Email open rates are not a reliable stat to look at anymore. So which one do you need to pay attention to?

First off, if that question in the title struck you by surprise, hello and welcome to the reality of email marketing in 2025. I'm glad to have you join us, we've been eagerly waiting for you.

So yes, email open rates haven't been reliable for years, which means that marketers had to look for alternative stats to rely and report on. 

My go-to answer to this question in recent years has obviously been: "it depends on what you want to measure", followed by a blanket statement of "your clicks and replies are a bit more trustworthy*".

(*Of course, there are many other things you can and need to look at, like list growth, deliverability, and depending on the type of business, it can be revenue per subscriber, % of engaged subscribers per month, and the list goes on and on.)

But even clicks are not to be trusted anymore. 

Inbox providers have been doing a better job of protecting their clients, which is a good thing for the inbox experience as a whole, but it does mean that their security bots are opening and clicking on multiple links before the subscriber even sees the email.

... Which, of course, royally screws up the click rates in some industries.

And replies? That's one of the hardest email engagement types to get.

Okay, so... now what?

For over a year now, I've been advising all of my clients to cross-check their email stats with website behavior, to see what's really going on there.

That's been helpful, no doubt.

But I just finished working on some monthly reports for the clients I onboarded in Q2, and I finally found an answer to this question in a way that leaves no room for "it depends" or other stats to look at.

Ask yourself:

What do your monthly leads/sales/revenue/whichever KPIs you care about look like when you take email marketing out of the mix? What is the impact on your overall marketing performance when email is not a part of it?

For all the consulting clients I onboarded last quarter, the impact is as clear as day - they will add an estimated multiple 6 or 7 figures to their annual revenue in 2025.

Yup, just because they added strategic, ethical email marketing to their ecosystem. 

Most of them have already seen an uptick of multiple 6 figures in their revenue in one quarter. And it doesn't matter if their list is 500 subscribers or 30k subscribers strong.

It doesn't happen overnight.

It is a long game of relationship building. 

But there's a reason why this channel is still one of the most impactful ones brands use in their marketing - because when you know what you're doing, and why you do it, it works.

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