After a Klaviyo send, the 8 numbers I look at first
The open rate says almost nothing on its own. Here are the 8 numbers I read after every Klaviyo campaign, and the order I read them in.
A campaign goes out. Everyone's first reflex, mine included, is to look at the open rate. It is the most visible number and the most misleading. Since Apple's privacy protection inflates opens with bot preloads, a nice open rate no longer proves much. It can hide a campaign that interested no one.
Here is the order I read a campaign report in. Not by theoretical importance, by real usefulness when you have to tell a client whether the send worked.
1. Attributed revenue
The only question the client really asks: did it make money? I start there. Decent attributed revenue forgives a lot of average rates. Low revenue on a large audience deserves a closer look, whatever the open rate.
2. The click rate, not the open rate
The click is more honest than the open. You can open by accident or by bot. You click because a subject line made you want to and the content kept the promise. A good click on an average open is often a better sign than a big open with no click.
3. The bot-corrected click rate
Klaviyo records bot clicks, automatic opens that trigger fake clicks. On some campaigns they make up an annoying share of the total. A click rate that does not filter bots overstates real interest. When I can isolate clicks to Bot Click = 0, I do it. The true number is always lower, and always more useful.
4. The comparison with the previous campaign
A number on its own says nothing. Is 18% click good or bad? It depends on the usual. I always compare to the same type of previous send. Direction matters more than the absolute value. An account climbing to 12% is worth more than an account sliding to 20%.
5. The unsubscribe rate
The counterweight to revenue. A campaign can sell in the short term while burning the list. An unsubscribe rate above 0.5% on a send is a signal: too much pressure, poor targeting, a broken promise. Today's revenue is not worth tomorrow's list.
6. The spam complaint rate
Rarer, more serious. Past 0.1% complaints, the whole account's deliverability starts to suffer, not just that campaign's. A spike in complaints on a send needs handling right away, before the next one.
7. The bounce rate
A bounce rate above 2% points to a list problem: aged addresses, a shaky import, neglected hygiene. It looks like nothing on one campaign, but it damages sending reputation over time. A clean account stays under that threshold without effort.
8. The breakdown by device and by provider
Last, but useful. If opens collapse on a single inbox provider while the others hold, the campaign is not the cause, deliverability to that provider is. This detail changes the diagnosis completely. I go into it further in the article on deliverability thresholds.
Reading fast, across every account
Doing this reading on one campaign is five minutes. Doing it on every campaign of fifteen accounts, every week, is a full-time job. That is why KlaviBoard runs the period-over-period comparison automatically on each campaign, keeps the anti-bot filter one toggle away, and puts unsubscribes and complaints next to revenue, not three screens away. You keep the analysis. You lose the time spent preparing it.
Open the demo to see what it looks like on sample data, without connecting anything and without signing up.
