Inside the February 2026 roundtable: Where email metrics get questioned

February's roundtable was full of smart people who were willing to question the stats they've been told to trust. 

And they are worth questioning, for sure. 

Early on, we established that opens and clicks have been unreliable for years, and that nowadays, they're mostly inflated and tracked as false engagement by bots… From there, the conversation got saucy.

Here are the three main topics we covered:

1. Email engagement ≠ email impact

You can have beautiful dashboard numbers and zero email-attributed conversations, opportunities, or revenue. You can also have seemingly low engagement, but a list that consistently generates referrals, speaking invitations, and qualified discovery calls.

My two cents: Some of the most meaningful things email does for your business will never show up in your Email Service Provider (ESP). If someone manually takes screenshots of your newsletter and shares those in a private community or directly with a friend or a colleague - your platform won't track that. Engagement and impact are not the same thing, and your ESP dashboard alone can't possibly show you the full picture.

2. Most people track the same stats - and ESPs aren't helping

Opens and clicks are front and centre on every email dashboard. 

There's a reason for that: those big, impressive numbers are nice to show, ESPs know this, and they’re not exactly thrilled with making you feel bad about your email performance - even if the truth hurts.

(That being said, opens and clicks are important to track in terms of deliverability. If you see an unusual dip in those, it can be a sign of a problem that must be tended to ASAP.)

As a measure of business impact, opens and clicks tell a very incomplete story for B2B brands with long sales cycles, relationship-driven pipelines, and values-led positioning.

My two cents: Decide what success means for your business - it can be form fills, reply rates, or email-assisted pipeline opportunities - and measure those against yourself. The changes in those numbers over time are the real email impact you’re looking for.

3. Email is a long, relational game

The value of staying top-of-mind is real, even when it's frustratingly invisible in your stats. 

Email’s success is something that compounds rather than a one-off effort, and the brands that understand that are still standing when every other channel decides to go bonkers.

My two cents: If you're building for longevity, email's relational value isn't a nice-to-have - it's a must-have.

If you value thoughtful, ethical conversations about email strategy, being on my newsletter is the only way for you to get an invite to future monthly roundtables.

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