The short version
- Attributed revenue as a share of total store revenue is the metric. Healthy is 30 to 40 percent.
- Revenue per recipient tells you whether growth came from quality or from volume.
- The flow versus campaign split tells you whether the account compounds.
- Open rate has been unreliable since Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Stop steering by it.
If a monthly report opens with open rate, something is being hidden. Not always deliberately, but the effect is the same: the number that is easiest to move is being presented in place of the number that pays your bills.
Here is the short version of what to track. One metric matters more than all the others combined, four are genuinely useful, and three are actively misleading.
The one that matters most
Attributed revenue as a percentage of total store revenue. That is the number. It answers the only question that matters: how much of this business is email and SMS responsible for.
For a healthy 7 or 8 figure store the band is 30 to 40 percent. Across the accounts on this site the figures sit at 39.07%, 42.38% of attributed from campaigns, 35.47%, 36.2% and 39.45%. Under 20% almost always means the flow layer is thin or the list is being treated as one audience.
One caveat worth knowing: above roughly 45% can be its own warning. It sometimes means email is excellent, and it sometimes means acquisition has stalled and email is propping up a shrinking business. Read it alongside total revenue, not on its own.
Revenue per recipient
Total revenue can rise simply because you sent more. Revenue per recipient tells you whether each send is actually working harder, which is the difference between a programme improving and a programme just being louder.
If revenue climbs while revenue per recipient falls, you are heading for list fatigue even though the topline looks healthy. It is the earliest honest warning you get.
The flow versus campaign split
Campaign revenue is work you redo every week. Flow revenue is an asset that keeps paying. The ratio between them tells you whether the account compounds or resets every month.
On one account we rebuilt, flows went from 61.07% of attributed revenue to 77.25%, moving from $234,099 to $635,737 a month. That shift is what turns email from a channel that consumes your time into infrastructure.
There is no universal correct ratio, but if campaigns are carrying most of your revenue, your automation layer has room in it.
Repeat purchase rate and list health
Retention work should show up in how often customers come back, not only in the email report. Repeat purchase rate and time between orders are the honest test of whether the programme is changing customer behaviour or just harvesting demand that already existed.
Alongside that, track list growth net of unsubscribes and suppressions. A list growing on paper while its engaged portion shrinks is a list getting worse.
The three that waste your time
Open rate. Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre loads images for a large share of recipients, which registers as an open whether or not anyone looked. It is still useful for comparing two subject lines in a controlled test, and useless as a performance goal or a trend line.
Total list size. A number that only ever goes up unless you clean, and one you pay for monthly whether or not those contacts do anything. Big lists impress people. Engaged lists produce revenue.
Click to open rate. A ratio built on top of a broken denominator. If opens are unreliable, anything divided by opens is unreliable.
What a good report looks like
One page. Attributed revenue and its share of total store revenue, with last month and last year beside it. Revenue per recipient. Flow versus campaign split. Repeat purchase rate. Engaged list size. Unsubscribe and complaint rates as a health check.
That is it. If a report needs more than a page to tell you whether the channel is working, it is decorating rather than reporting.