Using revenue per recipient to inform your marketing strategies

You will learn

Learn how to use revenue per recipient (RPR) in your marketing strategies to improve your campaign performance.

For email, RPR is the revenue attributed to a campaign or flow divided by the number of delivered emails. Emails that aren’t delivered aren’t included in the calculation. Use the same revenue metric when comparing results.

Before you begin

Ensure that your Klaviyo account is integrated with an ecommerce platform and that you have sent a campaign or flow so that you have data to generate revenue per recipient (RPR). You can also use a custom placed order metric to determine revenue per recipient as long as that metric uses $value as a property.

We recommend that you have at least a month’s worth of campaigns to get an accurate baseline portrait of RPR.

For more information on generating your RPR numbers, review our How to calculate revenue per recipient (RPR) guide.

Benefits of planning your campaign calendar with RPR

By establishing RPR expectations, you can estimate each month's campaign revenue and use discounts (or other incentives) more deliberately. For example, if you offer a 10% coupon code in a campaign, compare its RPR with similar campaigns without that discount. Check your costs and profit margins separately: RPR measures revenue per delivered email and does not show whether the discount was profitable.

You will also see what type of emails do best with your audience and update your content calendar to reflect such trends. RPR helps you assess campaign performance against your revenue goals. Compare your results with the campaign benchmarks for your annual revenue and average order value.

Measure flow performance with RPR

Similarly, you can measure flow performance with RPR to see which emails generate more revenue per delivered email. Assess which emails within the flow perform well and which are lacking. You can use characteristics of flows with a high RPR to guide tests for flows with a low RPR.

For example, the flow benchmarks list an RPR of $0.81 at the 75th percentile for abandoned cart flows from businesses with $1–$1M in annual revenue and an average order value below $28. This is $0.81 in revenue per delivered email and provides a comparison point for that type of flow.

If you find that one of your flows is performing below average, run A/B tests to see where you can improve. Test subject lines or email content with an email A/B test. To compare timing or the number of emails, test separate flow branches. For more information on measuring flow performance, check out our guide to performance benchmarks for flows.

Improving RPR

Analyzing RPR helps you iterate and understand what your audiences respond to, and conversely, what is not working for your business.

If your RPR is lower than desired, consider the following changes:

• List clean for campaigns, or send flows to a more specific, engaged audience based on their preferences and using Profile filters.
• Use segmentation to send campaigns to a highly engaged audience, and continue checking the level of engagement in your segment engagement reports.
• Follow email trends of what works best in your emails and update your content calendar to improve campaigns that aren't performing as well.
• Make sure your incentives help more than harm your business (e.g., if a 10% discount creates a marginal profit, it may not be worth the incentive).
• Use your overview dashboards and custom reports to find out what is working for your business and what needs to be adjusted.
• Knowing that RPR is tied to conversion rate and order size, experiment with different ideas to boost email performance and adjust your current email strategy to leverage growth through email.

Use RPR to inform your sending strategy

In addition, use your engaged list and RPR to plan your month’s campaign strategy.

Based on your RPR rate, make changes that reflect what seems to work for you. If your RPR is lower than expected, consider the following:

• How often are you messaging subscribers currently?
• What specific characteristics, styles, and blocks are working best in your emails and SMS messages?
• How engaged are the audiences receiving your emails?
• Are incentives (e.g., discounts) working in your emails or not?
• Are subscribers even receiving your emails?

Estimate campaign revenue by multiplying the number of emails you expect to deliver by the RPR from comparable past campaigns. If you expect the same number of deliveries for each campaign, use: expected deliveries per campaign × number of campaigns × RPR.

For example, 10,000 delivered emails per campaign × 4 campaigns × $0.20 RPR = $8,000 in estimated campaign revenue.

If campaign audiences or expected RPR differ, estimate each campaign separately and add the results. This is a planning estimate; changes in engagement, offers, or sending frequency can change RPR.

Additional resources