Definition
Campaign lifted revenue measures how much new revenue an email campaign drove beyond the natural baseline. It corrects for the reality that some recipients would have purchased anyway through other channels.
The most reliable method uses a randomly selected holdout group that does not receive the campaign. The difference in revenue between the campaign group and the holdout group — normalised for list size — is the true lifted revenue.
Calculation
Lifted Revenue = Campaign Group Revenue − (Holdout Revenue × Scaling Factor)
Where the scaling factor adjusts for any size difference between groups. This approach removes attribution guesswork and provides a clean, defensible ROI number.
Related Glossary Terms
A/B Testing
A/B testing in email marketing is the practice of sending two variations of an email to a small sample of your list to determine which version performs better before sending the winner to the remaining subscribers.
Abandoned Cart Email
An abandoned cart email is an automated message sent to customers who added items to their online shopping cart but left without completing the purchase. It is one of the highest-converting email types in ecommerce.
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is a metric that measures the average revenue generated per email subscriber over a specific period, used to evaluate list value and campaign effectiveness.
Attention Rate
Attention rate is the percentage of email opens that last longer than 5 seconds, distinguishing genuine reads from passive opens, preview-pane views, or Apple MPP auto-loads.
Bounce Rate Threshold
A bounce rate threshold is the percentage of hard or soft bounces at which email platforms and ISPs begin to penalise sender reputation, typically around 2-5%.
Bounce Rate
Email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that were rejected by the receiving server before reaching the recipient. It is a key indicator of list health and data quality.