Below are the most common analytics and data used to measure the success of an email newsletter. Not all of these metrics make sense for every newsletter. For example, if you don’t need your audience to click back through to your website, then “clickthrough rate” isn’t a meaningful metric.

• Open Rate: What percentage of your list opened the email?
• Clickthrough Rate: How many people clicked on a link from your newsletter?
• Conversions: What did they do once they clicked? (Did they take action, for example, buy something, or bounce away?)
• List Growth: Is your list growing? What is the rate of growth? Has there been a drop off?
• Forwards: Are people sharing your newsletter with other people?
• Delivery Rate: How many of your emails are going to dead addresses? (Clean your list for better performance.)

To compare your newsletter with others like it, see MailChimp’s Average Email Campaign Stats by Industry.