In email marketing, a recipient is an individual who receives an email you send. The term refers to anyone on your email list who is delivered a message, whether they’re a subscriber, customer, lead, or contact.
For example, if you send a campaign to 5,000 people on your list, you have 5,000 recipients for that send.
While “recipient” may seem straightforward, it’s an important term in email marketing metrics and reporting. Understanding how recipients are counted, tracked, and engaged helps you measure campaign performance and optimize your email strategy.
Why recipients matter in email marketing
Recipients are the foundation of your email marketing metrics. Every key performance indicator—open rate, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate—is calculated based on the number of recipients.
Recipients vs. sends – Some platforms distinguish between recipients and sends. If you send the same email twice to the same person (intentionally or by mistake), that counts as two sends but only one recipient.
Recipients vs. subscribers – Not all recipients are active subscribers. Your recipient count for a specific campaign depends on which segment you’re targeting. You might have 10,000 total subscribers but send a campaign to only 2,000 recipients based on segmentation.
Recipients drive engagement – The quality and relevance of your recipient list directly impacts how well your emails perform. Sending to the right recipients improves open rates, clicks, and conversions.
Types of recipients
Not all recipients interact with your emails in the same way. Understanding different recipient types helps you refine targeting and improve results.
Engaged recipients
These are people who regularly open, click, or take action on your emails. Engaged recipients are your most valuable audience—they’re interested in your content and more likely to convert.
Inactive recipients
Recipients who haven’t opened or clicked your emails in a set period (often 60–90 days or longer). Inactive recipients hurt engagement metrics and can negatively impact deliverability if they make up too much of your list.
New recipients
People who’ve recently joined your list. New recipients often have high engagement initially, making this a critical time to deliver relevant, valuable content through welcome series or onboarding campaigns.
Unengaged but deliverable recipients
These are valid email addresses that receive your messages but show little to no engagement. They may have lost interest, changed roles, or simply ignore your emails. Over time, keeping these recipients on your active list can harm your sender reputation.
How email recipients count affects metrics
Your recipient count is the denominator in most email marketing calculations, so it directly influences how you interpret performance.
- Open rate = (Emails opened ÷ Recipients) × 100
- Click-through rate = (Clicks ÷ Recipients) × 100
- Bounce rate = (Bounced emails ÷ Recipients) × 100
- Unsubscribe rate = (Unsubscribes ÷ Recipients) × 100
If your recipient list includes a large number of inactive or invalid addresses, your metrics will appear worse than they actually are for your engaged audience. This is why list hygiene and segmentation are so important.
Managing your recipient list
A healthy recipient list is made up of people who want to hear from you and are likely to engage. Keeping your list clean and targeted improves deliverability, engagement, and results.
Segment recipients strategically
Don’t send every campaign to your entire list. Use segmentation to target recipients based on behaviour, preferences, lifecycle stage, or demographics. This ensures your emails are relevant to the people receiving them.
Remove invalid recipients
Hard bounces—permanent delivery failures—should be removed immediately. Continuing to send to invalid addresses damages your sender reputation and skews your metrics.
Re-engage or remove inactive recipients
If someone hasn’t engaged in several months, send a re-engagement campaign to see if they’re still interested. If they don’t respond, consider removing them from your active list or moving them to a separate, low-frequency segment.
Use double opt-in
Double opt-in requires new subscribers to confirm their email address before being added to your list. This ensures your recipients are real people who genuinely want to receive your emails, reducing bounces and improving engagement from the start.
Monitor recipient engagement over time
Track how different recipient segments perform. If a group consistently shows low engagement, investigate why and adjust your targeting, content, or frequency.
Recipient vs. contact
Some email platforms distinguish between recipients and contacts.
- Contact – A person in your database, whether they’re subscribed, unsubscribed, or bounced. Contacts represent everyone you have information for.
- Recipient – Someone who actually receives an email. Only subscribed, deliverable contacts are counted as recipients when you send a campaign.
For example, you might have 12,000 contacts in your system, but only 9,000 are active subscribers eligible to be recipients.
Recipient limits and pricing
Many email service providers (ESPs) base pricing on the number of recipients or contacts in your account, or the number of emails sent per month.
- Contact-based pricing – You pay based on how many total contacts or recipients are in your account, regardless of how often you email them.
- Send-based pricing – You pay based on how many emails you send, regardless of list size.
Understanding how your ESP counts recipients helps you manage costs and avoid surprises. Some platforms charge for all contacts, including unsubscribed ones, while others only count active, deliverable recipients.
Recipient quality over quantity
It’s tempting to grow your recipient list as large as possible, but quality matters more than quantity.
A list of 5,000 engaged recipients who open, click, and convert will outperform a list of 50,000 recipients who ignore your emails. Large, unengaged lists can actually harm deliverability, as mailbox providers track engagement rates and penalise senders with consistently low interaction.
Focus on attracting recipients who genuinely want to hear from you, and prioritise keeping them engaged over simply growing the list.
Recipient consent and compliance
In many regions, you’re legally required to have explicit consent before adding someone as a recipient. Laws like Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, and the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States all regulate how you can collect and email recipients.
Key compliance principles include:
- Only email recipients who have opted in or have an existing business relationship with you
- Provide a clear, easy way for recipients to unsubscribe
- Honour unsubscribe requests immediately
- Include your physical mailing address in every email
- Don’t use misleading subject lines or sender information
Respecting recipient consent isn’t just a legal requirement—it builds trust and ensures your list is made up of people who actually want to engage with your content.
Key takeaway
A recipient is anyone who receives an email you send. Recipients are the foundation of your email metrics and the focus of your targeting and segmentation efforts. Building and maintaining a high-quality recipient list—one made up of engaged, consenting individuals—is essential for strong deliverability, better performance, and long-term email marketing success.