A monthly email report exists to answer three questions: did email make money, what changed, and what happens next. Most reports answer none of them, because they open with a table of open rates and end with a paragraph of adjectives.
Here is a structure that answers all three in the first ten lines.
Lead with the three-line summary
Revenue attributed to email: £48,200 (+12% MoM, +31% YoY)
Programme cost: £3,900
Ratio: 12.4 : 1
Then one sentence saying what drove the change. That is the whole executive summary, and for most readers it is the whole report.
Note the attribution line that must accompany it, every time: "attributed within 7 days of a click, last-click, deduplicated across campaigns and flows". Stating the method prevents the two most common failures — someone comparing your number to a differently-calculated one, and the temptation to widen the window in a bad month. See email attribution.
Split flows from broadcasts
This is the single most useful cut in an email report and it is routinely missing.
| Sends | Revenue | Revenue per send | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated flows | 4,100 | £26,400 | £6.44 |
| Broadcasts | 61,000 | £21,800 | £0.36 |
The pattern is nearly universal: flows are a small minority of volume and a large share of revenue. Showing it makes the case for building more flows better than any argument could, and it stops anyone concluding that the answer to a soft month is more broadcasts.
List health, which nobody asks for and everybody needs
Four numbers:
- Engaged list size — subscribers who clicked in the last 90 days — and its trend. More informative than total list size, which only goes up.
- Spam complaint rate, from Google Postmaster Tools.
- Unsubscribe rate, and net list change.
- Inbox placement or domain reputation.
This section is where you justify the unglamorous work — list cleaning, suppression, authentication — that otherwise looks like sending fewer emails. Without it, the person reading only sees volume going down.
What worked, and what did not, both with numbers
One or two specifics each. "The second-purchase flow launched on the 4th has produced £3,100 from 480 sends" is credible. "Engagement was strong this month" is not.
Include the failures every month, not only when they are unavoidable. A report that only contains good news is a report nobody believes, and the month you have genuinely bad news you will have no credibility left to spend. It also protects you: a documented failed test is evidence of a working process, while a run of unbroken success looks like selective reporting.
Next month, with reasons
Three items. Each with a why.
"Build a win-back flow for customers who last bought 6–12 months ago (2,400 people, currently receiving only the newsletter)." That is a plan. "Continue optimising campaigns" is not.
This section is what makes a report a document rather than a scoreboard, and it is the part that gets read by whoever decides your budget.
What to leave out
Open rate as a headline. Distorted by privacy proxies in proportions that vary month to month. The full ranking of what belongs on a report is in email marketing KPIs worth tracking. Include it in the appendix as a trend, segmented by recipient domain where a divergence signals a placement problem. Never lead with it.
Every campaign, individually. A table of 22 campaigns is data, not analysis. Show the top three and the bottom three, with a sentence on why.
Screenshots of your platform dashboard. They contain everything and communicate nothing.
Adjectives without numbers. "Strong", "soft", "encouraging" — each of these should be replaced by the figure that made you write it.
Cadence
Monthly for the full report. Weekly full reports encourage reacting to noise, since most email metrics need several campaigns before a change is real — see email test sample size for why.
If someone wants weekly, send three lines: revenue, complaint rate, anything unusual.
For the agency version of all of this, including how to handle a client who asks about open rate, see reporting email results to clients.
Frequently asked questions
What should be in a monthly email marketing report?
Revenue, cost and ratio in the first three lines with the attribution method stated; a flows-versus-broadcasts split; list health including complaint rate and engaged list size; what worked and what did not, both with numbers; and three next steps with reasons.
Should I include open rate in an email report?
Include it as a trend in an appendix, segmented by recipient domain. Do not lead with it — privacy-protection proxy loading inflates it by an amount that varies month to month, so changes often reflect audience mix rather than performance.
How do I report a bad month?
State it in the headline before anyone finds it, give a specific cause — deliverability, targeting or offer — and say what you are doing about it. Reports that bury bad news lose more credibility than the bad month itself costs.
How often should email reports be sent?
Monthly for the full report. Weekly encourages reacting to variance, because most email metrics need several campaigns before a change means anything. A three-line weekly note is enough if someone wants more frequent visibility.
