As a marketer, you’re probably a pro at email marketing. You’ve come to realize the enormous potential that email marketing holds, and you’re already leveraging it (with precaution, of course). Research studies on email marketing metrics show that you can expect a return of about $ 32 (dollar, dollar bill yo) for every dollar invested in email marketing.
Every email marketer strives to become an expert in marketing, learning the nuances, adopting the best practices for every campaign, and avoiding amateur mistakes. Once they click the send button, they’re confident that they’ve done their best, and now it is up to the receiver’s decision.
But is that all there is to email marketing?
Well, before you wade through email marketing metrics’ depths, we suggest you take a step back and assess your goals. What do you seek to achieve through this campaign? Are you looking to grow your subscriber base or generate more leads? Is this the best marketing strategy for your goal?
Once you’ve checked all those boxes, it is now time to execute your marketing strategy. But unless you monitor the campaign metrics, no matter how much effort you have put in, you may be unable to maximize the business outcomes.
As with all measurable things in life, from your age to your test score, it all comes down to the numbers. Want to know which tools help you measure the success of your emails?
What are email marketing metrics?
From email lists to open rates, bounce rates, click-throughs, and, sales and subscriptions, many indicators require the attention of marketers.
Measuring the success of your email marketing campaign is a sustained process. As your business grows, so should your marketing campaigns. You don’t want to become redundant, do you?
In this article, we will take you through a journey of the email marketing metrics that you need to analyze and track, while delving into the art of mastering high-performing emails.
Here we go:
- Email list
- Open Rates
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Disengagement rate
- Bounce rate
- Conversion rate
- Number of unsubscribes
- Forwarding rate/ email sharing rate
- Engagement over time
- Overall ROI
1. Email list
The first metric that is so obvious that it can never be overlooked is your email list, i.e., the audience that you are trying to engage with. While larger numbers may seem better, that’s not always the case.
In the words of Steve Jobs, “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”
We recommend you maintain a high-quality list. A high-quality list would include actively involved people with up-to-date addresses; this will reduce bounce rates and drive up click-throughs.
Think about it, when was the last time you updated your email list, based on email clients? Would we be right to assume that it wasn’t recent?
Did you know that on average, the quality of your email list goes down by 20% every year?
You read that right, 20%!
But why does your email list decay so much? Well, people change email addresses, move organizations, or opt out of marketing campaigns. Not to forget, simple typos are an aspect that drives down the quality of your email lists.
Go through your subscribers to search for typos and spelling errors (e.g., @gmial.com instead of @gmail.com).
The list growth rate is an important metric to assess how successful your email list is.
This metric can be measured by taking the number of new subscribers minus the number of unsubscribers. And then you divide it by the total number of email addresses on the list before multiplying it by 100.
It’s common to experience some attrition, so focus on ways to consistently build your list, attract subscribers, and find new loyal subscribers.
2. Open Rates
What is the purpose of refining your email list? It is primarily to get more of your audience to open your marketing emails. And that brings us to our next marketing metric – open rate.
Open rate is the easiest KPI in email marketing metrics and is key to determining how well your emails are received from the number of emails you sent. The available rating monitors how many subscribers have opened your email.
Open rates will give you insights into the effectiveness of the subject line.
For example, studies indicate that the subject lines using the first names of subscribers are 26% more likely to be opened.
When it comes to open rates, desktop open rates are higher during weekdays while people are at work and on mobile, open rates occur more during the weekends when people are away from their desks.
3. Click-through rate (CTR)
CTR is another primary metric that helps you assess how well your campaigns are doing. CTR assesses how many people have clicked on the links in your email. For instance, if you included a link for an offer or a Call-to-action, a CTR would measure the subscribers’ percentage that clicked on your link.
While you are creating your email, there are some ways to boost click-through rates. But it should apart from spam complaints. For example, include links throughout the email at the suitable areas and add eye-catching and noticeable Call-to-actions.
Click-through rates are usually lower than open rates. On average, click-through rates are slightly above 4%.
Mobile click rates are significantly lower than desktop click rates because users frequently operate several windows and other complicated browsing techniques. These behaviors are often simpler on a desktop than on the phone. Make sure your email campaigns look great both on a desktop or on a phone.
