Email Marketing ROI Calculator

Enter emails sent (50,000). Use delivered sends for this campaign, not the size of your whole list if you only mailed a segment.

Enter campaign cost ($800): the share of your email platform fee for this send, copywriting and design time at a real hourly rate, paid creative, and any list-building cost you choose to allocate to it (see the amortisation section below).

Enter conversions (350) and average order value ($65). Take conversions from tracked links, a unique discount code or your analytics platform, using a stated attribution window.

The results panel shows ROI 2,744%, revenue $22,750, net profit $21,950, conversion rate 0.70% and cost per conversion (rounded to whole dollars). Two more ratios come from the same inputs: cost per email is $800 ÷ 50,000 = $0.016, and revenue per email is $22,750 ÷ 50,000 = $0.455.

Revenue = Conversions × Average Order Value

Net Profit = Revenue − Campaign Cost

ROI = Net Profit ÷ Campaign Cost × 100 (reported as 0 if cost is 0)

Conversion Rate = Conversions ÷ Emails Sent × 100

Cost per Conversion = Campaign Cost ÷ Conversions; Cost per Email = Campaign Cost ÷ Emails Sent; Revenue per Email = Revenue ÷ Emails Sent

Revenue per subscriber is not a separate input. For a single send where each subscriber gets one email, it equals revenue per email. Across a month of several sends, divide total revenue by list size instead, which is the better figure for valuing the list itself.

Amortised list cost per campaign = what it cost to acquire the list ÷ the number of campaigns you expect to send to it. Add it to campaign cost when you want ROI to carry the cost of building the audience.

Campaign A goes to 4,000 subscribers of a specialist retailer, costs $300, and drives 40 orders at $220. Revenue is $8,800, net profit $8,500, ROI 2,833%, conversion rate 1.00%, cost per conversion $7.50, and revenue per email $2.20.

Campaign B goes to 120,000 subscribers of a mass-market brand, costs $1,500, and drives 600 orders at $30. Revenue is $18,000, net profit $16,500, ROI 1,100%, conversion rate 0.50%, cost per conversion $2.50, and revenue per email $0.15.

Each metric tells a different story. B makes $8,000 more net profit and has the lower cost per conversion. A has the higher ROI, and each email it sends earns almost 15 times as much, because its orders are worth 7.3 times more and it converts twice as often. Because each subscriber received one email, revenue per subscriber matches revenue per email: $2.20 against $0.15.

Pick the metric that matches the decision. To decide whether to grow a list, compare revenue per subscriber with the cost of acquiring one. To decide whether a campaign was worth sending, compare net profit with cost. ROI alone favours small, cheap sends.

A campaign's own cost ignores what you spent to get the subscribers. Suppose, as an example assumption, Campaign A's 4,000 subscribers cost $2,000 to acquire through paid lead generation ($0.50 each) and you expect to send them 24 campaigns before they churn. That spreads $83.33 onto each campaign.

Enter a campaign cost of $383.33 and ROI falls from 2,833% to 2,196%, cost per conversion rises to $9.58, and cost per email to about $0.096. If subscribers only last 6 campaigns, the share is $333.33, campaign cost becomes $633.33 and ROI drops to 1,289%, with cost per conversion at $15.83. The shorter a subscriber's life, the more of the list's cost each send has to carry.

Revenue-based ROI also overstates return when products carry real costs. At an assumed 40% gross margin, Campaign A's $8,800 of revenue is $3,520 of gross profit; after the $383.33 amortised cost that is $3,136.67, a margin-based ROI of about 818%. The calculator does not apply margin, so for a profit view enter gross profit per order in the average order value field.

Every conversion count rests on an attribution rule: which orders are credited to this email, and for how long after the send or click. A short window misses people who bought days later; a long one credits the email with purchases it did not cause, especially from loyal customers who would have bought anyway. Email platforms, ecommerce platforms and analytics tools each set their own defaults, so the same campaign can report different conversion totals in each.

Opens are a weak basis for attribution. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, introduced in 2021, loads email content, including tracking pixels, on the user's behalf, which inflates open counts, so prefer click-based or code-based attribution.

Write down the window you used next to the ROI figure, keep it the same from campaign to campaign, and where you can, hold back a random share of the list to measure the sales the email actually added.

The calculator assumes every conversion you enter was caused by this email and is worth the average order value. It does not model margin, refunds, repeat purchases or customer lifetime value, the long-term cost of unsubscribes and spam complaints, or deliverability. It treats cost as one number, so it will not tell you whether platform fees or labour dominate.

It cannot validate your attribution. Two campaigns measured with different windows or tools are not comparable, however precise the ROI looks. Compare results with your own past campaigns measured the same way rather than with outside averages.

If clicks are low before conversions even start, the email open rate calculator breaks down open, click-through and click-to-open rates. To put email next to paid channels on a common basis, run total spend and attributed revenue through the marketing ROI calculator. Brands that also text customers can compare that channel with the SMS marketing conversion calculator.

Email usually arrives late in a buying journey it did not start, so last-click credit flatters it. The UTM attribution ROI calculator re-credits the same revenue under several attribution models to show how much of the return depends on the model you chose.