Four numbers for campaigns, four for flows, one for the balance between them. The lines I use to decide in five minutes whether an email program is healthy.
When I open an email account for the first time, I don’t start with the calendar or the creative. I pull the last 30 days of campaigns and flows and check eight rates against three bands. It takes five minutes and it tells me where to look for the rest of the day.
These are my working thresholds, built from auditing accounts, not an industry standard. The spam lines are anchored to Google’s published limits. The rest are where I’ve found the difference between accounts that are working and accounts that are drifting. Treat them as a starting point and adjust for your category.
| Last 30 days | Healthy | Watch | Act now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaigns | |||
| Click rate | 1.25% or more | 0.5 to 1.25% | under 0.5% |
| Placed order rate | 0.5% or more | 0.2 to 0.5% | under 0.2% |
| Unsubscribe rate | under 0.5% | 0.5 to 1.25% | over 1.25% |
| Spam complaint rate | under 0.1% | 0.1 to 0.2% | over 0.2% |
| Flows | |||
| Click rate | 4% or more | 2 to 4% | under 2% |
| Placed order rate | 1% or more | 0.5 to 1% | under 0.5% |
| Unsubscribe rate | under 0.5% | 0.5 to 1.25% | over 1.25% |
| Spam complaint rate | under 0.1% | 0.1 to 0.2% | over 0.2% |
From my workRates are per recipient. Spam lines sit inside Google’s bulk-sender guidance: below 0.10%, never 0.30% or higher.
Two notes on reading it. Flows are held to a higher bar than campaigns because they’re triggered by something the customer just did; a flow performing at campaign levels is broken. And my healthy line for campaign order rate is well above the average in Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmarks, which put campaigns at 0.16% Reported. That’s deliberate. The average includes many accounts mailing their whole list several times a week. Near the vendor average, you’re typical, and by my lines that still means work to do. Above 0.5%, you’re healthy.
A flow performing at campaign levels is broken, not average.
One more number: the share of email revenue that comes from flows. From my work, in a healthy account flows earn about half or more. Far below that usually means flows are missing, broken or in draft. Very far above it can mean campaigns are being under-used, or that the list has been mailed so hard that only triggered messages still get read.
This is one chapter of The Whole Machine, which is free and readable in full on a single page with no form in front of it.