What is RPE (Revenue per Email) and How to Calculate It

RPE (Revenue per Email) is a metric that reflects the average revenue from each email sent.

In other words, RPE shows how much revenue each email from your campaign generates on average, excluding the costs of creating and sending it. This value is expressed in monetary terms (dollars, euros, etc.). RPE is one of the key indicators of email campaign effectiveness and the quality of the email channel in marketing. For example, if your email newsletter generated $12,000 in revenue over a month, and you sent 6,000 emails, the RPE would be 12,000 / 6,000 = $2.

Why is RPE important and valuable

RPE is one of the key metrics in email marketing alongside open rate, CTR, conversion, and ROI. It measures revenue, i.e., how much the email channel is earning.

Here are a few reasons why experienced marketers should track RPE:

Evaluating the profitability of email campaigns. RPE serves as a simple analogue of ROI for the email channel. It shows how profitable a campaign is in terms of revenue, even when it is difficult to accurately calculate a classic ROI.
RPE is simpler than ROI: it shows revenue from emails without taking costs into account. It is convenient for quick assessment, although it does not directly reflect profit.
RPE is convenient for comparison: it demonstrates how much more profitable email is compared to other channels and identifies which campaigns or segments generate more revenue.
Monitoring dynamics and identifying trends. By tracking RPE over time (monthly or quarterly), you can see whether your email marketing performance is improving or declining.
When calculating ROI is difficult due to numerous expenses, RPE may serve as a simple temporary substitute and show revenue from email marketing.

How RPE is calculated

In its most basic form, the formula looks like this:

RPE = Total revenue from email campaign / Number of emails sent

Here's what to consider when calculating RPE:

1. Deliveries and sends. Not every email reaches the recipient — some are lost due to address errors or mail server issues. Therefore, the actual number of delivered messages is more often used for calculations. Let's imagine a situation: a campaign generated $25,000 in revenue; 50,000 emails were planned, but 1,000 emails never reached the recipients. Calculating by delivered messages, the result is 25,000 / 49,000 ≈ $0.51 per email. The difference from the "sent" metric is small, but for large databases, this approach provides a more accurate picture.

2. Read and opened emails. Sometimes, RPE is calculated only by opened emails: campaign revenue is divided by the number of opens. This metric is usually higher than the standard one, as only engaged recipients are counted. It shows how well the subject line and content of the email convert attention into purchases.

3. RPE by segments and email types. RPE can be calculated not only for the entire database but also by segments or email types. For example, you can compare promotional emails with special offers and transactional emails like order confirmations. Analyzing groups such as new customers, VIPs, or different categories shows which audiences generate more revenue and what to focus on.

4. RPME is the revenue per thousand emails. It is calculated when the database is very large, and the RPE appears too low. The formula is simple: RPME = RPE × 1,000. For example, if RPE is $0.51, then RPME will be $510 per 1,000 emails. This format is more convenient for reporting, although it is essentially the same metric, only scaled up.

It is important to understand that RPE does not have a universal "good" or "bad" value without context. For one company, an RPE of $0.5 may be excellent, while for another, it may be weak. It all depends on the specifics of the business, the average order value, and other indicators. There is no point in directly comparing your "revenue per email" metric with someone else's. It is better to monitor it over time and in conjunction with other metrics used on your project.

How to use RPE: analysis in conjunction with revenue and other metrics

RPE should not be viewed in isolation. It is analyzed alongside revenue and audience metrics. An increase or decrease in the metric has different meanings depending on the overall campaign dynamics. Let's take a look at several typical cases.

