then you have launched your email marketing campaign.
Whether it’s highlighting a new product or persuading potential customers to re-engage, it certainly took you some time to determine the right copy and images to use.
Before you start tracking, know why you are measuring.
Not all email marketing campaigns are aimed at generating sales (although that’s probably their ultimate goal). Other goals may focus on re-engagement, building brand awareness, growing another email list, collecting more data on subscribers, etc.
now know the next steps by effectively tracking the performance of your campaign.
Too many marketers track only 3-5 KPIs, but there are actually 10 you need to look at to get the full picture. To help you really optimize your campaigns, here are maropost’s 10 essential metrics and kpis for email marketing.
#1: number of emails delivered
Just because you have 10, 100 or 1000 names on your email list doesn’t mean your emails are getting delivered.
That’s because a 100% deliverability rate is really impossible.
for example, if 85% of your emails make it to the inbox, that means 15% might as well not exist. so if you have 1000 names on your list, that means 150 people never received your email.
Second, you need to know if there’s a sudden drop in deliverability. Sometimes, through no fault of their own, an ISP can suddenly blacklist a vendor, especially if they have a shared, rather than dedicated, IP. If you suddenly can’t email anyone with a gmail address, for example, you should act immediately to find out why and fix the problem.
A word of warning: there is a difference between an email that is “delivered” and one that actually arrives in your inbox. It could very well be delivered, but go straight to the recipient’s spam folder. that’s why more marketers are starting to use inbox placement rate (ipr) as a kpi, so they can measure how many emails actually make it to the inbox.
#2: number of opened emails
just sending it to the inbox is not enough.
You’ll also want to note how many emails are opened. If you get 85% of your emails delivered and you have an IPR of 79%, that doesn’t mean subscribers are paying attention to your message. That’s why you need to track your open rate.
Like deliverability, you want to track trends in your open rate and adjust accordingly.
You may want to compare your open rates to what is typical for your industry for a benchmark. make sure the comparison is industry-specific, as some industries, like finance and hospitality, tend to have higher open rates (which makes sense given people are going to open emails from their banks and hotels they frequent), so don’t compare it to a broad standard.
Please note that some people use preview panes for their email. this can record email opens that are not actually opened. also, text-only emails will not be recorded as opened, even if they are.
#3: clickthrough rate
clickthrough rate (ctr) indicates how many people clicked on a link in your email.
however, unlike openings and deliverability, you’ll need to dig a little deeper. For each campaign, you need to know not only which links interested them the most, but also where those links were placed.
for example, if most clicks are in the top half of the page, it’s passing the blink test.
suppose you offered the same link but worded it in two different ways and one worked better than the other, then you can optimize your text cta accordingly. Also, compare buttons to text links.
Remember to track recipient clicks. clicking the unsubscribe link can count as a click, that’s a bad sign!
#4: click-to-open rate
Your click-to-open (ctr) rate is the number of opens compared to the number of clicks.
Of the people who opened your email, how many actually clicked on a link? This metric tells you how well your subject line and content work together. If your subject line generated many opens but few clicks, there was a disconnect. if you had a lot of clicks but few opens, you had a great offer but you missed the subject line.
Other factors can influence your open rate, such as the quality of your list, the sender’s email address, the day/time you send, etc.
#5: unsubscribe rate
seriously, this kpi is a must!
There’s a lot you can learn from your unsubscribe rate. for example, it means people didn’t report your email as spam, they just weren’t interested in your emails anymore and probably had them on the wrong list.
Watch for trends in your unsubscribe rate, especially after making a change like targeting, a template redesign, or a new shipping schedule. If the number of unsubscribes suddenly increases in response to the change, you should reconsider the change.
Remember that people who unsubscribe don’t want to be on your list and are leaving voluntarily, which is much better for the long-term health of your ability to deliver.
[sc name=”guide-deliverabilityguide”]#6: bounce rate (hard and soft)
a hard bounce is a permanent bounce while a soft bounce is temporary.
Hard bounces are often due to invalid email addresses. this happens when someone leaves a job (email address removed) or when an email address is entered incorrectly (for example, with a typo).
Pay attention to hard bounces because it indicates that you are falling behind in cleaning up your list. it may also indicate that you should use double opt-in or some other method to verify that the email addresses were entered correctly.
When you get hard bounces, you should remove those addresses from your list ASAP because those email addresses will never work.
soft bounces, on the other hand, are temporary and caused by a problem on the receiving end. for example, it could be that the inbox is full or a server is down. Depending on the email service provider or email marketing platform you are using, the system will automatically try to resend the message as many times as possible.
#7: spam complaints
Monitor spam complaints along with your unsubscribes because some people just report emails as spam instead of bothering to unsubscribe.
If both kpis are trending in the same direction, that’s telling you something. also, look at this number if you made a change.
#8: sharing on social networks
This kpi indicates social media engagement and is a good indicator of the quality of your content. so make it easy for your readers to share your content by adding social buttons to your emails.
An email blog I read produces some great content, but makes it nearly impossible to share to the point where it’s comical. the only link in the entire email links to your home page, then you have to click through several submenus to get to your blog.
To further complicate matters, they email the article days before they publish it on their blog, so the only way to share it is to set a reminder to come back to their blog in a couple of days to see if it happens. have published, then I can share it.
#9: forward
This kpi is like social sharing, but with one key difference: people who receive email forwards tend to be more receptive to content compared to people who receive content shared with they. through social channels.
This is because a forward is like answering a phone call or receiving a physical letter in the mail…it stands out because it’s rare. again, this is measuring the level of engagement and the quality of your share-worthy content, both of which you want to increase.
#10: conversions
Finally, the kpi that matters most: conversions.
Now, don’t assume this means dollars. Depending on the goal of your email campaign, a conversion could be a sale or event registration, subscription, demo registration, content download, or something else.
Ultimately, you can have different goals for your email marketing campaigns. Knowing why you’re measuring is just as important as knowing what you’re measuring, and this is particularly true when it comes to tracking conversions.
Time to start tracking these email marketing metrics
Now that you know the 10 essential email marketing metrics and KPIs, start testing to optimize your campaigns in the future. this way you can set new goals not related to conversions, like increasing your subscriber rate or reducing the number of spam complaints.
[sc name=”guide-doingmorewithdata”]