> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Email Health, BigCommerce > Email Health for BigCommerce stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Supporting Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Ecommerce Platform](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Share of recent BC orders that carry a non-empty `billingAddress.email`. The single best leading indicator for email-marketing reach: missing emails today are missing welcome flows, missing abandonment recovery, and missing cross-sell touches for the next 90 days. Every missing email is a customer your CRM cannot ever speak to. | | | | --------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **What it counts** | `COUNT(billingAddress.email != NULL OR != '') / COUNT(_id)` over the rolling window. The result is a percentage between 0 and 100. We treat empty strings, whitespace, and BC's "noreply\@..." placeholder addresses as missing, only real, deliverable-shaped emails count. | | **VAT / tax treatment** | n/a, this is a customer-data metric, not a money metric. | | **Shipping** | n/a. | | **Discounts** | n/a. | | **Refunds** | n/a, the email captured at order time is what matters; refund status doesn't reverse the email collection. | | **Cancelled / voided orders** | Included. A cancelled order with an email captured at checkout still counts as "captured" for deliverability purposes; you can still email that customer. | | **Currency** | n/a, count metric. | | **Channels / sources** | All BC channels contribute, but channel-mix matters a lot here. **POS orders** capture email rate \~50-70% (cashier asks, customer often declines). **Web** captures \~95-99% (email is required at checkout). **Channel Manager / Amazon** orders may capture marketplace-anonymised emails (`...@marketplace.amazon.com`), which we count as "present" even though they cannot be marketed to. **Facebook Shop** orders captured via Meta-managed checkout often have anonymised emails. | | **Anonymised marketplace emails** | A separate concern. We count `...@marketplace.amazon.com` and similar as "present", but they are functionally undeliverable for marketing. To see the marketable share, pair with [BC Channel Revenue Mix](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/revenue-mix-by-channel) and exclude marketplace channels from the email-health denominator. We are working on a "marketable email rate" sub-card. | | **Guest checkout vs registered** | A guest checkout still requires email entry on web, so guest orders normally have email. The failure pattern is non-web channels (POS especially). | | **B2B Edition** | B2B orders almost always have email (the buyer login is email-based). B2B email health typically reads 99%+. | | **Time window** | `RT` (real-time, refreshed each order sync) | | **Alert trigger** | `<85% (deliverability risk)`, sentiment key `email_health`. Below 85% means more than 1-in-7 orders cannot be emailed; the marketing team is materially undersized vs the customer base. | | **Roles** | owner, marketing | ## Calculation ``` COUNT(billingAddress.email != NULL) / COUNT(_id) WHERE date BETWEEN [period_start, period_end] ``` ## Worked example A US homewares brand on BigCommerce Pro with web + POS + Amazon Channel Manager. Snapshot at 12 Apr 26. | Channel | Orders (last 30 days) | Orders with email | Email health % | Notes | | ---------------------- | --------------------- | ----------------- | -------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | | Stencil web | 4,210 | 4,180 | 99.3% | Healthy, web checkout enforces email | | POS Terminal A | 740 | 410 | 55.4% | **Cashiers not asking for email consistently** | | POS Terminal B | 312 | 240 | 76.9% | Better, store manager has trained team | | Amazon Channel Manager | 1,180 | 1,180 | 100.0% | But all `...@marketplace.amazon.com`, not marketable | | Facebook Shop | 88 | 81 | 92.0% | Mix of real and Meta-anonymised | | **Store total** | **6,530** | **6,091** | **93.3%** | Above 85% threshold, but headline is misleading | What's interesting: 1. **The headline 93.3% is healthy but misleading.** Strip out the 1,180 marketplace-anonymised Amazon emails and you get 5,350 orders with 4,911 marketable emails = 91.8% on the marketable base. Strip out POS A's missing emails too and the marketable rate is 87%. Materially worse than the headline. 2. **POS Terminal A is the single biggest fix.** 330 orders without emails over 30 days = \~4,000 missing emails per year on that one terminal alone. At a typical 1-3% email-to-revenue conversion that's \$20-60k/year of CRM revenue lost from one cashier-training gap. 3. **Amazon Channel Manager 100% is a footnote, not a result.** Amazon-anonymised emails are unmarketable. Use Amazon's own Brand Tailored Promotions for direct marketplace customer outreach; there is no way to bridge to your Klaviyo or Mailchimp list from these orders. 4. **Below 85% triggers the alert. Below 75% triggers panic.