Situation #1: RPE is growing, but overall revenue is stagnant or changes only slightly. This happens when emails are sent to a narrower, yet more active, portion of the database. Cold contacts are excluded, and each email generates more revenue, but the overall revenue barely grows because fewer emails are sent. It is too early to draw conclusions here: the increase may be attributed solely to sampling. If full coverage is restored later, the metric may return to its previous level. This trend suggests that it is worth working with the passive portion of the database or changing the content for them to expand reach without reducing the average revenue per email.
Situation #2: RPE is growing, but the overall revenue is decreasing. This happens if you significantly reduce your email distribution, for example, by reducing frequency or sending emails only to a narrow segment. Revenue per email is higher, but total sales are lower. In this situation, it is important to find a balance: distribute frequency and segments to maintain both high RPE and sufficient overall revenue.
Situation #3: RPE is decreasing, but the total revenue grows. This happens when you increase email frequency or rapidly expand the subscriber base. For example, a company doubled its email frequency from 3 to 6 per month: total revenue increased from $40,000 to $50,000, but RPE fell from $1.33 to $0.83. A month later, sales returned to $40,000, and RPE dropped to $0.67. This demonstrates that an aggressive increase in email volume produces a short-term effect, but reduces the effectiveness of each email.
Situation #4: Both the RPE and total revenue are decreasing. In the worst-case scenario, the email channel has both a slump in total revenue and a decrease in return on investment from each email. Here are possible reasons: you are sending emails to an outdated or inactive database, with a significant portion of recipients no longer responding. Alternatively, you may be sending too many irrelevant emails, which subscribers simply ignore or delete. As a result, sales from your database are declining alongside the RPE. In this case, your marketing strategy should be reconsidered: urgently clean up your database, improve your email content, and perhaps reduce the email frequency to avoid irritating your audience.
Situation #5: Both the RPE and the total revenue are rising. This is the ideal scenario for any email marketer. It indicates that you are on the right track: your emails and strategy are working effectively, each email generates more money, and overall sales through email are increasing.

Limitations of the RPE metric

1. RPE only reflects revenue, not profit and not actual profitability. This metric does not include platform costs, email design, discounts, and other expenses. Therefore, a high RPE does not guarantee that the newsletter is truly profitable — it only reflects revenue. To understand profitability, you need to calculate ROI, ROMI, or at least the channel's gross profit.

2. There is no industry benchmark or "norm". RPE is highly dependent on the specifics of a business: average order value, purchase frequency, and monetization model vary significantly. Comparing your RPE with another company's RPE is incorrect. It is better to compare your own values over time and strive to improve them. On top of that, RPE may vary by season (for example, during holidays, emails generate more sales, and RPE increases), therefore, this must also be taken into account.

3. Offline calculations are complex. When all sales occur online, calculating income from email is straightforward: just use web analytics, UTM tags, or last-click attribution. However, if a customer visits a brick-and-mortar store after receiving an email, linking the purchase to a specific email campaign becomes much more difficult. In such cases, tools like unique coupons or checkout surveys are needed; otherwise, some revenue will remain unaccounted for, and the actual RPE will be higher than in the reports.

4. Lack of automation. Many email marketing services do not have a separate RPE metric — they typically only show opens, clicks, and deliveries. Therefore, the marketer has to either manually compile revenue and email volume data or set up integration with CRM and analytics. Modern platforms already address this issue: it is possible to enable automatic sales import and see RPE directly in reports. Without such settings, monitoring this metric is inconvenient, and for this reason, it is often ignored.

How to increase RPE

1. Monitor the quality of your subscriber base. The more relevant and "clean" the list of email addresses, the higher the RPE will be. By removing inactive addresses and those who have not reacted to emails in a long time, the proportion of interested recipients will increase, and the average result will improve. However, cleaning alone is not enough — it is important to attract the right audience. For this purpose, it is better to use double opt-in to ensure your list only includes those who genuinely want to receive emails and are willing to open them.

2. Regularly check the user base and remove addresses that haven’t opened emails for a while. You may switch these subscribers to less frequent emails or try to rekindle their interest through a dedicated campaign. This will ultimately make your user base more vibrant: emails will reach active readers, engagement will increase, and each email will deliver maximum results. The cleaner and more active your user base, the higher the RPE will be, since fewer emails will be wasted.

