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To tell whether an email campaign is working, check whether it reached the intended audience, prompted its intended action, and showed delivery or list-health problems. A single open-rate figure cannot answer all three questions. Use this 15-minute audit to review one recent campaign, compare it with similar campaigns from your own program, and choose one next step.
Minutes 0–2: Define what the campaign was supposed to do
Before opening the report, write down three things:
- Audience: Who was meant to receive the message?
- Action: What should recipients do after reading it?
- Destination: Which landing page, product page, form, or other destination was supposed to help them take that action?
These details give the metrics a meaningful reference point. An email designed to drive registrations should be judged by registrations or the closest measurable step—not by opens alone.
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In your email marketing platform’s campaign report, start with clicks and the closest available downstream outcome, such as a completed purchase, signup, or form submission. Check that the destination worked and that the result you care about was actually tracked. Shopify’s 2025 email marketing audit guide recommends reviewing engagement and conversion, and identifies your own historical performance as the best reference.
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Compare the campaign with similar messages from your program: use a consistent time period, audience, and campaign type. A product announcement, a regular newsletter, and a re-engagement email may have different purposes, so comparing their headline metrics as if they were interchangeable can mislead.
Look at opens after clicks and outcomes, not instead of them. Google says, “Google doesn’t track open rates,” and says it cannot verify the accuracy of open rates reported by third parties. That is a limitation on Google’s ability to verify the measure; it is not proof that every platform reports opens incorrectly. Treat opens as a secondary signal and interpret them alongside clicks, outcomes, and delivery information.
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Minutes 6–9: Check delivery and list health
Review bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints alongside engagement. These signals help distinguish a weak response to the message from a possible delivery or audience-quality problem. Shopify’s guide includes bounce and spam-complaint measures in an email audit.
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- Weak engagement with rising bounces or complaints: investigate delivery and list quality before concluding that the subject line or design is the main problem.
- Engagement is reasonable but the intended action is weak: check the call to action, destination, and conversion tracking before changing the email itself.
- Metrics move in different directions: keep the measures separate in your notes; one result does not explain the others by itself.
Minutes 9–12: Check Gmail sender health when it matters
If Gmail is an important recipient provider for your audience, Google Postmaster Tools can add a Gmail-specific view of spam reports, authentication, domain or IP reputation, and delivery errors. Google describes these signals in its Postmaster Tools dashboards documentation. Use them to investigate mail sent to Gmail users, not as a measure of inbox placement across every email provider.
Google’s sender requirements also depend on how much mail you send to Gmail accounts. All senders to personal Gmail accounts must use SPF or DKIM. Senders delivering 5,000 or more messages per day to Gmail accounts must use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Google also specifies alignment requirements for direct email, and requires marketing or subscribed messages to support one-click unsubscribe and display a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body. See Google’s Email sender guidelines and sender guidelines FAQ for the live requirements and policy details.
For the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools, Google advises staying below 0.10% and avoiding 0.30% or higher. Those are Google’s Gmail-specific guidance thresholds, not general email campaign benchmarks. Google’s FAQ states that enforcement on non-compliant traffic is ramping up starting November 2025, with temporary or permanent rejections possible; that timeline does not mean every sender has been rejected.
Minutes 12–15: Record one finding and one next action
Write a short note that will make the next review useful:
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- Main finding: State what changed or what stands out, using the same measures you reviewed.
- Likely cause: Identify the most plausible explanation supported by the evidence, while distinguishing a guess from a confirmed tracking or delivery issue.
- Next action: Choose one change to test, such as checking list quality, repairing a destination or tracking issue, or revising one message element.
- Comparison window: Record the audience, campaign type, and time period so the next audit uses a comparable baseline.
Changing one thing at a time makes it easier to learn what may have affected the result. Historical performance is generally more useful as a primary reference than an unrelated industry average; the Shopify guide recommends using your own past campaigns for comparison.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to interpret the audit without overreading one number
The audit answers three distinct questions: did the message reach its intended audience, did recipients take the intended action, and are there signs that delivery or list health needs attention? Keep those questions separate. A high open figure does not establish that the campaign produced its intended outcome, and a weak outcome does not by itself show whether the cause was delivery, the audience, the offer, the destination, or measurement.
No universal open, click, or conversion benchmark is established here. For a useful comparison, use campaigns from your own program that share the relevant audience, purpose, and measurement window. When Gmail-specific health is in question, add Postmaster Tools rather than treating a campaign report as a complete view of provider delivery.
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