How to track newsletter performance beyond open rates

If you're still using open rates as your main metric for newsletter success, you're not alone. But you're likely missing most of what actually matters.

Email opens were never a perfect signal. With Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection and other privacy features, they’ve become even less reliable. A user might open an email three times without reading it. Or they might forward it to a colleague who is the real decision-maker, and that action won't show up in any report.

If you want to understand how your newsletter drives interest, builds relationships, and supports your pipeline, you need to go beyond the basics. Here’s how to do it.

The problem with open rates

Open rates used to be a reasonable way to gauge attention. If a large percentage of your list opened an email, it felt like a success. But that number has become increasingly unreliable. It’s often inflated by image preloading, skewed by how mobile devices render emails, and generally disconnected from what actually drives results. What matters more is who is reading, what actions they’re taking afterward, and how those actions impact your pipeline.

Here’s why relying on open rates alone can lead you in the wrong direction:

• They’re noisy. Most tools count an open when the email is auto-previewed or partially loaded, even if the person never actually read it.

• They miss important actions. If someone forwards your newsletter to a colleague who then visits your site, you won’t see that connection.

• They don’t show intent. Just because someone opens an email doesn’t mean they’re interested. It could be muscle memory, curiosity, or even a misclick.
  
  

Instead of focusing only on opens, a better approach is to ask what the email actually achieved. Did it spark follow-up activity? Did the reader explore your site, view your product pages, or share it with others on their team? These are the kinds of signals that show whether your newsletter is doing its job.

Better metrics to track newsletter performance

To truly understand how your newsletter contributes to your pipeline, you need to go beyond surface-level metrics. Tracking what happens after someone opens your email gives you a clearer picture of intent and engagement. Here are some better ways to measure performance.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Clicks are more meaningful than opens because they reflect intent. If someone clicks a link, they’re taking a clear action. But not all clicks are equal. It's not just about how many clicks you get, but what people are clicking on, where those clicks lead, and who is doing the clicking.

Look at the types of content that generate clicks. Do readers respond more to product updates, customer stories, or educational pieces? Review the destination too. Are they heading to your pricing page, reading case studies, or bouncing off the blog after one paragraph? Most importantly, try to understand whether your target audience is the one clicking, or if the traffic is coming from irrelevant sources.

Tracking click-through rates over time and breaking them down by content type, audience segment, or industry will show you what’s resonating and what’s not. This can help shape your content strategy and improve how you tailor newsletters to different segments.

Website behavior after someone clicks

The real insight begins once someone lands on your site. Do they bounce immediately, or do they explore more? Do they look at high-intent pages like pricing or case studies? Do they sign up for your product or register for an event?

Standard tools like Google Analytics can give you surface-level data like bounce rate, time on page, and basic traffic flows. But they don’t connect behavior across sessions or tie it back to specific companies, especially when users stay anonymous or never fill out a form.

This is where ClearCue makes a difference. It tracks both anonymous and known visitor activity at the account level, giving you visibility into how interest builds over time. You can see if multiple people from the same company are returning to your site, reading your content, or spending time on key product pages after reading your newsletter.

Repeat readers and returning visitors

A single open or click doesn’t mean much on its own. What matters more is whether someone keeps coming back. If the same person opens multiple issues over a few weeks or visits your site several times without converting, that can be a strong sign that interest is building.

Look for signals like repeat newsletter opens within a specific time frame, multiple blog visits from the same IP or domain, or engagement from job titles commonly involved in buying decisions, such as Head of Product or VP of Marketing. These patterns suggest that someone is actively evaluating your content and offering.

ClearCue helps you identify these repeat behaviors and groups them by company. This gives you a clearer view of whether one person is showing interest or if engagement is spreading across the buying team.

Engagement clustering across accounts

Most B2B buying decisions are made by groups, not individuals. That’s why tracking engagement at the account level is critical. One person reading your newsletter is useful, but when multiple team members start interacting with your brand across different channels, it’s time to pay attention.

