As digital marketers, we’ve all spent a lot of time on the question: what’s the most meaningful and effective way to communicate the data story we’re trying to tell?

Most digital experts would agree that email is a key channel that helps brands, ecommerce and B2B alike, achieve goals. Looking ahead to 2023, 42% of marketers identified email as a channel that would provide the best ROI during challenging economic times. How do we tell this story? Is the data we’re using the same as it was a year ago?

Why are the answers to these questions so ever-evolving? Regulatory, tech, and lifestyle changes influence the ways we reach users, and influence how user data makes it back into our business decision-making ecosystem.

Take email marketing, for instance. Email was one of the earliest ways brands connected digitally with prospective and existing customers. These customers used to access email via desktop and receive maybe a dozen emails a day. Now, with changes in technology and lifestyle, people have nearly uninterrupted access to email on mobile devices that are constantly buzzing with notifications. Inboxes today receive over 100 emails a day on average.

Looking at the digital marketing ecosystem as a whole, customer data privacy has been a driving force behind many recent changes, and will continue to be into 2023 and beyond. Privacy protection always sparks a flurry of headlines about the end of digital marketing as we know it. iOS 14.5 forever reshaped Meta Advertising, Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics in favor of GA4, and Apple Mail Privacy Protection altered the email data feedback system. But it’s not an “ending.” Instead, it’s a shift in strategy and the data storytelling we use to make sense of it all.

Ultimately, it’s our responsibility as marketers to bring it back to this:

What’s our business objective?
How is this channel helping us achieve it?

“If there’s something we were forced to accept during 2022, it’s that open rates are not the be-all and end-all of email marketing,” wrote Beatriz Redondo Tejedor of Mailjet in her piece on email marketing trends for 2023.

We’re here today to explore the evolution of email marketing reporting. What’s in and what’s out when we’re telling our email marketing data story in 2023?

What’s out for Email Marketing Reporting in 2023

Open rates as the north star of email program health

Open rates measure how many users opened your email out of the total number of delivered emails. However, in recent history, open rate accuracy has declined. Going back to the data privacy conversation, changes like Apple Mail Privacy Protection have created uncertainties around the open rate metric. Apple is the leading email client, so inaccuracies in reporting here will certainly impact your data.

What’s more, open rate doesn’t tell the whole story. While it can be a great KPI for A/B testing tactics, it fails to tell the story of what happens after the user opens the email. Monitor open rates when sending at different times of day, or when you test a new subject line for example. Ensure your open rate is high enough that users are receiving your content. But don’t let it steer the ship.

Reporting only on the email program as a whole, without attention to segmentation

A robust email marketing program consists of different elements. You have individual emails informing people of new products or sales, newsletters, and full customer journey campaigns. These each have different goals, are sent to different users, and should each receive dedicated attention when it comes to reporting.

What’s in for Email Marketing Reporting in 2023

Subscribe/unsubscribe for list health

Beyond looking at open rates to decide if you’re sending your content to the right people, consider tracking list growth and unsubscribes. Are you doing the right things to bring people in, and once you have them, are they sticking around?

Email engagement is a two-way street, so why not ask people what they want while you have them? When people subscribe, ask what they’re shopping for. Measure this qualified growth. Once subscribed, consider asking if people found what they’re looking for in the email in the footer. Don’t wait to ask for this feedback until people are already on their way to unsubscribe.

This subscribe/unsubscribe data can tell a more powerful story when these elements are considered, rather than someone just opening an email alone.

Reporting on a segment and objective basis

We don’t expect the same behavior from users at opposite sides of the customer journey, so why would we report on them as one? Back to the question of business objectives for a moment – if the ultimate goal is long-term revenue growth, do we want to push our high-price-point products to someone in the awareness phase, or do we want to educate them and nurture brand affinity first?

People expect increased personalization in advertising experiences, and catering to this can improve their experience. Segmenting your first-party data will allow for this hyper-customization, and as a result, help you better understand your email marketing results. What works for people who haven’t purchased in six months, and how is that different from what resonates with your VIPs?

Use UTM tagging in email marketing and configure micro-conversion goal tracking in your analytics platform to tie segment performance to specific actions taken on site.

For example, you could set up a “time on site” goal for someone at the start of the customer journey, while measuring for revenue from the VIP segment.

Engagement measured via click-through rate

Getting someone’s attention in a crowded inbox is no easy task. We mean really getting someone’s attention. How much does an opened email contribute to business objectives if it doesn’t drive action?

We believe click-through rate is a much better indicator of measurable engagement. is. This shows that the email content piqued a user’s interest enough to take time out of their day to interact with the content. Knowing which elements of your email strategy drive true engagement is much more impactful and actionable in your future strategy.

Conversion rate

While we touched on conversions in the conversation on segmentation, this one is so nice we added it twice. At the end of the day, is your email marketing strategy converting qualified leads to customers?

Moving Forward in 2023

In the constantly evolving digital marketing space, we’re doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t periodically evaluate the data we’re sharing to measure success. Intentional, goal-oriented reporting is no easy task, but it’s such a powerful way to improve client relationships by confirming that you’re on the same page.
For email marketers, go beyond open rates. Understand what’s driving engagement, and how different segments are interacting with your brand via email. Track micro-conversions to get the customer journey down to a science and add more color to your data story. Always keep big-picture goals in mind, and do your best to both drive and measure meaningful interactions.