Tracking performance

Understanding how your nurturing workflows perform helps you optimize messaging, timing, and targeting. Without performance data, you’re guessing. With it, you can see what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus improvement efforts.

This article covers the metrics available for email nurturing, how to interpret them, and how to use data to improve your workflows.

Why Performance Tracking Matters

Nurturing is an investment. You spend time creating workflows, writing content, and managing sequences. Performance tracking tells you whether that investment is paying off.

Good tracking answers questions like:

• Are people opening my emails?
• Are they clicking links and engaging?
• Are too many people unsubscribing?
• Which workflows perform best?
• Which emails in a sequence work well and which fall flat?
• Is nurturing actually helping win back deals?

Without answers, you’re running blind. With answers, you can continuously improve.

Accessing workflow performance

Each workflow has its own performance dashboard.

1. Go to Nurturing
2. Click on a workflow name to open its details

[Screenshot: workflow performance dashboard with metrics cards and charts]

The performance shows metrics for that specific workflow. You can also see aggregate nurturing metrics in your main Rizer reports.

Audience metrics

These metrics tell you about workflow membership — who’s in the workflow and what’s happening to them.

Currently active

Contacts currently in the workflow — they’ve entered but haven’t completed, unsubscribed, or been removed.

What it tells you: How many people are mid-sequence right now.

What to watch for:

• This number fluctuates as people enter and exit
• A very high number relative to entries might mean your workflow is long or people aren’t progressing
• A very low number might mean people are dropping off quickly

Email metrics

These metrics measure how recipients interact with your emails.

Emails sent

Total number of emails delivered across all steps in the workflow.

What it tells you: The volume of email activity from this workflow.

How it’s calculated: If 100 contacts each receive 5 emails, that’s 500 emails sent.

Open rate

Percentage of sent emails that were opened.

What it tells you: Whether your subject lines and sender names are compelling enough to get people to open.

Industry benchmarks: B2B nurturing typically sees 15-25% open rates. Below 15% is concerning. Above 25% is strong.

What affects open rates:

• Subject line quality — Is it compelling? Does it create curiosity?
• Sender name — Do recipients recognize and trust the sender?
• Send timing — Are you reaching people when they check email?
• Deliverability — Are emails landing in inbox or spam?
• List quality — Are these real, engaged contacts?

Caveats: Open tracking isn’t perfect. Some email clients block tracking pixels, making opens undercounted. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images, potentially inflating opens. Use open rate as a directional indicator, not an exact measure.

Click rate

Percentage of sent emails where recipients clicked at least one link.

What it tells you: Whether your content and calls-to-action are compelling enough to drive engagement.

Industry benchmarks: B2B nurturing typically sees 2-5% click rates. Below 2% suggests content or CTA problems. Above 5% is strong.

What affects click rates:

• Content relevance — Does the email address something the recipient cares about?
• Call-to-action clarity — Is it obvious what you want them to do?
• Link placement — Are links visible and easy to click?
• Value proposition — Is there a clear benefit to clicking?
• Mobile optimization — Do links work well on phones?

Click rate vs. click-to-open rate: Click rate is clicks divided by sends. Click-to-open rate is clicks divided by opens. Both are useful. Click-to-open tells you how engaging content is for people who actually opened.

Bounce Rate

Percentage of emails that failed to deliver.

What it tells you: The quality of your contact data and any deliverability issues.

Target: Keep this under 2%. Above 5% indicates serious problems.

Types of bounces:

• Hard bounces — Permanent failures. Email address doesn’t exist, domain is invalid. These contacts should be removed.
• Soft bounces — Temporary failures. Mailbox full, server temporarily unavailable. These might succeed on retry.

What causes high bounces:

• Outdated contact information in HubSpot
• Contacts who’ve left companies
• Typos in email addresses
• Domain or deliverability issues on your end

Re-engagement metrics

Ultimately, nurturing should help win back deals. These metrics connect nurturing to business outcomes.

Re-engaged contacts

Contacts who moved from Recycling to Ready for callback while in the workflow.

What it tells you: Whether nurtured contacts are progressing toward re-engagement.

Context: This isn’t solely caused by nurturing — callback dates arrive regardless of nurturing. But nurturing might accelerate readiness or improve receptiveness.

Deals created

New deals or leads created in HubSpot for contacts who were in this workflow.

What it tells you: Whether nurtured contacts are becoming active opportunities.

What to watch for: Compare deal creation rates between nurtured and non-nurtured contacts. Is nurturing making a difference?

Won after nurturing

Deals that closed as won for contacts who were nurtured by this workflow.

What it tells you: The bottom-line impact. Did nurturing help win deals?

Context: Attribution is tricky. A contact might have won even without nurturing. But tracking this helps you see whether nurtured contacts are converting.

Identifying and diagnosing issues

Performance data helps you spot and fix problems.

