percentage of people who forward your email to others. It’s a strong indicator of how interesting, helpful, and engaging your email is, as subscribers are more likely to share useful content with their friends and family. Keep in mind that not all email marketing tools measure this metric, so if you want to track it over time, you might have to use unique URLs or social media sharing buttons for this purpose. 

📍 Formula: forwarding rate = (number of forwards / number of emails delivered) x 100

💡 Business insight: The forwarding rate reveals whether your content resonates with your target audience. It could unveil whether word-of-mouth organic growth is feasible for your business. A good email forwarding rate is typically between 0.5% to 2%. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To encourage your recipients to share your email campaigns, make it easy for them to do so. Include a clear call to action asking them to forward or share it. Provide helpful content, expert tips, or other valuable information that is worth sharing, and ensure your email design is visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Key Email Marketing KPIs to Track 

There are countless KPIs you could monitor, but how do you decide which ones to track? Here we’ll highlight the most popular KPIs, explain their benefits, and help you determine which ones are best suited to your email marketing goals.

As we mentioned earlier, a KPI can be a single metric or a mix of metrics, specifically aligned with your goals. They are tools that help you and your team monitor progress toward your objectives. As a result, it’s crucial to identify which KPIs are the most important for your business or project early on.

Note that some email service providers automatically provide such metrics. If not, consider tracking the key ones for your business yourself, as they can significantly impact your strategy.

Conversion Rate

One of the essential KPIs that you can monitor as a small business owner is conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action after receiving your email. This action can vary depending on your specific goals and may include making a purchase, converting a lead into а client, filling out a form, reading a blog post, signing up for a webinar, or visiting your website, among other actions.

📍 Formula: conversion rate = (number of conversions/number of delivered or sent emails) x 100

Tracking conversions typically requires integrating data from two sources: your email marketing platform and your website analytics. To accurately attribute conversions to specific email campaigns, it’s crucial to use UTM parameters in your email links. These are tags added to URLs that allow you to track the source, medium, and campaign name in your analytics tool.

💡 Business insight: The conversion rate can reveal how effective your email campaigns are in encouraging subscribers to engage and take action with your business. The higher the conversion rate, the better your email campaigns are performing. But what qualifies as a good conversion rate? 

Research suggests that the average conversion rate in email marketing hovers around 3%. Note that to truly assess your email performance, it’s important to track conversion rates over time and compare them. Keep in mind that these rates can be influenced by factors such as your industry, your content, sending times, and more. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To improve your conversion rate, you need to ensure that your email campaigns are relevant, useful, and easy to navigate. Clear inactive users from your recipient list, write attention-grabbing subject lines, include visible and compelling call-to-action buttons or links, and experiment with sending times.

Subscriber acquisition cost (SAC)

Subscriber acquisition cost is a critical KPI to track in order to make informed decisions about your marketing spend. In the context of email marketing, SAC represents the cost of acquiring a new subscriber to your list. 

📍 Formula: SAC = total cost of acquisition / number of new subscribers acquired through email

To calculate SAC, divide the total cost of acquiring a new subscriber by the number of new subscribers gained as a result. The total cost should include all the costs, including marketing, design, ads, sales, and everything else that you might have used in the acquisition process. 

If your SAC is high, it could indicate that your marketing efforts are not cost-effective. Note that SAC varies significantly across industries, so you should research what the estimate is for your specific industry and analyze your results for a longer period. It’s also useful to keep in mind that a good SAC is lower than the subscriber’s lifetime value (which we explain down below). 

💡 Business insight: By tracking SAC, you can get an idea of how effective your overall marketing efforts are in acquiring new subscribers and respectively whether you need to change something to help increase your email list. A lower SAC means you’re spending less to acquire each new subscriber, which is crucial for profitability.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: If you discover that you need to lower your SAC after researching your industry’s average, focus on improving your ad design and copy, and create useful and educational content on your website, social media, and on any other platforms that you may use for collecting leads. Try incentivizing readers to subscribe to your email list with different free resources and materials.

Subscriber lifetime value 

Subscriber lifetime value is another useful KPI that estimates the revenue a subscriber is expected to generate for you over the course of time as your newsletter subscriber.

📍 Formula: Subscriber lifetime value =  (average revenue per email subscriber x average subscriber lifespan) – the cost to serve them

Calculating this KPI might not be straightforward, as you need to have specific data. If you are able to calculate it, it will help you to decide how much to invest in acquiring your subscribers and, in the end, will optimize your marketing spend. 

💡 Business insight: Lifetime value is one of the most important KPIs to track because it can give you insights into how much to invest in acquiring new subscribers and how well you are performing in monetizing your audience.  

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To improve the lifetime value of your subscribers, work on enhancing engagement with your email content. Make it more personalized and actionable, and provide more value to your audience with different exclusive offers and promos. Try boosting upsells by sending email campaigns offering related products. 