4. Disengagement rate
While you probably would like to disengage from the disengagement rate, it is a significant metric that informs you of how likely people are to dislike your email.
Your emails will always drive your subscribers to take action, this may either be in your favor or against your marketing campaign and while you can’t get all your subscribers to like the content you put out, a large majority of them should.
With the help of the disengagement rate, you can detect content that doesn’t work and take it out of your copy toolbox.
Try to keep the average disengagement rate below 0.15% for the emails, or you’ll start to see a decline in the efficacy of your campaigns.
5. Bounce rate
Then comes the bounce rate. The bounce rate calculates the number of email addresses that didn’t receive your email. Soft bounces track transient email address issues and hard bounces track permanent email address issues.
Measuring bounce rates with open rates will give you a clearer picture of the efficiency of your subscribers. If you have many hard bounces, the list can be full of invalid email addresses, outdated email addresses, or addresses with errors in them.
You can proactively minimize the bounce rate by enabling a double opt-in, which requires subscribers to check their email addresses and confirm that they wish to receive emails from the brand. Double opt-in is a smart way to help maintain better quality email lists and reduced bounce rates but sometimes it may affect by internet service providers.
6. Conversion rate
While your click-through rate measures the number of subscribers who clicked on your link, your conversion rate measures the number of subscribers who completed a specific action.
For instance, if you have a link in your email for your subscribers to partake in a Black Friday sale or attend the latest webinar, the conversion rate will tell you what percentage of the people who clicked on the link made purchases or participated in the webinar.
Conversion rates give you a fascinating insight into your investment return. When you know how much you’ve invested and how many customers you’re converting, it’s easier to determine whether you’re getting the returns you are seeking.
7. Number of unsubscribes
It’s very simple to measure the number of unsubscribes and unsubscribe rate. Any email provider will inform you about how many users have unsubscribed after receiving an email from you. Typically, this email metric can be found in your main dashboard or your analytics dashboard.
While a high number of unsubscribers could seem discouraging, it is not all grim. Unsubscribers could turn out to be a blessing in disguise, they give you the opportunity to fine-tune your subscriber list.
In fact, giving people the option to unsubscribe lets them know they have a preference as to what type of content they can opt to get from your brand, and this helps to develop trust.
8. Forwarding rate/ email sharing rate
As the term suggests, the forwarding rate or email sharing rate calculates the number of subscribers who either shared your post via social media or sent it to a friend.
Forwarding rate or sharing is a good measure to monitor because it gives you an indication of how many people support and advocate your brand. It shows you the number of subscribers who are recommending your emails.
Developing brand advocates via email marketing is a fantastic strategy, particularly since 81% of customers are influenced by friends’ social media posts to make purchasing decisions.
9. Engagement over time
Do you post on Instagram at certain times during the day as it receives more engagement?
Well, tada, the same logic applies to email marketing campaigns. By tracking your engagement over time, you will know the best time to send emails.
Your email service provider will allow you to use automation to send emails based on customer behaviors or triggers. However, if you track engagement over time for your emails, you will analyze when you get the highest open and click rates.
Many email service providers automate this functionality and collect the data for you. However, it’s a good idea to track this statistic by yourself and schedule your emails appropriately.
10. Overall ROI
Overall ROI is an essential metric to track for a successful email campaign. It shows you the average return on investment for your campaign.
You can measure this by taking the revenue you’ve earned from campaign profits minus the amount you’ve expended on marketing, dividing it by the amount, and so on – as earlier mentioned.
Email marketing does not require deep investment, yet it provides the highest ROI compared to other digital marketing strategies. Learn some art and science of email signature marketing.
Conclusion
And that’s all folks (hope we haven’t bored you).
We’ve reached the end of our exhaustive list of key email marketing metrics that every marketer should pay attention to. You can also check out some modern marketing metrics.
Here are three points that an email marketing metric should do:
- Provide useful information for marketing campaigns
- Provide insight into consumer activities
- Keep you focused on campaign targets
While you set your campaign targets, these email metrics will help you assess your overall performance and help you make the required changes to your marketing strategy.
With all these metrics in the palm of your hand, you should now be ready to multiply their dollars. To improve your marketing campaigns, be sure to check out Sloovi Outreach.