What metrics should be tracked weekly vs monthly?
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The cadence matters as much as the metric itself. Checking complaint rates monthly is too slow. Checking your engagement trend weekly is often too noisy. Here's a practical split.
Track weekly (things that can break fast):
- Spam complaint rate . even a brief spike above 0.10% will trigger Gmail and Yahoo filtering
- Hard bounce rate . a sudden jump usually means a bad data import or expired list segment
- Blocklist status . new listings can appear overnight and damage deliverability fast
- Authentication failures . SPF and DKIM issues show up before deliverability drops
- Inbox placement rate if you have a monitoring tool running seed tests
Track monthly (things that trend slowly):
- Engagement rates (click rate over time by segment) . month-over-month trends reveal content or frequency drift
- List growth vs churn . net subscriber growth tells you whether acquisition is outpacing decay
- Inactive subscriber volume . percentage with no activity in 90 days relative to total list
- Conversion rates per campaign type . which email types drive the most downstream value
- Revenue per email sent if you track it
A complaint spike that goes unnoticed for a month can get your domain flagged or put on a blocklist. An engagement decline that goes unnoticed for a month is unfortunate but recoverable. That's the key distinction driving the different cadences.
If you're setting up a weekly deliverability review for the first time, Google Postmaster Tools and a free blocklist check takes about ten minutes. That's your baseline minimum.
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