What is the ROI of my email marketing?
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One month of each, from your invoices and your email or store reports.
Display only. Your figures are read in the currency you pick — nothing is converted and no exchange rate is applied.
On a yearly plan, enter what it comes to for one month.
Campaigns and flows, same month.
Optional, and each one makes the answer fairer.
Planning, writing, building.
What that time is worth.
Freelancers, design, add-ons.
Measures the return on profit rather than sales.
Enter your email platform bill and the revenue your reports credit to email for the same month. Add the hours you spend on it, and your gross margin, for a fuller answer.
- Email platform billNeeded
- Revenue credited to emailNeeded
- Hours and their valueOptional
- Gross marginOptional
No benchmark return is used: every cost and the revenue are yours. To put a value on each subscriber instead, use the email list value calculator.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. There is no account, no install and no store connection.
Bills, hours and the sales email is credited with
Email marketing ROI is how much your email programme returns for each dollar it costs to run, counting the platform bill and the hours you put in, so an imaginary coffee roaster paying 60 dollars a month for its platform plus 10 hours of the owner at 40 dollars an hour, whose email brought in 6,200 dollars of sales at a 55 percent gross margin, got back about 7.41 dollars of gross profit per dollar spent.
Every cost and the revenue are yours; no typical return is quoted. To value each person on the list instead, use the email list value calculator.
One month of costs and one month of results, all from your own accounts. The hours matter as much as the invoice: an owner writing every campaign is a real cost even when nobody is paid for it.
- Email platform bill
- What you paid your email service for the month. If you pay yearly, enter what the plan comes to for one month, so it matches a single month of results.
- Other email costs
- Optional. Anything else spent only because you run email: a freelance copywriter, a designer, a template pack, a deliverability add-on.
- Hours and the value of an hour
- Optional, and worth filling in. The time you or your team spend planning, writing, building and checking emails, and what an hour of that time is worth to the business. Enter both or neither.
- Revenue credited to email
- Sales your email platform or store reports attribute to campaigns and automated flows in the same month. The answer can only be as fair as that attribution.
- Gross margin
- Optional. The share of a sale left after the cost of the goods. With it, the return is measured on profit rather than on sales, which is the fairer comparison with what email costs.
- Return per dollar and payback
- What comes back for each unit of currency spent on email, and roughly how many days into a month email has earned back that month of costs.
Nudgesmart is available on the Shopify App Store. Browse the template library or see what it costs.
What email returned at five imaginary shops
Invented shops, one month each, in US dollars. Their bills, hours and margins are made up for illustration and say nothing about what yours should be. The table comes from the code behind the calculator above.
| Scenario | Total cost | Revenue from email | Back per dollar | Net | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coffee roaster, owner writes the emails | $460.00 | $6,200.00 | $7.41 | $2,950.00 | 5 days |
| Swimwear brand with a freelancer | $1,610.00 | $31,000.00 | $11.94 | $17,610.00 | 3 days |
| Plant shop, revenue only | $45.00 | $2,400.00 | $53.33 | $2,355.00 | under a day |
| Board game store, early days | $540.00 | $900.00 | $0.67 | -$180.00 | longer than the month |
| Leather goods, automated flows | $250.00 | $8,800.00 | $20.42 | $4,854.00 | 2 days |
What an email return figure leaves out
Attributed sales include some you would have made anyway
A customer who was going to reorder may open an email first and be credited to it. Email return figures are generous by nature, which is why the margin field is there to bring them back toward profit.
Discounts in emails cost more than the bill
A code sent to the whole list gives margin away on orders that would have happened at full price. That cost never shows up on the platform invoice, so account for it separately.
One month can flatter or punish
A month with a big sale send looks brilliant and a month spent rebuilding flows looks poor. Run a few months through the calculator before deciding anything.
Time is the cost people forget
Leaving the hours out can make email look close to free. If the person writing the emails could be doing something else that earns money, that is what their time is worth.
A high return can still be a small number
Twenty dollars back for every dollar spent sounds strong, but on a tiny bill it may be a few hundred dollars of profit. Look at the net figure beside the ratio.
Email marketing ROI questions
How do I calculate email marketing ROI?
Enter a month of email costs, including your platform bill and the hours spent at what an hour is worth, and the revenue your reports credit to email in the same month. Add your gross margin for a return on profit. The coffee roaster above got back about 7.41 dollars of gross profit for each dollar it put into email.
Should I include my own time?
Yes, if you want an honest answer. An hour spent writing a campaign is an hour not spent on product, suppliers or customers. Put a value on it that reflects what that hour could otherwise earn.
What does the payback figure mean?
Roughly how far into a typical month email has earned back that month of costs. Under a week means email pays for itself early; longer than the month means it does not.
Revenue or profit: which return should I look at?
Profit, when you have a gross margin figure. A return on revenue is always larger and can make a thin-margin store think email is doing more than it is.
How is this different from the email list value calculator?
That page puts a value on each subscriber from your list size and email revenue. This one never asks about the list; it sets what email costs you to run against what it brings back.
What if email costs more than it returns?
Check the tracking first, because unattributed orders are common. Then look at whether the list is big enough to be worth mailing, and whether the time going into it could be cut.
A programme can only earn from the people it can reach.
Nudgesmart captures signups on the storefront and, on paid plans, connects to Klaviyo, one of its listed integrations.
