If you’ve just cleaned your email list with Kickbox and want to see if your campaigns are actually performing better, you’re in the right place. This guide is for anyone who runs email campaigns—marketers, founders, or that one person in the office who “just knows how the email works.” We’ll walk through what you should be tracking, how to actually get the numbers, and how to report results that matter—not just vanity stats.
Why bother tracking after Kickbox?
Kickbox helps you remove bad emails so you’re sending to real people, not bots or dead addresses. But just cleaning your list isn’t the finish line—if you don’t actually measure what happens next, you’re flying blind.
Here’s what you want to find out: - Did cleaning your list improve open rates? - Are more people clicking your links? - Are fewer emails bouncing or getting marked as spam? - Did your sender reputation get any better?
If you can’t answer those questions with real numbers, you’re just guessing.
Step 1: Understand What to Measure (And What to Ignore)
Not all email metrics are worth your time. Here’s what matters:
Critical Metrics
- Open rate: Percentage of people who opened your email.
- Click rate (CTR): Percentage of people who clicked a link.
- Bounce rate: Percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered.
- Spam complaint rate: Percentage of recipients marking your email as spam.
- Unsubscribe rate: How many people opted out.
Useful Extras
- Inbox placement rate: How many emails actually land in the inbox (harder to measure).
- Device breakdown: Are people reading on mobile or desktop?
- Time spent reading: Are people actually reading, or just opening and closing?
What to Ignore (Mostly)
- Raw “delivered” numbers: Just means the email didn’t bounce. Doesn’t tell you what happened after.
- Forwarding/“viral” metrics: Rarely relevant unless you’re running a referral campaign.
- “Impressions”: In email, this is usually just opens.
Pro tip: Focus on improvement over time, not just the numbers themselves. A 20% open rate is great if you were at 10% last month.
Step 2: Set a Baseline Before You Cleaned Your List
If you didn’t record your key metrics before running Kickbox, do it now with your most recent campaign data. Otherwise, you’ll have no idea what changed.
Save your: - Open rates - Click rates - Bounce rates - Spam complaints
You want at least a couple of campaigns’ worth of data, so you’re not just reacting to a fluke.
Step 3: Send Your Next Campaign—But Don’t Change Everything At Once
It’s tempting to “optimize” everything at once now that your list is clean. Resist. If you change your subject lines, content, and send time, you’ll never know what improvement was due to Kickbox and what was just a lucky test.
Keep these steady: - Your sender name and address - Typical subject line style - Send cadence
Then send your next campaign to your newly cleaned list.
Step 4: Pull the Right Data After Sending
Most email platforms (Mailchimp, SendGrid, etc.) will show you all these numbers. But they’re usually buried in reports with a lot of distracting fluff.
Look for: - Total sent - Total delivered - Unique opens (not just “opens”—those can be inflated by Apple Mail privacy changes) - Unique clicks - Hard and soft bounces - Spam complaints - Unsubscribes
Ignore: - “Best time to send” recommendations (these are often generic) - Social shares (unless you’re explicitly tracking referrals)
Heads up: Open rates are less reliable than they used to be, thanks to privacy updates from Apple and others. Click rates and bounce rates are more trustworthy.
Step 5: Compare “Before” and “After” Metrics Honestly
Make a simple table or spreadsheet. Here’s the no-nonsense way:
| Metric | Before Kickbox | After Kickbox | |-------------------|---------------|--------------| | Open Rate (%) | 15 | 22 | | Click Rate (%) | 2.5 | 3.1 | | Bounce Rate (%) | 4.2 | 0.7 | | Spam Complaints (%)| 0.18 | 0.06 |
Look for: - Lower bounce rates (this one should drop dramatically) - Slightly higher open and click rates (but don’t expect miracles) - Fewer spam complaints
If your bounce rate drops but other metrics stay the same, that’s still a win—your sender reputation will improve, which helps long-term deliverability.
If your open or click rates drop after cleaning, double-check that you didn’t accidentally remove good addresses, or that your content didn’t change at the same time.
Step 6: Report Results Clearly—Not Just the “Good” News
If you’re sharing results with your boss, a client, or your team, keep it clear and honest. No one likes a chart that’s all green arrows but doesn’t explain what really happened.
What to show: - The table above, with before/after - A quick written summary: “After cleaning with Kickbox, bounce rates dropped by X%. Opens and clicks rose slightly. Spam complaints are down.”
What not to do: - Cherry-pick the best numbers - Hide dips or unexplained changes
Most people appreciate transparency. If something got worse, say so—and point out what you’ll try next.
Step 7: Keep Tracking—And Don’t Assume You’re Done
One clean doesn’t fix everything forever. Bad emails sneak back in over time (people change jobs, mistype addresses, etc.). Make list cleaning a regular thing—quarterly is usually enough for most senders.
Also: - Watch out for sudden spikes in bounces or spam. That’s often a sign your list is getting stale again. - Keep an eye on engagement trends, not just single-campaign wins.
Pro Tips & Common Gotchas
- Don’t obsess over open rates. With privacy updates, they’re just not as accurate as before. Clicks and bounces tell a truer story.
- Don’t expect instant inbox miracles. Cleaning helps, but if your content is spammy or your sending habits are erratic, you’ll still have problems.
- Segment your list. If you’re running large lists, break out new subscribers, inactive folks, or high-value customers. Engagement varies a lot by segment.
- Beware of “over cleaning.” If you get too aggressive, you might remove real people who just haven’t opened in a while.
- Avoid vanity metrics. Huge send numbers look impressive but mean nothing if engagement stinks.
Keep It Simple—Then Iterate
You don’t need fancy dashboards or a data science degree to see if Kickbox helped. Track the basics, compare before and after, and share what you find. Clean your list regularly, watch your key metrics, and ignore the hype about “industry benchmarks.” Your audience is what matters.
Improvement is about small, steady steps, not magic fixes. Keep it honest, keep it simple, and you’ll actually get somewhere.