3. Carefully consider your sending frequency. Sending emails too infrequently may result in lost revenue, while way too frequent emails may irritate subscribers and decrease response rates. It is important to find a rhythm that maintains a consistently high RPE. For some businesses, sending one email per week is sufficient, while for others, three emails work well. Monitor your email dynamics: if your RPE decreases as you increase the number of emails, your audience most likely feels overloaded. Segment your list by activity: for example, send emails to active subscribers more frequently, while less engaged subscribers will receive emails less frequently. Modern platforms are capable of automatically adjusting the frequency for each subscriber based on their behavior.

4. Segment your audience and make emails more personal. One of the most effective ways to improve email campaign results is to tailor newsletters to the interests of specific individuals. Segment subscribers by purchases, interests, age, region, or subscription source. For each segment, choose a specific email subject line, offer, and sending time. The more accurately you meet expectations, the higher the click-through rate and sales will be. Personalization directly impacts conversion and RPE: the more relevant the email, the more money it brings in.

5. Incorporate triggered and transactional emails. These are automated messages sent in response to customer actions. Examples include thank-you emails for a purchase, reminders about abandoned carts, birthday greetings, or emails for "inactive" subscribers. These messages feel natural and expected, so they are opened and read more often than regular promotions. Statistics show that the open rate for triggered messages is about 70% higher, and revenue is significantly greater. By adding such scenarios, you can noticeably increase revenue from the email channel without increasing the number of emails, thus raising RPE. If you do not yet have a customer lifecycle email chain, start simple: an abandoned cart email (which may recover 10-30% of orders), a welcome series for new subscribers, or recommendations based on past purchases. All these formats bring additional revenue and raise the average return from emails.

6. Test different email options and track the results. Even small changes to design, copy, or buttons may significantly impact conversion. Use A/B testing: send different versions of the email to two small groups and check which one generates more orders and higher RPE. Sometimes, an email with fewer clicks yields more money — for instance, because buyers choose more expensive items. Therefore, looking solely at opens and clicks is insufficient: revenue remains the primary measure of success.

How to quickly and conveniently conduct A/B testing? Can it be automated? Read here.

7. Regularly monitor RPE and other marketing metrics to identify patterns and improve your emails. Analyze campaigns and segments: which topics and products generate more sales, and which audiences respond less well. Use insights for planning new emails — for instance, highlight categories with high RPE or create welcome series for newcomers. Such a cycle of "measuring → analyzing → adjusting" makes email marketing manageable, and an increase in RPE shows that you are moving in the right direction.

8. Utilize professional tools for email marketing. Increasing RPE involves a variety of tools and methods: segmentation, personalization, triggers, and analytics. Doing all of this manually is challenging, which is why the market offers solutions that significantly ease marketers' workloads. Specialized platforms (such as Altcraft) provide tools for comprehensive marketing management. A single system combines a subscriber database (with details for each email address), an email editor, segmentation tools, trigger automation, and end-to-end performance analytics. This gives marketers an understanding of all key email marketing metrics, including conversions and revenue, and enables them to quickly assess the RPE for each campaign. Furthermore, Altcraft and similar platforms allow for the implementation of personalization (insertion of personal data, product recommendations, etc.) and A/B testing without extra effort. Using such solutions simplifies optimization: instead of technical routine, you focus on content and strategy. As a result, RPE growth is achieved faster, because the platform ensures high deliverability, relevance, and timeliness of emails.

Conclusion

RPE (Revenue per Email) is a metric that reflects the average revenue generated by a single email. For email marketing professionals, it is valuable because it demonstrates the financial impact of email campaigns in a simple and understandable manner. RPE provides a benchmark for how effective the email channel is in terms of revenue. However, this metric should not be viewed in isolation; it is only useful when combined with other metrics and business goals. Regularly monitoring RPE trends and analyzing the reasons for changes is most beneficial: this allows marketers to understand areas for improvement and make email campaigns more effective.