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Email reports your boss (or clients) will actually read: Build, save and export custom reports
Your campaign went out on Tuesday. By Thursday, your manager wants to know whether it worked, while you're staring at a dashboard with 40 metrics on it. Screenshotting the whole thing and hitting send is tempting, but that report will probably sit unread.
If you report to a marketing director or a roster of clients, your update lands in an inbox that already receives hundreds of emails a day on average, according to Microsoft's Work Trend Index. Most email platforms now let you build custom reports around the few numbers your readers care about. We'll walk through how to build one, then how to save and share it so it earns more than a glance.
What does a good email report look like?
A good email report answers one question before the reader thinks to ask it: did this work? Everything else is supporting evidence. Raw platform exports rarely manage this, because they're built for the person running campaigns rather than the person funding them.
Most reports fall into a handful of broad types. Some track individual campaigns or automated sequences, while others monitor the health of your list and sender reputation. Revenue-focused reports tie email activity to sales, which is usually what leadership wants to see first.
Whatever the type, lead with the conclusion. Journalists call this the inverted pyramid, where the most important information sits at the top and detail tapers off below it. If your manager reads only the first two lines, they should still know what happened and what you recommend doing next.
Be careful which number gets top billing. Reports estimate Apple's Mail Privacy Protection now affects roughly 55-60% of all email opens, because it preloads tracking pixels whether or not anyone reads the message. General industry guidance says clicks and purchases are stronger engagement signals than opens, so we'd suggest leading with those and treat open rates as a rough indicator.
How to build different types of email reports
Report type |
Best for |
Metrics to lead with |
Suggested cadence |
Campaign performance |
Marketing managers |
Conversions, click rate, unsubscribes |
After each send or weekly |
Automation |
Lifecycle and CRM teams |
Conversion rate per step, drop-off points |
Monthly |
Deliverability and list health |
Marketing and ops leads |
Bounce rate, spam complaint rate, net list growth |
Weekly or monthly |
Revenue and attribution |
Executives and ecommerce leads |
Attributed revenue, revenue per recipient |
Monthly or quarterly |
Client summary |
Agency and freelance clients |
Progress against goals, next steps |
Monthly |
Campaign performance reports
Start with the goal you set before the send. If the campaign existed to drive webinar sign-ups, the headline metric is sign-ups, with click rate as supporting context. Compare results against your own recent averages, since a line reading "this send versus our last five" tells a manager more than a page of raw figures.
Keep unsubscribes in view, too. A campaign that doubles clicks while spiking opt-outs isn't much of a win.
Automation reports
Welcome series and abandoned cart reminders run quietly in the background for months, which is exactly why they deserve a dedicated report.
Break the report down by step so you can see where people drop off. If the third email in a five-step sequence loses most of its audience, that's the fix to recommend. A monthly cadence usually works here, since automations need time to build up meaningful data.
Deliverability and list health reports
This is the report nobody asks for until something breaks. Track bounce and spam complaint rates over time, alongside net list growth, so you can catch problems before they hit revenue.
Google's email sender guidelines ask senders to keep their user-reported spam rate below 0.1% and never let it reach 0.3%. Draw that threshold onto your chart so readers can see how close you are to trouble.
Revenue and attribution reports
Executives tend to care about one line here: how much money did email bring in? Connect your email platform to your store or CRM first, because most tools can't report on purchases without that integration.
Show attributed revenue alongside revenue per recipient so leaders can judge efficiency rather than raw volume. Attribution windows also differ between platforms, so note which one you used before someone compares your numbers against another tool's.
Client summary reports
Clients rarely want to log into your tools. Their report should read like a short memo, with a one-paragraph summary up top and supporting charts below.
Finish with what you plan to do next month. That turns a status update into a conversation about strategy, which is where you want a client relationship to live.
Save, export, and share custom email reports
Once you've built a report you like, save it as a template rather than rebuilding it every month. Most email platforms let you save and duplicate custom reports, which makes it easy to keep separate versions for different stakeholders.
Pick your export format based on who's reading. CSV and Excel files suit colleagues who want to dig into the numbers themselves, while PDF and PNG exports work better for executives who just need the big picture outlook. CSV is the near-universal baseline, with spreadsheet and image exports also available on many platforms.
Scheduled delivery is where the real time savings kick in. Many tools can email a saved report on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Check the fine print first, because some platforms only send recurring reports to people with an account, or only to the user who created the schedule.
When you share, add a few lines of context in the email body rather than a bare attachment. Double-check date ranges and filters before a scheduled report goes out for the first time. If an export contains subscriber-level data, send an aggregated version instead, since a spreadsheet full of customer email addresses is a data protection headache waiting to happen.
Making your email reports more readable
Executives are already drowning in data. In a 2025 survey of 500 senior decision-makers by TheyDo and Sapio Research, half named data overload as a key challenge. A third said they simply lacked the time to scrutinize the data they receive.
Tailor each report to its reader rather than sending everyone the same file. A CFO wants revenue and cost figures, while your campaign team wants subject line tests and link-level click data. Splitting one bloated report into two focused ones usually gets both of them read.
The same survey found 26% of leaders were frustrated by missing context around the insights they're given. Put a short summary at the top and label each chart with its takeaway, such as "Clicks up 18% after the redesign" instead of "Q3 clicks". The best email report is one your boss can forward to their own boss without editing a word.
