If you’re running email campaigns and want real answers—not just pretty graphs—this guide is for you. Maybe you’re a marketer tired of guessing what’s working, or a founder who wants to know if your emails are actually moving the needle. Either way, if you’re using Inboxlogy, you need to get past the surface-level stats and actually use what you see. Let’s break down what matters, what’s just noise, and how to get the most out of Inboxlogy’s metrics.
1. Understanding the Metrics That Actually Matter
Inboxlogy will show you a ton of numbers. Some are useful, some just look good in a report. Here’s what’s worth your time:
- Open Rate: The percentage of people who opened your email. Not perfect—it’s affected by privacy features and image blocking—but it’s still a useful pulse check.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked a link. This is the real indicator of engagement.
- Bounce Rate: How many emails didn’t get delivered. High bounce rates can trash your sender reputation.
- Unsubscribes: Obvious, but don’t ignore it. Spikes usually mean you’re annoying people or targeting the wrong crowd.
- Spam Complaints: The one number you never want to see go up.
- Conversions: If you’ve set up goal tracking, this tells you who did what you actually want—bought, signed up, or replied.
What to mostly ignore: - List size. Bigger isn’t always better if half your list isn’t opening. - Vanity metrics. Shares and forwards are nice, but don’t obsess over them unless they map to real business results.
2. Setting Up Tracking in Inboxlogy
Before you get any value out of metrics, you need to know they’re tracking the right stuff. Here’s how to get set up, with a few hard lessons mixed in:
Step 1: Verify Your Domain
Don’t skip this. If your domain isn’t verified, your emails are more likely to hit spam, and your metrics will be off.
- Go to “Settings” in Inboxlogy.
- Find “Domain Verification.”
- Follow their steps—usually adding a DNS record. If this sounds scary, just copy-paste exactly what they say into your domain host’s DNS settings.
Pro tip: If you’re not seeing opens or clicks, domain verification is the first thing to check.
Step 2: Enable Link Tracking
If you want to know what people are actually clicking, turn this on:
- In your campaign editor, find the “Tracking” or “Analytics” section.
- Make sure “Link Click Tracking” is enabled.
- If you want to track website conversions, you’ll need to add Inboxlogy’s tracking pixel or UTM parameters to your links. This lets you see what happens after the click.
What doesn’t work: Relying only on open rates. With Apple Mail Privacy Protection, open rates can be inflated or useless. Clicks are much harder to fake.
Step 3: Set Up Conversion Tracking (If You Care About More Than Clicks)
- Go to “Analytics” -> “Conversion Tracking.”
- You’ll probably need to drop a bit of JavaScript on your site (Inboxlogy gives you the code).
- Test it. Always test. Click through an email yourself and make sure conversions show up in your dashboard.
If you’re not selling or collecting leads, you can skip this.
3. Launching a Campaign: What to Watch Live
Once you hit “send,” here’s what deserves your attention in the first 24-48 hours:
- Delivery Rate: If this is below 98%, something’s off—maybe a bad list or a technical problem.
- Open Rate: Decent if it’s above 20%. But don’t freak out if it dips—could just be a bad subject line or a sleepy time slot.
- Clicks: This is where you should focus. Low CTR? Time to rethink your content, offer, or call-to-action.
- Unsubs and Complaints: Anything above 0.2% is a red flag. Pause and fix before blasting again.
What not to do: Don’t obsess over every dip or spike. One bad send won’t kill you, but patterns matter.
4. Digging Into the Data: How to Actually Analyze Results
Metrics are only useful if you do something with them. Here’s a process that works—no data science degree required.
Step 1: Compare to Your Own Benchmarks
- Look at your past campaigns. Is this one better, worse, or about the same?
- Don’t just Google “average open rate”—your list is unique. Your own history is the only real benchmark.
Step 2: Segment the Results
Inboxlogy lets you break down metrics by:
- Audience segments (new vs. old subscribers, region, etc.)
- Device (mobile vs. desktop)
- Time sent (did a Tuesday morning beat a Friday afternoon?)
Find where things go up or down. Maybe your older subscribers never click. Maybe mobile users are bouncing. Use these clues.
Step 3: Look for Outliers
Is one link getting all the clicks? Did unsubscribes spike after a certain paragraph? These are leads worth chasing.
Step 4: Don’t Overreact
- One bad subject line isn’t a crisis.
- A missed conversion goal could just be bad timing.
- Look for trends over 3-4 sends before changing your whole approach.
5. Turning Insights Into Action (Without Overthinking It)
Here’s the part most folks skip: actually changing things. Here’s how to do it without tying yourself in knots:
- Tweak one thing at a time. Change your subject line, layout, or CTA—but not all at once. Otherwise, you won’t know what worked.
- Test, don’t guess. Run A/B tests when possible. Inboxlogy has built-in tools for this. Use them.
- Prune your list. If a segment never opens or clicks, suppress or remove them. It’ll improve your stats and deliverability.
- Ask for feedback. If unsubscribes spike, email a few people who left (if they’re willing) and ask why. The answers might sting, but they’re gold.
- Automate what you can. Set up automated reports for the metrics you care about. Don’t waste time hunting for numbers you never use.
6. Common Pitfalls (And How to Dodge Them)
- Chasing vanity metrics: Don’t get distracted by big numbers that don’t drive business results.
- Overcomplicating analysis: You don’t need a dashboard for everything. Focus on opens, clicks, and conversions.
- Ignoring deliverability: If your emails aren’t landing, nothing else matters. Inboxlogy has deliverability reports—use them.
- Not cleaning your list: Old, dead addresses tank your stats and can get you blocked.
- Changing too much at once: You’ll never know what worked.
7. What’s Worth Paying For?
Inboxlogy’s free tier covers the basics, but if you’re serious:
- Get advanced segmentation if you want to slice your data more ways.
- Use conversion tracking if revenue or signups are your real goal.
- Consider integrations (with CRMs, Google Analytics, etc.) if you need to see the full customer journey.
If you’re just starting out, don’t pay for features you don’t use. The basics work well for most.
Final Thoughts: Keep It Simple, Ship, and Iterate
Tracking campaign performance in Inboxlogy isn’t rocket science, but it’s easy to get bogged down. Focus on a few key numbers, compare them to your own past results, and change one thing at a time. Ignore the fluff. The best way to get better results is to keep sending, keep learning, and not let “analysis paralysis” slow you down. You’ll figure out what works for your audience faster than any industry benchmark can tell you.