Email Marketing CPM Calculator
Measure the cost per thousand impressions for your email marketing campaigns. Input your email campaign costs and total sends or opens to calculate your CPM, then benchmark against industry averages for newsletters, promotional blasts, and sponsored email placements.
Campaign Comparison
What Is Email Marketing CPM?
Email marketing CPM measures the cost per 1,000 email sends, opens, or impressions for email advertising campaigns. It applies to both owned email marketing (sending to your own list) and paid email sponsorships (advertising in third-party newsletters).
Email CPMs typically range from $5 to $10 per 1,000 sends for owned lists, factoring in ESP (email service provider) costs. Sponsored newsletter placements in niche industry publications can command $15–$40 CPM based on list quality and audience specificity.
Email remains one of the highest-ROI marketing channels, averaging $36 returned for every $1 spent. Understanding your email CPM helps you compare the cost-effectiveness of owned email against paid channels, evaluate ESP pricing, and justify investment in list growth and segmentation.
Email Marketing CPM Formula
Divide your total email campaign costs (including ESP fees, design, and copywriting) by the number of emails sent, then multiply by 1,000. This gives you the all-in cost for every thousand emails delivered to inboxes.
CPM = (Email Campaign Cost ÷ Emails Sent) × 1,000 Email CPM Playground
$500 ÷ 100,000 = 0.005 × 1,000 = $5.00
How to Calculate Email Marketing CPM
Follow these four steps to determine the true cost per thousand sends for your email campaigns and understand how your email marketing stacks up against other channels.
Calculate Total Email Campaign Costs
Include all costs: ESP subscription fees (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, SendGrid), email template design, copywriting, list management, and any deliverability tools or services.
Example: Your monthly Klaviyo plan costs $350, plus $200 for copywriting and design, totaling $550 for the month's email campaigns.
Count Total Emails Sent
Pull the total number of emails successfully sent (or delivered) from your ESP dashboard. You can also calculate CPM based on opens to measure cost per impression—what recipients actually saw.
Example: You sent 85,000 emails across 8 campaigns in the month, with a 95% delivery rate resulting in 80,750 delivered emails.
Compute Your Email CPM
Divide your total email costs by emails sent (or delivered) and multiply by 1,000 to get the cost per thousand email sends.
Example: $550 ÷ 80,750 × 1,000 = $6.81 CPM — well within the $5–$10 range for owned email campaigns.
Compare Send CPM vs. Open CPM
Calculate a second CPM based on opens rather than sends. This measures the cost per 1,000 email impressions actually viewed, giving a truer comparison to display advertising CPMs.
Example: With a 22% open rate, your 80,750 sends produce 17,765 opens. Open-based CPM: $550 ÷ 17,765 × 1,000 = $30.96 CPM — comparable to premium native ads but with far higher engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good CPM for email marketing?
How does email CPM compare to social media advertising CPM?
Should I calculate email CPM based on sends or opens?
What ESP offers the lowest email CPM?
How much do sponsored newsletter ads cost?
How can I lower my email marketing CPM?
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