Low open rates

Possible causes:

• Weak subject lines that don’t create interest
• Sender name not recognized or trusted
• Emails landing in spam
• Sending at bad times
• List quality issues (old or inactive contacts)

How to investigate:

• Test different subject line styles
• Try different sender names
• Check deliverability (test emails to yourself)
• Experiment with send timing
• Review whether contacts are genuinely appropriate for nurturing

Quick fixes:

• Rewrite subject lines to be more compelling
• Use a more recognizable sender name
• Verify DNS records are correct for deliverability

Low click rates

Possible causes:

• Content not relevant to the audience
• Weak or unclear calls-to-action
• Links buried or hard to find
• Value proposition not compelling
• Mobile experience is poor

How to investigate:

• Review content relevance to audience criteria
• Check CTAs — are they clear and prominent?
• Test emails on mobile devices
• Get feedback from colleagues on content quality

Quick fixes:

• Make CTAs more prominent (buttons instead of text links)
• Ensure above-the-fold content hooks interest
• Simplify — fewer links, clearer direction

High unsubscribe rates

Possible causes:

• Emails too frequent
• Content doesn’t match what recipients expect
• Wrong people in the audience
• Overly salesy or pushy tone
• Content is low quality or feels like spam

How to investigate:

• Review audience criteria — are these the right people?
• Read your content as a recipient would — is it valuable?
• Check frequency — are you emailing too often?
• Look at which specific emails cause unsubscribes

Quick fixes:

• Reduce email frequency
• Refine audience targeting to better-fit contacts
• Revise content to provide more value, less pitch

High bounce rates

Possible causes:

• Old contact data in HubSpot
• Contacts who’ve left their companies
• Invalid email addresses
• Domain or deliverability issues

How to investigate:

• Review bounced addresses — are they clearly invalid?
• Check how old recycled deals are — older deals have more stale contacts
• Verify your sending domain is properly configured

Quick fixes:

• Clean up obviously bad addresses
• Consider excluding very old deals from nurturing
• Re-verify domain DNS records

Building a performance review routine

Regular review keeps nurturing effective.

Weekly check

Quick scan — 5-10 minutes:

• Any workflows with obvious problems? (Zero sends, spike in unsubscribes)
• Are active workflows sending as expected?
• Any bounces or deliverability issues?

Catch problems early before they affect many contacts.

Monthly review

Deeper look — 30-60 minutes:

• Review metrics for all active workflows
• Compare to previous month — improving or declining?
• Identify underperforming workflows or steps
• Plan content updates or optimizations

This is when you make improvements based on data.

Quarterly strategy review

Big picture — 1-2 hours:

• Is nurturing contributing to recycling success?
• Which workflows deliver the best ROI?
• Should you create new workflows for underserved segments?
• Should you retire workflows that aren’t working?
• What have you learned that should inform future workflows?

This is when you step back and assess whether your nurturing strategy is working.

Using data to improve

Data is only valuable if it drives action.

Content improvements

• Low opens? Rewrite subject lines. Test different approaches.
• Low clicks? Strengthen CTAs. Make value proposition clearer.
• High unsubscribes at specific step? Revise that email. Change tone or content.

Don’t just observe problems — fix them.

Targeting improvements

• Poor engagement for a segment? Maybe they shouldn’t be nurtured, or need different content.
• Strong engagement for unexpected audience? Consider expanding that workflow or creating similar ones.
• Overlap causing fatigue? Refine criteria to prevent contacts from being in too many workflows.

Timing improvements

• Engagement drops sharply after step 3? Maybe the sequence is too long.
• Best engagement on step 5? Make sure earlier steps are setting up that content well.
• Seasonal patterns? Adjust send timing for holidays or busy periods.

Strategic improvements

• Nurturing not contributing to wins? Revisit the connection between nurturing and re-engagement.
• One workflow dramatically outperforming others? Study what makes it work. Apply lessons elsewhere.
• Diminishing returns overall? Maybe your best contacts have been nurtured. Focus on new segments.

Common questions

How long before I have meaningful data?

Wait until you have at least 100 emails sent before drawing conclusions. Smaller samples produce unreliable metrics. For newer workflows, be patient.

Why are my open rates different from what I see in other tools?

Different tools count opens differently. Tracking pixel placement, how they handle privacy features, and what counts as an “open” all vary. Compare trends within Rizer rather than absolute numbers across tools.

How do I know if a metric is “bad”?

Compare to benchmarks, your own history, and other workflows. A 10% open rate is concerning by industry standards but might be great if you were at 5% last month.

What if a workflow has great metrics but no business impact?

Engagement without outcomes means something’s disconnected. Maybe nurtured contacts aren’t becoming ready for callback, or re-engagement isn’t happening. Investigate the hand-off between nurturing and sales action.

Should I pause a workflow to analyze it?

Usually not necessary. You can review performance while workflows run. Pause only if you’ve identified a problem and need to stop sends while you fix it.