** A 75% email-capture rate means a quarter of your customer base is invisible to your CRM, and the gap compounds, every quarter you stay below 85% the long-term reachable customer pool shrinks relative to the unreachable shadow pool. 5. **POS Terminal B's 77% suggests the fix is operational, not technical.** A 99% web rate with a 55% POS rate means the POS app supports email capture; cashiers just don't use it. A 30-day "ask for email" training cycle typically lifts POS rates from 55% to 80%. The fix playbook when this card drops below 85%: 1. **Decompose by channel.** Run [BC Channel Revenue Mix](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/revenue-mix-by-channel) and a per-channel email-health view; almost always 1 or 2 channels are the cause. 2. **For POS underperformers**, retrain cashiers on the email-capture flow. Ask "would you like a digital receipt?" instead of "can I have your email?", consent rate jumps 30-50%. 3. **For Amazon / marketplace anonymisation**, accept that those customers are not marketable through your CRM. Use the marketplace's own follow-up tooling. 4. **Review checkout email-required setting** in [Settings → Checkout](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/settings/checkout). For web orders email should be required (default); some merchants disable it for accessibility reasons and then forget to monitor. 5. **Sync to your CRM (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, etc.)** with a lookback so any historically-missing emails captured later get back-filled into the right customer record. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Email Health | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Customer Count](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/unique-customers) | The total reachable base. Email health % × customer count = marketable customers. | | [Customer Acquisition Trend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/customer-acquisition-trend) | Acquisition without email capture is acquisition you can't nurture; the two together tell the full top-of-funnel story. | | [BC Guest vs Registered](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/guest-vs-registered-orders) | Guest checkouts often capture email but not consent. The marketable subset is smaller than this card suggests. | | [Repeat Customer Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/repeat-customer-rate) | Strong negative correlation. Stores with low email health typically have low repeat rates because retention email is the lever that drives repeat. | | [Unverified Emails](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/unverified-email-customers) | The "captured but unverified" subset. This card counts presence; that one counts deliverability. | | [BC Channel Revenue Mix](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/revenue-mix-by-channel) | Channel-mix decomposition. Drops on this card are usually channel-concentrated. | | [`klaviyo.kl_list_health`](/nerve-centre/klaviyo/kl_list_health) | The receiving end. BC's email capture should populate Klaviyo's active list; gaps mean sync is broken. | | [`shopify.email_health`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/email-health) | Cross-platform peer. Shopify defaults to required-email-at-checkout, so Shopify equivalents typically read 97-99%. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in BigCommerce Control Panel:** BigCommerce does not surface "email capture rate" as a single tile. The closest checks are: 1. [Customers → View](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/customers), which shows the customer list with email columns. Filtering for "no email" is approximate. 2. [Orders → All orders](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/orders), where each order's billing-email column is visible. Bulk-export to CSV and count the empty-email rows. 3. [Settings → Checkout](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/settings/checkout) confirms whether email is required at web checkout (it should be). For B2B Edition, [B2B → Buyers](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/b2b/buyers) shows the buyer email status; B2B logins are email-keyed so this is structurally near-100%. **Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual BC count:** | Reason | Direction | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | | **Marketplace-anonymised emails.** We count `...@marketplace.amazon.com` as "present"; a marketer manually counting marketable emails would exclude these. | Vortex IQ HIGHER than the marketable-rate count | | **Whitespace / null normalisation.** We treat `" "` and `" "` as missing; a naive `IS NOT NULL` SQL query treats them as present. | Vortex IQ LOWER than naive query | | **POS guest receipts.** BC POS may store an email at order-time then strip it on receipt-print; we capture whatever's in the order at sync. | Boundary effects | | **Time zone.