A Practical Guide to Email Marketing Metrics

Email marketing is the practice of forwarding your contacts emails for the sole purpose of marketing. The emails can be about promotional events, webinars, or commercials with the product images and links. It is important for all contacts to have agreed to be in your email list, otherwise your mail will end up in their spam folder. Now that we have gone through email marketing meaning, let’s look at some essential email marketing analytics metrics to track. These metrics will also help you understand what email marketing campaign analysis is.

Email marketing is one of the most potent marketing channels, ranking above social media marketing and affiliate marketing. It is only because of one simple reason – emails add a personal touch.

1. Clickthrough Rate

It is difficult to answer what the most important metrics for email marketing are, but the click-through rate (CTR) is definitely one of the top contenders. This is the first thing email marketers track. This metric enables the email marketer to easily calculate the performance of every email that they sent out. 

A good CTR is somewhere between 4% and 7%. If you are getting close to 7%, good for you! If it is on the lower side, it might be time to implement some changes which will help get the CTR to a higher level. 

Let’s see how can you improve CTR of your email.

1. Content should be relevant to the receiver:

Content relevancy is the most important method of improving CTR. It helps in generating a higher number of clicks as receivers are more interested to see what the email contains.

2. Personalisation of the emails.

Adding the recipient’s name in the email can help increase the CTR. It looks custom tailored for the recipient and they get a personal feeling. 

3. Including social sharing icons. 

When the recipients can share the emails on social media, it helps in getting higher CTR. 

2. Conversion Rate

The next thing that email marketers track is conversion rate. It tells the number of recipients who have taken any defined action which the email asked them to.

For example, if a mail has been sent out which asks the recipients to follow them on social media, and there is an increase in followers, you can consider those who followed you in the conversion list.

A good conversion rate is considered between 3% and 5% depending on the industry you are in. Keep a close eye on your email marketing metrics by industry to gauge the success of your campaigns.

Ways to increase conversion rate

1. Using a landing page:

Landing pages are one of the best methods of converting your visitors into customers. Landing pages can be designed in such a manner to showcase the offers and deals.

2. Use a clever and intriguing subject line:

This will ensure that the recipients do not think that it is a clickbait. Instead they will be intrigued and open the email to read its contents.

3. Using visual content:

Visual content is important for the email campaign. People have responded to visual content in emails positively. It helps in retention of the email in the minds of the recipient.   

4. Using appropriate call-to-action buttons: 

CTA buttons should be clear, short and have a working link of where the user is supposed to go. CTA buttons let people get a much clearer idea of what to do.

3. Bounce Rate

Two types of bounces are there:

1. Soft Bounces
2. Hard Bounces 

A temporary problem like a full inbox or recipient’s server problem, might result in soft bounces. The server may hold these emails till the problem clears, or the emails have to be sent again.

Invalid email addresses, closed or non existing email addresses result in hard bounces. These emails can never be successfully delivered to the intended email address. These email addresses should be immediately removed from the mailing list, as the ISPs treat bounce rates as one of the most important factors to form the sender’s image.

The average bounce rate is somewhere between 30% and 70%. If the range is  between 35% and 50%, it is considered an excellent number in terms of bounce rate.

Ways to decrease bounce rate

1. Clean the email list regularly:

This ensures that the bounce rate is less as the recipient emails are verified and updated.

2. Create engaging content: 

Keep the content engaging but short and to the point. Otherwise, prospects may not even open the email and straightaway delete them.  

4. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

The sharing and forwarding of the email helps the business get more recipients and it increases the audience. It is one of the most important metrics which should be tracked. It should be tracked because it helps you generate new contacts. 

The average forwarding rate is 0.02%. If you have a greater number than this, good for you! If the number is less than the average, then some of the following methods might help in increasing the numbers. 

Ways to increase email sharing rate.

1. Ask them to share:

The best method to increase email forward rate is to ask the recipients to share the mail with their contacts, if they like the contents of the mail.

2. Be relevant and have a personal touch:

People appreciate whenever they receive an email which gives them a personal feeling. They tend to share those emails more. Another factor is the relevancy. Whenever the contents of the email are relevant, it is more likely to get shared.

3. Offer them incentives: 

If everything else does not work, offering the recipients some kind of incentive is the best option. People like to get free or discounted stuff, and thus are willing to share the emails. 

5. Overall ROI

There are several methods to calculate the ROI of the campaigns. Determining overall ROI is very important. It helps you track the revenue generated for your company.