Instead of treating each subscriber or visitor as a separate data point, look for clusters of activity:

• multiple people from the same company reading the newsletter within a few days;

• one team member reading, followed by others exploring your product or pricing pages;

• one person reading the newsletter while another from the same company starts engaging with your LinkedIn posts or ads;

• consistent newsletter opens from a company over several weeks, followed by increased website visits from different departments.

• newsletter activity leading to other touchpoints, like webinar registrations or demo requests.
  
  

These are the moments when curiosity becomes intent. When tracked properly, they help your team prioritize accounts based on real interest, not just individual clicks.

ClearCue brings these signals together and highlights which accounts are warming up, cooling off, or entering a buying cycle. It gives you the context you need to respond with the right message, through the right channel, at the right time.

Read next: Why native analytics can’t show you true buyer intent (and what to do about it)

Real-world examples of overlooked signals

If you're only looking at open rate and CTR, you’ll miss moments like:

• a Head of Growth reading your newsletter three times, then visiting your blog;

• a Product Manager at the same company downloading a case study the next day;

• a CMO liking your LinkedIn post linked from the newsletter;

• a follow-up email getting forwarded to a decision-maker;

• two people from the same company reading your newsletter within the same week;

• a returning visitor from a target account exploring multiple product pages.
  
  

Each of these actions might seem small in isolation. But together, they start to show a pattern. When interest spreads across roles and touchpoints, it's usually a sign that an internal conversation is happening. 

These are the signals that help your team spot real buying intent early, prioritize the right accounts, and reach out while momentum is building. Waiting until someone fills out a form means you're likely arriving too late.

Attribution vs context

A common mistake is trying to tie a deal back to a single newsletter open or link click. In reality, attribution in B2B is rarely clean or linear. Multiple people influence a decision, and their actions often happen across disconnected channels.

Instead of focusing on assigning credit to one action, focus on building context around how interest builds. Ask:

• Who is consistently engaging with your content across multiple issues?
  What content tends to trigger follow-up activity, like site visits or product exploration?

• Which companies show signs of collective interest, even if some users remain anonymous?

• Are there repeat patterns in behavior that show up before deals move forward?

When you shift from attribution to context, you stop optimizing for surface metrics and start understanding how decisions actually unfold. ClearCue helps by collecting these signals in one place, letting you score accounts based on real engagement and giving marketing and sales a shared view of what’s working and where to focus.

How to track newsletter performance more effectively

If you're still measuring newsletter success with basic metrics like opens and clicks, it's time to rethink your approach. These numbers might give you a surface-level view, but they don’t reflect real engagement or buyer intent. Here’s how to move toward deeper, more actionable insights:

1. Audit your current metrics. Review what you’re tracking today. Are these metrics helping you make better decisions, or are they just filling in reports? Focus on signals that lead to actual actions and insights.
   
   

2. Track what happens after the click. Use UTM parameters, Google Analytics, and tools like ClearCue to understand what subscribers do next. Are they visiting high-intent pages, returning to the site, or sharing content with others?
   
   

3. Look at engagement at the account level. Stop thinking only in terms of individual subscribers. Look for patterns across entire companies (multiple team members engaging, return visits, or content being passed around).
   
   

4. Use data to shape follow-ups. If a company is actively engaging, tailor your outreach based on what they’ve interacted with. Avoid sending the same message to everyone. Relevance improves conversion.
   
   

5. Build scoring models that reflect reality. Not all actions carry the same weight. A single click might be a weak signal. But repeat reads, return visits, and multi-person engagement are much stronger signs of interest. Prioritize accordingly.
   
   

Shifting your focus from vanity metrics to meaningful signals takes effort, but it pays off. You’ll stop guessing and start acting on what actually drives interest and pipeline.

Final thoughts

Your newsletter is one of the most powerful signals of interest you have. But if you’re only looking at opens, you’re missing most of the value.

Real buying intent is messier. It’s scattered, multi-threaded, and often anonymous at first. Tools like ClearCue help you bring that picture together. You’ll know who’s engaging, where they are in the journey, and when it’s time to act.

It’s time to stop measuring vanity metrics and start tracking what really matters. See what others miss with Clearcue.ai.