** Window boundary differs between BC reports (store TZ) and our index (UTC). | Boundary effects | | **Sync lag.** Webhook delays mean recent orders may be missing from this card. | Vortex IQ LOWER for the most recent hour | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`klaviyo.kl_active_subscribers`](/nerve-centre/klaviyo/kl_active_subscribers) | Klaviyo's active list should be a subset of this card | Klaviyo requires consent; this card counts captured emails regardless of consent. Expect Klaviyo to be 60-90% of this card. | | [`mailchimp.mc_audience_size`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/mailchimp/audience-size) | Same as Klaviyo, consent-gated subset | Same divergence pattern. | | [`google_analytics.ga_logged_in_users`](/nerve-centre/google_analytics/ga_logged_in_users) | GA4's logged-in-user share should track web-channel email-capture rate | GA4 measures session login state, not order-level email capture. | **Same-metric documentation cross-reference:** * [`shopify.email_health`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/email-health) (planned) * [`adobe_commerce.email_health`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/email-health) (planned) ## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **My email-health % is 96% but Klaviyo says my reachable list is 64%, what's going on?** The 32-percentage-point gap is almost entirely consent vs presence. This card counts emails captured at checkout. Klaviyo (and any consent-gated email tool) only counts emails with explicit marketing consent. UK / EU stores under GDPR see this gap most starkly; US stores see narrower gaps (CAN-SPAM is opt-out by default for transactional senders). Fix the gap by adding a consent checkbox at checkout (default off, single-opt-in) plus a post-purchase consent email. **Why does my Amazon channel show 100% email but Klaviyo can't find any of those customers?** Amazon anonymises buyer emails to `...@marketplace.amazon.com` for privacy; those addresses route through Amazon and cannot receive third-party marketing. Use Amazon Brand Tailored Promotions for direct marketplace customer outreach. To reach Amazon-acquired customers off-platform you'd need them to register on your BC store separately, which they rarely do. **Below 85% triggered the alert. How quickly does this affect revenue?** Slowly but compoundingly. The first month at 80% capture rate doesn't move email-driven revenue much. By month 6 your email list is 18% smaller than it would have been; email revenue trails that gap. By month 18 the compounded effect is 30-40% lower email-driven revenue than a 95%-capture peer. **My POS rate is 50%, what's a realistic target?** 80-85% with consistent training. Above 90% is rare on POS unless you tie email capture to a perk (digital receipt is the easiest, loyalty-points enrolment is the strongest). The fix is operational, not technical, every BC POS install supports email capture. **Are abandoned carts in this number?** No, this card counts orders only (`COUNT(_id)` on the orders index, not carts). Abandoned-cart email rate is a separate concern; check your cart-recovery vendor's deliverability dashboard. **My checkout recently added an "email is optional" toggle for accessibility, did that drop my number?** Likely yes. We've seen stores drop from 99% to 85% within 30 days of making email optional at web checkout. The accessibility argument is reasonable but the marketing cost is high. Compromise: keep email required at checkout; provide a "skip and email me later" option that uses receipt-confirmation flow. That balances both. **My most recent reading is 100%, did the integration break?** Possibly, possibly not. Some stores legitimately read 100% (web-only, every order has email). If you also run POS or marketplace channels and the number reads 100%, it suggests channel orders aren't reaching the index. Check Settings → Sources → BigCommerce to confirm all channels are syncing. **Should I trust BC's own "Customer email capture rate" report on Plus / Pro?** It's directionally right but uses BC's own definition (which may exclude POS and marketplace channels by default). Use this card for the cross-platform headline; use BC's report for promotional-touchpoint diagnosis (welcome flow opt-in rate, abandoned-cart subscribe rate). **Does removing test orders affect this number?** Yes, marginally. Test orders typically have placeholder emails (`test@yourdomain.com`) which we count as present. If your test-order volume is high (developer team running QA daily), the headline can drift up by 1-3 percentage points artificially. Filter by `customer_id != known_test_id` upstream if precision matters. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Email Health* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across BigCommerce and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.