A good ROI is considered somewhere between 3600% and 4500%. This means for every rupee spent, the campaign, if done with perfection, will give a return of 36 rupees to 45 rupees.

Ways to increase ROI

1. Set goals:

This ensures that you can get the best results for every bit of money spent in the campaign.

2. Grow the email list:

This ensures that the email reaches out to more people which will help in increasing the ROI.

3. Segmentation:

By doing this , you can be sure about increasing the campaign performance, which helps in increasing the ROI.

Recommended Read : Branding that Works for B2B and B2C

6. Open Rate

It is denoted by the number of emails opened divided by the total numbers of emails sent. Most of the email marketers are trying very hard to optimise their mails and subject lines in order to get higher open rates. More opened emails are great, but the focus should be on clickthrough rates. 

The average open rate is somewhere between 17% and 28%. If your numbers are in this range, then it is good for your campaign. But if the numbers are on the lower side, then the following tips might come in handy to increase the open rate.

1. Update your list regularly: 

By doing this you are making sure that only interested people are in the email list. By removing the inactive and uninterested recipients, you can make sure that the open rate is high.

2. Segment the email list:

Segmenting helps increase the open rate as the recipients feel that they have received an email related to their journey with the brand.

3. Make sure the timing is perfect: 

Timing of sending the mail plays an important role in open rates. You can be sure of timings which give the best results by performing A/B testing with the mail.

4. Choose an interesting subject line:

Subject lines are the first thing that the recipient sees. It is based on the subject line that the decision of opening the mail or ignoring it is made. If the subject line is interesting enough, it will compel the recipient to open, resulting in a higher open rate. 

7. Number of unsubscribes

The email service provider provides you with the number of unsubscribes. These are the people who were in your email list and now have changed their consent to receiving mails from you.

Although a high number of unsubscribes can be disheartening, a small number of unsubscribes is not  a bad thing. This is because it is considered as cleaning up the email list. This is a good thing, as the open rate and click through rate will be highest. 

A good unsubscribe rate is considered under 2%. The average unsubscribe rate is 0.17%. The unsubscribe rate is best when it is kept lowest, so here are some tricks to keep the number at the lowest.

1. Segment subscribers.
2. Use relevant content.
3. Make use of great subject lines.
4. Personalise the emails.

8. List growth rate

This email marketing metric benchmark provides insights into the growth rate of your email list.

It can be easily calculated. You take the number of new subscribers and subtract the number of unsubscribes from that, and divide it by the total number of emails on the list and multiply the number by 100. 

The benchmark for email list growth is considered at 2.5%. If the growth rate is below 2.5%, you can check out here and see the techniques which can be used to grow the email list .  

9. Engagement over time

Tracking engagement over time provides one of the best insights, i.e. the best times of the day to send emails.

You can use the email automation technique which is provided by the email service provider, to send emails based on customer behaviour but tracking engagement over time gives you the data that the highest number of clicks are received at what time for the emails that are not automated. 

10. Mobile open rate

This metric is the same as open rate but it provides the data only for mobile devices and tablets. Desktop or laptop open rates are more likely to happen on weekdays when people are working, and mobile open rates occur during weekends.

11. Mobile click rate

It provides the data only for mobile click rates related to mobile devices and tablets. This is much lower than desktop click rates because the users can manoeuvre through different windows easily, something which is difficult to perform on mobile phones. 

12. Domain open rate

The success of your email marketing campaign heavily relies on the email open rate, which is a critical metric. It presents the data of how many people are opening your emails by a specific email provider. This gives an idea if you are facing problems with a specific domain’s spam filter. 

13. Domain click rate

This allows you to see the number of people who click on your emails in a specific email provider. It helps you to see if there are any problems with the domain’s spam policy by comparing the click rates of different providers. 

14. Revenue per email

ROI shows you the overall return on investment of the email campaign, but this metric will show you the individual success of each email. This email marketing metric helps in deciding which emails have the best performance and which emails are performing poorly. 

15. Revenue per subscriber

It is like a microscopic understanding of your ROI. It is the revenue generated per subscriber. It helps you in finding what demographics work best for your emails. After finding out the data, you focus less on a particular demographic, concentrate more on a particular demographic, or change the emails. 

At We Think North, we have dedicated email marketers with a good amount of experience to be able to take your email marketing strategies, well and beyond the lines and help you grow your business. Leave a query and we will get back to you with the answers.