The metric ladder
- Delivered — did it land? (Watch bounces as the inverse.)
- Opened — did it get a glance? Heavily affected by subject line and deliverability; open tracking is also imperfect (privacy features inflate it).
- Clicked — did they act inside the email? Cold email works best with few or no links, so treat clicks as a secondary signal.
- Replied — did a human respond? This is the metric that matters.
Optimize for replies
Opens can be gamed by curiosity subject lines, but an open without a reply is worth little. When a campaign shows high opens and low replies, the problem is almost always the body or the ask — run the SEVEN SECOND TEST on the templates.
Read rates, not raw counts
Compare proportions, not absolutes:
- Replies ÷ sends = your reply rate. For cold outbound, single digits are normal; sustained 5%+ is good.
- Bounces ÷ sends should stay very low. If it climbs, stop and fix list quality first.
Segment before you judge
A campaign's blended reply rate hides which template works. Use the Campaigns report to see per-step and per-template performance, then rewrite the laggards. Copy quality is the highest-leverage fix available to you.