Email marketing can yield great results, but it takes effort to perfect it. The email marketing campaign you start with my look very different than the one you end up with. That’s because it takes time to perfect your approach, and continually optimize your emails for the best results. Of course, before you attempt to create a successful email marketing initiative, you have to determine what success will look like. How will you measure your campaigns?
Start by creating a list of goals for your campaign. Then, consider which of the following eleven metrics you should track.
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Click-Through Rate
This is one of the most popular metrics to track, and for good reason. It really tells you how well your email campaign is progressing. Click through rate tracks the number of readers who click the links inside of your emails that link to your website or landing pages.Click-through rates can indicate how many readers are clicking through to read additional content, or who are clicking through to answer a call to action. Don’t be surprised if your click-through rates are significantly lower than your open rates. That’s to be expected.
However, there are things you can do to boost these numbers. Super Office increased their click through rates by 53%. They accomplished this by optimizing their emails for all devices, perfecting their subject lines, testing their calls to action, and personalizing their emails.
Bounce Rate
Email bounce rates are a bit different than website bounce rates. Here, bounce rate refers to failed deliveries. These can be divided into two categories. Hard bounces indicate a permanent issue with an email address. A soft bounce is a temporary issue.By measuring bounce rates, you can do a better job of determining the overall quality of your email lists. For example, an email list that receives a large number of hard bounces likely needs to be cleaned and verified. You can also implement a double opt-in protocol to ensure that your list only includes valid subscriptions.
List Growth
Remember that there’s more to your email strategy than measuring the actions your subscribers take when they get your emails. Your ability to gather and keep new subscribers is also important. That’s why list growth is such an important metric.To get this percentage, subtract the number of unsubscribes that you get from the number of new subscribers. Take that figure and divide it by the total number of subscribers you have. Multiply that by 100 to get your final answer.
Remember that some loss is to be expected. However, if you see a quick drop in growth rates or things begin to go negative, it’s time to do a bit more investigating.
Campaign ROI
This is the metric that tells you the overall return on investment for a particular email campaign. It’s pretty easy to calculate. Just take the money from sales resulting from the campaign and subtract the money spent. Take that figure and divide it by the amount of money you invested in the campaign. Multiply the total by 100.Domain Opens And Clicks
This number tracks how many opens and clicks you are getting on a particular domain. Domains are, gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc. If you notice that you’re numbers are low with a particular email provider, or the numbers suddenly drop, there might be an issue. You could have run afoul of that email providers spam rules for some reason.A marketing analyst at IsAccurate, translation review website, says, “Getting gray or blacklisted by a major email provider can have dire consequences. We track domain based metrics to ensure that our emails find their way to our clients.”
Open Rate
This is a simple, but exceptionally important metric. If your audience isn’t opening your emails, nothing else happens. One thing that open rates will tell you is whether or not your subject lines are effective.If your open rate isn’t where it should be, consider the example of Digital Marketer, along with several other examples. They tripled their email open rates by applying several proven techniques to upgrade their subject lines. These include:
- Using Psychological Tricks Such as Urgency or Scarcity
- Highlighting Benefits
- Piquing Curiosity
- Exploiting Credibility
- Using Emoticons
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate measures the number of recipients who click on a link in your email, then complete the desired action. For example, if a user clicks a link to a landing page, that’s a click through. If they answer the call to action on that landing page, that’s a conversion. Ethan Dunwill, a writer at Supreme Dissertation, understands the power of this metric. He says, “This is one of the best metrics to determine your return on investment. If you know how many people are converting, and the amount of money you have spent, you can calculate whether or not your investment has paid off.”Unsubscribe Rate
This is one of the easiest email marketing metrics to track if you use an email provider. This information is likely found in the analytics dashboard or the administrative dashboard. If you notice a high number of unsubscribes, that’s not always a bad thing.Unsubscribes can reflect the fact that your email list is a bit ‘self-cleaning’. You are losing people who simply aren’t interested in engaging with you, and likely never will be. On the other hand, you don’t want to lose people simply because they don’t understand the worth of staying.
Petdoors.com created a great unsubscribe page that allowed them to re-engage subscribers who clicked the unsubscribe link. They were able to reduce their unsubscribe rate by 82.2%.
Spam Rate
You will always have some emails that get flagged as spam. Simply put, many recipients will simply mark emails as spam rather than unsubscribing or filtering them. Still, you shouldn’t ignore this metric. Too many spam complaints could get you blocked by certain domains, even your own email provider.If you notice any issues with your spam report rate, take a look at your emails. You want to ensure that nothing about them is triggering any spam filter red flags.
Timed Engagement
This metric tracks the engagement rates your email receives over a specific period of time. This could be engagement over certain hours of the day or certain days of the week. If you use an email provider to automate the sending of your emails, this can tell you whether or not you are timing things correctly. You can learn when to send emails so that you get the most engagement.Social Shares
This metric is a bit different than email forwards and shares. This is only measurable if you add social share buttons to your emails or landing pages. Fortunately, this is easy enough to do through most email marketing software providers. You can then track the shares you earn through the accompanying analytics provided with your email software.There’s another reason to integrate social sharing into your emails. A study showed that adding social share options to emails boosted CTR by 158%. It’s also an important metric to track because social shares indicate that recipients are broadcasting your message to a wide audience.
Final Thoughts
To get the most out of your email campaigns, you need to track the metrics above relentlessly. By doing this, you can quickly identify areas where improvement is needed. You can also identify opportunities to improve on things that are already working.
About the Author:Kristin Savage is a writer for WoWGrade and Studicus. She’s also a budding author. In her relatively short time in her field, she has built a reputation for her ability to clearly explain complex concepts in a relatable, engaging manner. Kristin also runs her own blog called FlyWriting.
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