Ashley Friedlein, the CEO of E-consultancy.com gives out a rule for the email marketing metrics, which he appropriately calls the 3-2-1 rule of thumb. It serves as a basis to your email marketing numbers.

Of course, the results for each industry should be different but at least with this number we know if we have done better than the average or otherwise.

• Open rates - 33 percent (divide/multiply by 3)
• Unique click rates (of those who’ve opened) - 20 percent (divide/multiply by 5)
• Buy/convert rates (of those who click) - 10 percent (divide/multiply by 10)

I think Ashley has mistakenly written the buy/ convert rates. It should be percentage of those who click instead of open. I corrected it above.

The 3-2-1 bit equates the 33%-20%-10%. Note these are based on emailing an opted-in in-house list.

So let’s say you are planning to send an email campaign to your list. What should be the expected conversions? Divide the size of the list by 150 (10 x 5 x 3). This should give some ideas about what could be considered a successful campaign.

Of course, if you are doing email marketing in different geographical area/ countries and demographics, again the numbers should be different. In some industries, it is simply impossible to reach such rates but in others this number could be conservative.

Source: e-Consultancy.