Email Success is More than Opens and Clicks
This article was published on January 29, 2026
Categorized in: Digital Marketing
Measuring success with email marketing is a multi-layered process. Of course, there are metrics we can analyze, such as open rates and click-through rates, but this doesn’t always tell the whole story. As with any offshoot of digital marketing, we also need to understand if the emails themselves are actually moving the business forward. To do this, we need to look at other factors besides just the pure data. Here’s a look at how to tell if your email marketing campaign is actually affective:
Assess the Long-Term Impact of Emails
Yes, we can celebrate the email by email data of open rates, click-through rates, and even conversions. However, in order to discover what the long term impact of the email and how they relate to our businesses, we need to think of the long term results, not just the data. It isn’t about how one email performs in isolation. It’s about how the emails perform over time.
It’s a measure of how strong the email program is, essentially. They build on your results over time. They establish your brand, build trust, nurture leads, and in general, help improve your results. The more exposure someone has, the better the results will be. Your brand will become recognizable and results should be improving with each email deliver, if the program and strategy is done well.
Measure How Email Fits Your Digital Marketing Ecosystem
The real test is that you need to measure how email marketing fits your greater marketing ecosystem. It shouldn’t exist in a vacuum, alone and by itself. It is a part of a whole, and should be treated as such when measuring the outcomes. To do this, you will need to trace email’s direct impact on other marketing channels.
Are people clicking out into your website? Is there some curiosity traffic spiking on social media when you send an email out? Are you getting These are some examples of the impact emails can have, and you can easily measure it. The goal is to see how and where your data spikes, especially after an email is sent.
Develop the Email Strategy with Your Digital Marketing
Email marketing shouldn’t be done in isolation, it should be considered part of the whole. So, in order to really determine if your email marketing is working, you need to assess the digital marketing results as a whole. The entire goal of your campaign needs to align with your business goals, and to effectively do that, you need to align every part of the digital marketing, including email marketing.
The true marker of success is if business as a whole has grown, and email marketing is one component of that. When you have this big picture perspective, you can move beyond the metrics, although the metrics are a good sign that things are moving in the right direction.
Yes, you want to measure basic metrics when it comes to email marketing. However, the real outcomes are measured in reference to whether or not the emails have helped grow the business.
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About the Author: Brick Marketing President, Nick Stamoulis
Nick Stamoulis is President of Brick Marketing and has over 25 years of digital marketing experience. He works directly with clients on strategy and implementation, helping solve complex challenges through SEO, AI Search Optimziation (GEO), content marketing, social media, PPC, and conversion optimization. Nick Stamoulis has worked with over 500 companies across virtually every B2B industry and also provides digital marketing consulting and training classes, helping companies improve performance and achieve the digital marketing outcomes they are looking for.
