Email Marketing Metrics Every Digital Marketer Needs To Know
Email platforms have made email marketing easier than ever before. With the help of these platforms, email marketing beginners can learn how to design, write, and send an email within one or two hours.
That being said, email marketing is not just about blindly sending emails to your subscribers and hoping for the best. You also have to know how to measure the success of your emails.
Don’t know where to start? Here are a few of the most critical email marketing metrics to track in order to get the best possible insight into how effective your email marketing strategies are.
Open rate
Your open rate might be the most basic email metric, but that doesn’t make it any less crucial to your overall email marketing analytics.
Your open rate lets you know how many recipients opened your email. It’s a metric that can give you insight into the effectiveness of your subject line.
A healthy average for open rates is around 24%. If your open rate falls within that range, then you can be sure that you are taking the correct steps when it comes to your email marketing.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Your click-through rate measures the number of recipients who clicked on links or linked images in your email. For example, if you sent a promotional email that included a link for a discount, taking a look at the email’s CTR would let you know how many people clicked on that link.
In contrast to your open rate, the healthy average for CTR is significantly lower. Most campaigns have a CTR of approximately 4%.
Conversion rate
CTR measures how many recipients clicked on a specific link within your email, but it doesn’t paint the entire picture in terms of the link’s effectivity. Remember, not all recipients who click on an offer will complete the purchase.
That’s why you need to analyze your conversion rate. It tells you how many of those who clicked actually purchased your offer. Doing so also gives you an idea of ROI. When you can compare the money you spent on a campaign against conversions, then you know whether or not your investment is worth it.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the number of emails that were not sent to their intended recipients. There are two kinds of email bounces: 1) soft bounces, and 2) hard bounces. Soft bounces are caused by temporary issues such as a recipient’s email inbox being at capacity at the time of your email send. Hard bounces, on the other hand, are caused by permanent and irreversible issues like an invalid email address. Of these two, you only really need to worry about hard bounces.
Your bounce rate is a reflection of the health of your subscriber list. A high hard bounce rate means your list is full of erroneous email addresses. In this case, you’d have to purge your list of these email addresses immediately.
Unsubscribe rate
Unsubscribe rate is the number of subscribers who opt out of your list after receiving an email. It’s a simple metric to understand since all email service providers (ESPs) display unsubscribe rates prominently in their analytics dashboard.
When it comes to sending emails, make sure it’s easy for people to unsubscribe. You’ll foster more trust and loyalty when you give subscribers options as to what type of emails they receive and when they receive it.
List growth rate
As its name implies, list growth rate signifies the percentage of growth that your list is experiencing.
Here is how you to calculate for list growth rate:
Step 1: Take the number of new subscribers.
Step 2: Subtract the number of unsubscribes.
Step 3: Divide that number by the total number of subscribers on your list.
Step 4: Multiply the result by 100 in order to express a percentage.
Keep in mind that email list decay is unavoidable, so don’t waste your time thinking about it. Focus instead on how you can grow a list of engaged and loyal subscribers.
Spam rate
Spam rate is the number of subscribers who mark your emails as spam. It’s important to pay attention to your spam rate because a high number of spam complaints can severely impact your sender reputation.
ESPs, in particular, track your spam rate. If it gets too high, there is a chance that your ESP blocks your account.
Forwarding rate
Forwarding rate is the percentage of recipients who share the content of your email on their social media profiles or forward it to their friends via email.
By keeping an eye out for this metric, you’ll have an idea of how many subscribers you can consider as brand ambassadors.
Having this information can help with your segmentation efforts. You can create a segment of brand ambassadors and send exclusive content and offers, which will further encourage them to spread the word about your brand.
Overall ROI
Overall ROI is something that every email marketer should monitor, regardless of their industry or what products and services their brand offers.
Simply put, this metric tells you the total ROI of your campaign.
To calculate the overall ROI:
Step 1: Take the amount of sales from a specific campaign.
Step 2: Subtract the money you spent on that campaign.
Step 3: Divide that number by the amount of money you spent.
Step 4: Multiply the result by 100 in order to express a percentage.
Once you have the number, you can judge whether the campaign was a success.
Wrap up
Measuring these aforementioned metrics will provide you with valuable insight into not only the revenue you are getting from email marketing but the level of engagement and interest your subscribers have.
If you want more information on the different email metrics you can track, feel free to check out Campaign Monitor’s blog on Email Marketing Metrics Every Marketer Needs to Know.