Email Marketing ROI Calculator

Is email earning its cost?

Calculate your email list's total revenue potential and see how much of your store's revenue comes from a channel you own.

Your email program

Email List Size. Total number of subscribers on your email list.
Send Frequency (emails/month). How many campaign emails you send to the full list each month.
$
Revenue Per Recipient (RPR). Average revenue generated per recipient per email send — a Klaviyo RPR of $0.10-$0.25 is typical.
$
Average Order Value (AOV). Average order value from email-attributed purchases.
What’s this? Average Order Value in the glossary
$
Total Store Revenue (Monthly). Your entire monthly store revenue — used to calculate the percentage of revenue that comes from email (your owned channel).

What the program costs you (optional)

Add either one and you get a real return on investment (ROI) alongside the revenue. Leave them blank and the revenue figures stand on their own.

$
Email Platform Cost (Monthly). What your email service provider bills you each month — Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend, plus any pop-up or list-growth app you pay for. Optional: leave it blank and no return is calculated.
$
Agency or Team Cost (Monthly). What it costs to actually run the program each month — an agency retainer, a freelancer, or the share of a salary spent on email. Optional: leave it blank and no return is calculated.
How to use this calculator

Example numbers · Monthly Email Revenue

$4,800Under-leveraged

Edit inputs
EMAIL REVENUE IMPACT

Owned channel share

Monthly Email Revenue

$4,800

Revenue from a channel you own, every month — 9.6% of total store revenue.

What we’d check next

We’d add email costs before judging the return, then compare campaigns with automatic emails.

View chart and context
9.6%
Email share of revenue

Revenue / Subscriber / Year

$11.52

Owned Channel %

9.6%

Estimated Email Orders

64
Based on 5,000 subscribers, 8 sends/month at $0.12 revenue per recipient.

Values update as you type.

YOUR RESULTS

Your email revenue

Revenue / Subscriber / Year

$11.52

Annual value of each subscriber

Owned Channel %

9.6%

Email share of total store revenue

Emails Sent / Month

40,000

List size × send frequency

Annual Email Revenue

$57,600

Monthly email revenue × 12

Estimated Email Orders

64

Orders driven by email revenue

Add what the program costs — your email platform, and any agency or team time — to turn the revenue above into a return on investment (ROI).

BENCHMARK

How you stack up

Directional owned-channel contribution benchmark for ecommerce planning. Benchmarks are directional, not a guarantee; use them as a comparison point alongside your own historical data.

You vs. the planning band

Your Owned Channel

9.6%

Planning band

Where the Healthy band starts

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Under-leveragedDevelopingHealthyMature

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How we calculate your email list revenue, your owned-channel share, and — once you give us a cost — your return.

Monthly Email Revenue
List Size × Send Frequency × Revenue Per Recipient

Example: 5,000 × 8 × $0.12 = $4,800

Revenue Per Subscriber Per Year
(RPR × Send Frequency × 12)

Example: $0.12 × 8 × 12 = $11.52

Owned Channel %
(Email Revenue ÷ Total Store Revenue) × 100

Example: ($4,800 ÷ $50,000) × 100 = 9.6%

Email Program Cost
Email Platform Cost + Agency or Team Cost

Example: $150 + $600 = $750 / month

Email ROI
(Email Revenue − Program Cost) ÷ Program Cost × 100

Example: ($4,800 − $750) ÷ $750 × 100 = 540%

Return Per $1 Spent
Email Revenue ÷ Program Cost

Example: $4,800 ÷ $750 = $6.40 back per $1 spent

More things we’d check

We’d include platform fees and the cost of writing, designing and sending the emails.

We’d compare campaigns with automatic emails to see where the revenue comes from.

We’d review the welcome and cart recovery emails first.

Read the email flows guide

About email marketing ROI

What is email marketing ROI?

Email ROI (return on investment) is what your emails earn compared with what they cost to send: your email platform plus the time or people it takes to run it. Revenue alone tells you email is working. ROI tells you whether it is worth what you pay for it.

