TL;DR
The Cost Per Positive Lead card on Analytics (next.listkit.io/analytics) estimates what each positive reply cost you.
Cost per email: a Bundle is $597/month and can send 30,000 emails a month, so each email costs about $0.0199.
Cost per positive lead = $0.0199 × emails sent per positive reply.
The fewer emails it takes to get a positive reply, the lower your cost per positive lead.
When you'd use this
Use it to compare campaigns on one number, or to see what your cold email is costing you per interested prospect. Like every other metric, wait until a campaign has contacted about 1,000 people before you judge it.
How it works
Step 1: Cost per email
One Bundle can send up to 30,000 emails a month, which is its full sending capacity over a 30-day month. A Bundle costs $597/month, so:
$597 ÷ 30,000 emails = $0.0199 per email (about 2 cents)
If you have more than one Bundle, your sending capacity and your cost go up together, so the cost per email stays the same. For example, with 2 Bundles: $1,194 ÷ 60,000 emails = $0.0199.
Step 2: Emails sent per positive reply
Next we take how many emails your campaigns sent for each positive reply in the campaigns and dates you've picked. For example, 10,000 emails sent with 20 positive replies is 500 emails per positive reply.
Step 3: Multiply them
500 emails × $0.0199 = $9.95 per positive lead
The card uses whatever you've selected in the campaign and date filters at the top of Analytics, so it changes when you change them.
What good looks like
Emails sent per positive reply | Cost per positive lead |
250 | $4.98 |
500 | $9.95 |
1,000 | $19.90 |
2,000 | $39.80 |
3,000 | $59.70 |
Our benchmark for a healthy campaign is 1 positive reply per 1,000 people contacted. This card counts emails, and each person gets several emails in a sequence. With a 3-email sequence, 1 positive reply per 1,000 people is about 3,000 emails per positive reply, or around $60 per positive lead. Anything below that is ahead of the benchmark.
How to lower it
Your cost per email is fixed, so the only way to lower this number is to get more positive replies from the same number of emails:
Tighten your targeting so you only email people who fit your offer.
Test new angles as separate campaigns and keep the ones that win.
Scale what's working. See How do I scale a cold email campaign that is working?
Expected outcome
You know how the Cost Per Positive Lead card is calculated.
You can tell whether a campaign is ahead of or behind the benchmark.
You know that lowering it means more positive replies per email sent.
FAQ
Why doesn't this match what I actually paid per lead?
The card assumes you use your Bundle's full 30,000 emails a month. If you send fewer, you're paying more per email than the card shows. For example, sending 15,000 emails a month on one Bundle works out to about $0.04 per email, double what the card uses.
I have more than one Bundle. Does the number change?
No. Each Bundle adds $597 and 30,000 emails, so your cost per email stays at $0.0199.
Does it count emails or people?
Emails. It uses every email sent, including follow-ups, not the number of people contacted.
Can I see it for just one campaign?
Yes. Pick the campaign in the All campaigns filter at the top of Analytics.