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Placed Order Rate

The share of messages you delivered that ended in an order.

60 second readAppears on: Klaviyo

What it means

Placed Order Rate is the share of delivered messages that led to an order Klaviyo credits to that send. Orders are counted once per recipient, and credit goes to the last Klaviyo message clicked inside the attribution window. Deliver 9,600 and get 58 attributed orders and it reads 0.6%.

Show the math

Formula and a worked example

Placed Order Rate = attributed orders ÷ DeliveredDeliveredHigher usually means a larger reachable audience..

Attributed orders are orders Klaviyo credits to that specific message, counted once per recipient.

Worked example. A campaign is delivered to 9,600 profiles. 288 people click and 58 of them order, at an average of €62. Placed Order Rate = 58 ÷ 9,600 = 0.6%, and the send earned €3,596 — about €0.37 for every message delivered.

Send a campaign on the same day a cart flow fires and the campaign can take an order the flow was about to close, so both rates move without either message changing.

It answers the question

Of everyone this message reached, how many bought? Unlike opens and clicks, it ends in an order, which makes it the better way to rank sends.

Why it matters

Opens and clicks are steps on the way; this one is the till. A send with unremarkable opens and a strong Placed Order Rate usually beats the reverse, and ranking your last month by this column can reshuffle which emails you thought were working.

It's also the clearest argument for automation. Triggered messages usually beat scheduled ones, because they arrive while the shopper still has their card out rather than at 10am on a Thursday.

What good looks like

There's no universal standard, and the spread between send types is enormous by design. An abandoned checkout flow can sit far above a newsletter with both perfectly healthy, so judge each send against its own history and its own segment.

Read it in euros as well as percent: 0.2% of 40,000 delivered is worth far more than 1% of 2,000.

How to improve it

LeverWhat you doExpectHow longWatch out for
Fast
Rank last month by this column and repeat the winners
Rebuild your top three sends for a fresh segment instead of writing new onesNext month's average rises with no new ideas2–3 weeksRepeating winners narrows what the list ever sees. Fatigue arrives sooner and Unsubscribe Rate creeps up.
Fast
Fire the cart reminder sooner
Move the first abandoned checkout message from 4 hours to 1Rate up on that flow1–2 weeksYou catch shoppers who'd have come back anyway. Any code attached discounts orders you'd have won at full price, so Contribution Margin per order falls.
Slow
Match the send to what they browsed
Segment campaigns by category and last viewed product so the images fit0.2–0.5 points on campaigns4–6 weeksMore versions of every send, each to a smaller audience, so single-send results get noisy and harder to trust.
Slow
Fix the page behind your best emails
Point links at a page that repeats the email's promise and price, not the homepageThe same clicks convert better across every send1 quarterBespoke pages need building and maintaining, and they go stale the moment stock or pricing moves.

Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.

Read it with

A rate tells you how well a send converted. Beside reach, it tells you whether that mattered.

Placed Order Rate and Delivered, month over month on Klaviyo
Placed Order Rate up
Placed Order Rate down
Delivered up

Growing and converting

Reach and relevance rose together, which almost never happens by accident. The signup source is doing something right.

Find where the new subscribers came from and buy more of that.

Reaching more, moving fewer

You added names faster than interest. Common right after a giveaway or a competition — the list looks bigger and sells the same.

Check the newest signup source before adding another.
Delivered down

Sharp and small

You're mailing a keener slice, so the rate flatters. Real orders, but the ceiling is set by how few people you're reaching.

Test widening the segment one step and watch what happens.

Shrinking both ways

Fewer people reached and fewer of them buying. That's a list decaying rather than a campaign misfiring.

Check bounces and suppressions first, then the offer.
Placed Order Rate + Click RateClick RateHigher is better; it shows stronger engagement.

The pair splits the email from the shop. Clicks strong with orders weak means the message did its job and the page, the price or the stock let it down. Clicks weak with orders holding means a small group is buying reliably and the message isn't reaching enough of them.

Placed Order Rate + Returning OrdersReturning OrdersHow much of your volume loyalty drives.35% or more is healthy

Together they show whether email is winning orders or harvesting them. A strong rate that rises and falls in step with Returning Orders means your flows are taking credit for loyalty you already had. A strong rate on flat repeat business is email genuinely creating demand.

Common misreads

“This was our best campaign — it had the highest rate.”

Check the audience size. A back-in-stock alert to 300 waiting shoppers will often top the table and can't be scaled beyond the people waiting. Rank by rate to learn what works, by revenue to decide what to send.

“This flow converts at 4%, so send it to the whole list.”

The rate comes from the trigger, not the copy. The message works because the person just abandoned a full basket. Send the same words to people who never carted and it collapses.

“Orders fell, so the email underperformed.”

Klaviyo credits the last message clicked in its window. A heavy campaign week quietly takes orders the flows would have closed, so flow rates dip with nothing wrong in the flows. Check the send calendar before you rebuild anything.

Also called

Email conversion rate · placed order rate · orders per delivery

See yoursYour Placed Order Rate for every campaign and flow in the period, beside the delivery count and revenue for the same send.

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