Formula

Email ROI = (email revenue − program cost) ÷ program cost × 100

Email revenue = list size × emails sent per month × revenue per recipient (RPR), the average a single email earns per person it reaches.

A worked example

  1. You have 5,000 subscribers, send 8 emails a month, and each email earns $0.12 per recipient.
  2. 5,000 × 8 × $0.12 = $4,800 a month, or $11.52 per subscriber per year.
  3. Your platform costs $350 and running it costs $250, so $600 a month. ($4,800 − $600) ÷ $600 = 700% ROI.
  4. Against $50,000 of store revenue, email brings in 9.6%. That lands in Under-leveraged on the ladder.

What’s a typical email ROI?

There is no single figure worth trusting, so we don’t grade your ROI. It swings with how engaged your list is and what you pay to run email, and a big return on a tiny program can still be a small amount of money. What we do grade is how much of your store revenue email brings in:

Under 15%
Under-leveraged.
15–20%
Developing.
20–30%
Healthy.
30%+
Mature.

A low share usually means missing flows (automated emails such as a welcome series or abandoned-cart reminders), not a bad list.

Email ROI vs revenue share vs ROAS

  • Email ROI is profit from email ÷ what email costs. It answers "is this worth paying for?"
  • Revenue share is email revenue ÷ total store revenue. It answers "how much of my business do I own?" rather than rent from ad platforms.
  • ROAS (return on ad spend) is revenue ÷ ad spend. You don’t pay per click for email, so the two aren’t a fair head-to-head. Compare each against its own break-even. Check your ad return with the ROAS calculator
  • Revenue per subscriber is one input to what a customer is worth over time. Work out customer lifetime value (LTV) with the LTV calculator
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about email marketing ROI and owned channels

Take the revenue your email program generated, subtract what the program cost you over the same period, then divide by that cost: (revenue − cost) ÷ cost × 100. Cost means your email platform bill plus whatever you pay to actually run it — an agency retainer, a freelancer, or the share of a salary spent on email. Both cost fields in this calculator are optional; leave them blank and you get the revenue figures on their own, with no return claimed.

Revenue per recipient (RPR) is email-attributed revenue divided by emails delivered. Use the same reporting window for both figures. We’d compare similar sends rather than combine automatic emails and promotional campaigns into one target.

The average alone cannot tell you. We’d compare similar sends by audience, offer, and reporting window, then check delivered emails, clicks, and orders. That helps choose a test without assuming the list or the copy is responsible.

We’d start with useful signup reasons and the automatic emails customers need, such as welcome and cart reminders. Compare email-attributed revenue with total store revenue over the same period. A higher share can also mean other channels declined, so check both totals. Reference bands used on this page: Under 15% is under-leveraged, 15–20% is developing, 20–30% is healthy and 30%+ is mature. These are calculator labels, not measured industry averages.

Keep text messages separate here. Their reach and costs differ from email. We’d calculate text-message revenue and costs over the same period before comparing the two.

Our calculators use industry-standard formulas and are designed for directional accuracy. Results depend on the quality of your input data. For precise financial planning, we recommend validating results with your accountant or financial team.

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Your calculations run in your browser, and we don't store the numbers you type unless you choose to send them — by unlocking a benchmark, emailing yourself a report, or contributing an anonymous data point. We do record anonymous usage events, which tool was used rather than what you entered. The AI tools work differently: your store URL and the report or concepts we generate are saved so we can support you and so your share link keeps working. We never access your Shopify admin, your customer data, or any private account information.
GLOSSARY

Learn these key metrics

Customer Lifetime ValueLTV

The total revenue a business expects to earn from a single customer over the ent...

Return On Ad SpendROAS

The revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising....

Average Order ValueAOV

The average dollar amount customers spend per order/transaction....

Customer Acquisition CostCAC

The total cost of acquiring a new paying customer, including all marketing and s...

Browse all glossary terms

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5x email revenue in 60 days — June came in at five times the pre-program monthly average · Stuffed States · Apr–Jun 2026 Read the Stuffed States case study