Return on investment (ROI)

Return on investment is a popular KPI that measures the revenue generated from your email campaigns compared to the cost of running those campaigns. It unveils whether your email campaigns are profitable or not. 

📍 Formula: ROI = (revenue from email campaign – cost of email campaign) / cost of email campaign

To calculate it, you need to subtract the money you spent to run the campaign from the revenue – this represents the money you earned from it, which will show you how much profit you made after covering your costs. Then, dividing by the cost of the email campaign will reveal how much profit you made for every dollar spent. 

Note that to correctly calculate the cost of creating and sending your email campaign for that KPI, you need to again consider the email tools you use to do it, as well as internal writers, freelancers, agencies, and/or design costs.

💡 Business insight: A positive ROI is a sign that your marketing efforts are working and generating more than you spend. According to research, the average ROI for email marketing is $36. Keep in mind that as with most of the other KPIs, the ROI also varies greatly depending on your industry. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: You can improve your ROI by making your offers more appealing to your readers. For example, you could use personalization and experiment with different content and the way it’s presented. You could also review how you segment your email lists and make changes in order to improve your targeted messaging. 

Revenue per email

The revenue per email KPI could help you assess the profitability of individual campaigns and identify which types of emails are most effective at driving revenue. You can calculate it easily by dividing the revenue of an email campaign by the number of emails sent. 

📍 Formula: revenue per email = revenue from email campaign / number of emails sent

💡 Business insight: This KPI allows you to compare the effectiveness of different campaigns and email strategies. It will help you reveal which email types work the best at driving revenue – whether they are promotional, newsletters, or otherwise. A higher revenue per email shows that your content, CTAs, and targeting are resonating with your audience. Since there isn’t a specific industry benchmark, you need to track and analyze the results for your particular business. 

As a general guideline, the revenue from your email campaign should be equal to or close to the amount you invested. This way, you can ensure that your campaigns are paying off, and you can determine the budget for future campaigns.  

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To drive more revenue for your campaigns, it is again important to increase engagement. Optimize your email content specifically for each segment of your subscribers to make it more relevant. A/B test various subject lines, design styles, buttons, and visuals (one at a time) to see what will bring you the most clicks, engagement, and revenue. 

Choose the Right Email Marketing Tool to Track Metrics 

Having the right Email Marketing Tool by your side is crucial for optimizing all your tasks related to creating, sending, testing, and analyzing your email campaigns. When selecting an email marketing service, make sure you choose a tool that provides you with all this functionality – and that is easy to use and to get started.

With the SiteGround Email Marketing tool, you can rest assured that you have everything in one place. Developed by experts with 20+ years of experience in hosting email, our platform provides an intuitive no-code builder, customizable email layouts, AI copywriter, unlimited audiences, subscriber management, and friendly reporting features. 

You can enjoy automated essential email analytics like open, delivery, click-to-open, bounced, spam, and unsubscribe rates, and interactions stats showing you clicks on specific URLs, the type of the element that has been clicked (button, link, image) and the caption text.

Conclusion

Monitoring your metrics and adopting a structured approach to evaluating your email marketing work will empower you to make data-based decisions and boost your business. Don’t miss out on that opportunity! Now, tell us in the comments: Are there any metrics you already track for your business? Which ones have most helped you to reach your goals?

BONUS: Email Marketing Glossary

Term	Explanation
Open Rate	The percentage of recipients who opened an email, indicating how well your subject line worked.
Click-Through Rate	The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in an email. It shows engagement with the content.
Conversion Rate	The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, like making a purchase.
Bounce Rate	The rate at which your emails are not delivered to the recipient’s inbox, either due to invalid addresses (hard bounce) or temporary server deliverability issues (soft bounce).
Deliverability	The measure of the success rate at which emails are delivered to the recipient’s inboxes.
Unsubscribe Rate	The rate at which people opt-out of your email list after receiving an email, indicates the relevance and quality of your campaigns.
Segmentation	The process of dividing your email list into smaller, more specific groups based on certain criteria to send more targeted campaigns.
Personalization	The practice of tailoring email content to individual recipients based on the data you have about them.
A/B Testing	Sending two variants of an email to a small percentage of your total recipients to see which version performs better, before sending the better-performing version to the rest of the list.
Call To Action (CTA)	A button or link placed in your email that encourages your recipients to take a specific action, such as “Buy Now”, “Learn More”, or “Subscribe”.
Email Automation	Email that is sent automatically by the system when triggered by a specific customer action or event. For example, a welcome email after sign-up or a confirmation email after purchase.
CAN-SPAM Act	A US law that sets the rules for commercial email and establishes requirements for commercial messages. It gives recipients the right to stop unsolicited emails from being sent to them and spells out tough penalties for violations.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)	A regulation on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.
Email List Hygiene	The practice of regularly cleaning your email list to remove inactive, invalid, or unengaged subscribers to maintain a high-quality recipient list.