Email marketing ROI calculator: revenue, cost and return per subscriber
Email marketing ROI is the revenue email brings in, minus what it costs, divided by that cost, times 100. $12,000 of revenue on $1,800 of monthly costs is an ROI of 567%, or $6.67 back per dollar. Enter your numbers above, or estimate revenue from sends, clicks and conversions, to see ROI per campaign and per subscriber.
Design, copy, staff time, tools.
Your last verification result, or your bounce rate as a floor.
- ROI
- 96%
- Return per $1
- $1.96
- Revenue per subscriber
- $0.18
- Cost per subscriber
- $0.090
80,000 emails sent, 78,400 delivered, 1,960 clicks and 59 orders at $60: $3,528 revenue, or $0.045 per delivered email. ROI = ($3,528 − $1,800) ÷ $1,800 × 100 = 96%.
About 1,000 of the 20,000 contacts no longer exist. If your platform prices by contacts, roughly $15 of the $300 a month pays for addresses that can only bounce.
Next step
Your cost per subscriber includes 1,000 that can't receive anything.
Many email platforms charge by contacts or sends, and an address that no longer exists costs the same as a customer. Verifying the list removes them before the next bill and the next bounce.
- Drop your list as a CSV
- See its rows, duplicates and bad formats, free
- 100 free email checks when you sign in with Google, no card
Ready to verify now? Verify the list
Sample result
4 sends to 20,000 subscribers return an estimated 96% ROI, $1.96 for every $1 spent.
- ROI
- 96%
- Return per $1
- $1.96
- Revenue per subscriber
- $0.18
What this means for you
1,000 dead contacts still cost you platform fees; removing them lowers your costs.
- Known revenue or an estimate from rates
- Return per dollar and per subscriber
- Platform spend on dead contacts
- Clicks to orders from your own rates
- ROI
- Revenue
- List cost
By SimpleVerifier Team · Last updated · Runs in your browser; nothing you paste is sent to us
How do I calculate the ROI of my email marketing?
- Choose Estimate revenue from rates, or I know the revenue if your store or analytics already attributes sales to email.
- To estimate, enter subscribers, campaigns sent this month, bounce rate, click-through rate, conversion rate and average order value.
- Enter the email platform's monthly cost and other costs: design, copy, tools and staff time.
- Enter the share of the list that no longer exists, from your last verification or your bounce rate, to see what those contacts cost.
Example
- You enter
- 20,000 subscribers, 4 sends this month, 2% bounce, 2.5% click-through, 3% conversion, $60 average order, $300 platform and $1,500 other costs, and 5% of the list dead.
- You get
- 78,400 delivered, 1,960 clicks and 58.8 orders: $3,528 estimated revenue against $1,800, a 96% ROI or $1.96 back per $1. The 1,000 dead contacts take $15 of the platform bill.
- Limits
- No limit; runs in your browser.
How do you calculate email marketing ROI?
ROI = (revenue from email − cost of email) ÷ cost of email × 100. If email brought in $12,000 this month and the platform plus content cost $1,800, the ROI is ($12,000 − $1,800) ÷ $1,800 × 100 = 567%. Return per dollar is revenue ÷ cost, here $6.67.
In a spreadsheet, with revenue in B1 and costs in B2: =(B1-B2)/B2, formatted as a percentage. The hard part is the revenue: use your store's or analytics tool's email attribution, and use the same attribution window every month so the ROI is comparable over time.
How do I estimate email revenue without attribution?
Work it through the funnel: emails sent × (1 − bounce rate) gives delivered, × click-through rate gives clicks, × conversion rate gives orders, × average order value gives revenue. 20,000 subscribers sent four campaigns, 2% bounced, 2.5% clicked and 3% of clicks bought at $60, which is $3,528.
Each rate comes from your own reports: the email platform for bounces and clicks, the store for conversion and order value. The open rate calculator works out click-through and click-to-open rates from raw counts if your platform only gives you those.
What is a good ROI for email marketing?
Any ROI above 0% means email earns more than it costs; beyond that, the useful benchmark is your own ROI last month and last year. Published email ROI figures are mostly self-reported by marketers in industry surveys, with different cost and attribution rules, so they don't compare cleanly with your number.
If you want to compare channels, calculate them the same way: the same costs counted, the same attribution window. A campaign that looks profitable on platform fees alone can look different once staff time is in.
How do invalid addresses affect email ROI?
They add cost without adding revenue. Many email platforms price by contacts or sends, so an address that no longer exists costs the same as a customer, and it lowers your revenue per subscriber. Sending to them also produces hard bounces on every campaign.
The calculator estimates that cost from the share of the list you enter. How fast lists go stale varies; the list decay calculator models it from job-tenure data, and a verification run measures it for your list.
Email marketing ROI or cold email ROI: which calculator?
| Email marketing ROI (this tool) | Cold email ROI | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Opted-in subscribers | Prospects you contact first |
| Revenue from | Orders from campaigns | Deals from meetings |
| Key rates | Click-through, conversion, order value | Reply, meeting, close rate |
| Tool | This page | Cold email ROI calculator |
Who uses this tool, and for what?
- Ecommerce stores
- Turn a month's sends, click rate and order value into revenue and ROI, and see what a 1-point change in click rate is worth.
- Marketing managers
- Report email's return per dollar with every cost counted, in a form finance can check.
- Agencies
- Show a client what their list earns per subscriber, and what the contacts that no longer exist cost them.
- Newsletter businesses
- Compare platform cost per subscriber with revenue per subscriber before moving platforms or tiers.
What can’t this tool tell you?
- Revenue estimates are only as good as the rates you enter; real attribution from your store is better when you have it.
- It doesn't model attribution windows, repeat purchases or lifetime value.
- The cost of invalid contacts assumes contact-based pricing; send-based plans charge for the failed sends instead.
- This is for marketing to subscribers. For outbound to prospects, use the cold email ROI calculator.
Common questions
- What is email marketing ROI?
- The return on what you spend on email: revenue attributed to email, minus its costs, divided by those costs. An ROI of 400% means $4 of profit for every $1 spent.
- How to calculate email marketing ROI?
- (Revenue from email − email costs) ÷ email costs × 100. Count the platform fee and the time and tools that go into each campaign, not just the platform.
- What is a good ROI for email marketing?
- Anything above 0% pays for itself. Compare against your own past months rather than published averages, which use different cost and attribution rules.
- Does email marketing have the highest ROI?
- Industry surveys often rank it near the top, but those figures are self-reported and defined differently from study to study. Measure your own channels with the same method to know.
- What does ROI stand for in email marketing?
- Return on investment: the profit email produces relative to what it costs, usually shown as a percentage or as revenue per dollar spent.
Sources
The calculator makes the case better than we can.
Every per-address model above recurs each time you clean. A flat plan does not.
- Unlimited verifications, no monthly cap
- The email finder and enrichment included, also unlimited
- Published limits, so nothing is a surprise later
One plan, cancel anytime, no contract. Sign in with Google and your first 100 email checks are free, no card. The free tools stay free either way.