What your campaign metrics mean
Once your campaigns and flows are running, the Analytics section becomes one of the most important places in your Nudge account. Understanding what each metric means — and what to do when the numbers look off — is what separates good email marketing from great email marketing.
You can find your metrics under Analytics in the left panel. Metrics are broken down across four tabs: Campaigns, Flows, Popups, and Deliverability.
Open rate
Your open rate is the percentage of recipients who opened your email.
How it is calculated: (Emails opened ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
What is a healthy open rate? For e-commerce brands, a healthy open rate typically sits between 20% and 35%. Anything consistently below 20% is worth investigating.
What affects it:
- Subject line — this is the biggest driver. A clear, benefit-led subject line almost always outperforms a vague one
- Preview text — the short line of text visible in the inbox below the subject line. Treat it as a second subject line
- Send time — emails sent on weekday mornings tend to see higher open rates than those sent late at night or on weekends
- Sender name — recipients are more likely to open emails from a name they recognise
Tip: If your open rate is dropping over time, your list may need cleaning. Contacts who have not opened in the last 6 to 12 months are worth suppressing or running through a re-engagement campaign before sending to them again.
Click rate
Your click rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked a link inside your email.
How it is calculated: (Unique clicks ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
What is a healthy click rate? A strong click rate for e-commerce typically sits between 2% and 5%. If you are above 5%, your content and CTAs are working well.
What affects it:
- Clarity of your call to action — one clear CTA almost always outperforms multiple competing links
- Placement — your primary CTA should be visible without scrolling
- Relevance — the offer or content in the email needs to match what the recipient actually cares about
- Design — cluttered or hard-to-read emails get fewer clicks regardless of the offer
Bounce rate
Your bounce rate is the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to the recipient's inbox.
How it is calculated: (Bounced emails ÷ Emails sent) × 100
There are two types of bounces:
| Type | What it means |
|---|---|
| Hard bounce | The email address does not exist or has been permanently deactivated. These contacts should be removed from your list immediately. |
| Soft bounce | A temporary issue — the inbox is full, the server was down momentarily, and so on. Nudge will retry these automatically. |
What is acceptable? Keep your bounce rate below 2%. Anything above this signals poor list hygiene and can damage your sender reputation significantly.
Important: Nudge monitors your bounce rate continuously. If it climbs too high, your account may be flagged for review. Regularly cleaning your list and only sending to valid, engaged contacts is the best way to keep this number healthy.
Unsubscribe rate
Your unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who opted out of your emails after receiving a campaign.
How it is calculated: (Unsubscribes ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
What is acceptable? Aim to keep your unsubscribe rate below 0.2% per campaign. A spike in unsubscribes usually means one of three things — you are emailing too frequently, the content is not relevant, or your list includes people who did not expect to hear from you.
Once a contact unsubscribes, Nudge will automatically suppress them from all future sends. You must not attempt to re-add or email them again.
Spam complaint rate
Your spam complaint rate is the percentage of recipients who marked your email as spam.
How it is calculated: (Spam complaints ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
What is acceptable? This number should stay below 0.1% at all times. Gmail and Outlook use spam complaints as a major signal when deciding whether to deliver your future emails to the inbox. Even a small number of complaints can have an outsized negative impact on deliverability.
What causes spam complaints:
- Sending to contacts who did not opt in
- Sending too frequently
- Content that feels irrelevant or misleading
- A subject line that does not match the email content
- No easy way to unsubscribe
Deliverability rate
Your deliverability rate is the percentage of emails that were successfully accepted by the recipient's mail server.
How it is calculated: (Emails delivered ÷ Emails sent) × 100
A healthy deliverability rate is 98% or above. If this number is dropping, it is usually a sign of list quality issues or domain reputation problems worth investigating.
How to use your metrics
Looking at any single metric in isolation rarely tells the full story. Here is how to read them together:
| If you see this | It usually means |
|---|---|
| Low open rate, normal click rate | Subject line or send time issue |
| Good open rate, low click rate | Content or CTA issue inside the email |
| High bounce rate | List quality issue — time to clean |
| High unsubscribe rate | Frequency or relevance issue |
| High spam complaint rate | Consent or targeting issue — stop and review immediately |
Check your metrics after every campaign and look for patterns over time. Small, consistent improvements compound into significantly better results over the long run.