When utilized correctly, email is arguably the most successful marketing tool. Therefore, it’s critical to assess your efforts regularly and make adjustments to optimize your results. Metrics allow you to assess the effectiveness of each email and discover factors that may be preventing you from reaching your goals.
There are a few metrics that help you gauge your email marketing efforts in order to make sure that you are not leaving any money on the table. This article should provide you with an understanding of what metrics to monitor and why, straight from an email marketing company.
Let’s go right into the five email marketing metrics that can play a role in defining your email marketing success.
#1 Open Rate
Email open rate is calculated by dividing the number of emails received by the number of emails sent. It usually ranges from 15 to 25%, although it varies depending on the industry. To put things in perspective, consider the following example, which demonstrates how to compute the open rate:
Let’s say you have 200 subscribers, and 100 of them have opened an email from a certain campaign. As a result, your open rate would be 100/200*100 = 50%. The open rate is a straightforward and very useful measure. It’s also one of the most trustworthy sources of data for evaluating the success of your campaign. A low open rate indicates that your campaign has some issues but you will need to look into other metrics too to create combinations that help diagnose the actual issue. For instance, a low open rate combined with a faulty subject line can be an indicator of unintended malpractices like use of spammy words.
#2 Click-Through Rate
The percentage of people that clicked on at least one CTA/ outbound link during an email campaign is known as the click-through rate. Most email service providers give you the click-through rates, but don’t expect CTR rates to be as high as open rates. Generally, the CTR rate is around 1/10th of your open rates. It indicates that your audience is eager to learn more and engage with each ad if your click-through rates are high.
Most email marketing systems allow you to monitor which links each user visited in addition to overall clicks. This is a fantastic method to see which portions of each email were successful and which might be improved. You may also use a click-through rate to assess the efficacy of two versions of each ad.
#3 Bounce Rate
Bounce rate, as the term implies, refers to when your email does not reach the inbox at all. A spam email will appear on the list, but a bounced email indicates that the email ID is either inactive or false.
It’s computed similarly by dividing bounced emails by emails sent and multiplying the result by 100. Your bounce rate can be reduced by implementing all best practices associated with managing IP reputation, using a double-opt-in form, and avoiding any unintended malpractice like using spammy words in the subject line and the email copy.
#4 Spam Rate
The percentage of people who either did not get your email (due to the mailbox provider blocking you) or reported it as spam is known as the spam rate. The user clicking on the email is the foundation of your whole email campaign. But what if your prospective client never received the message at all? It has the potential to derail your entire campaign, forcing you to restart.
The spam rate is simple to calculate: say, five individuals reported your email as spam out of 100 emails sent. As a result, your spam rate would be 5/100*100 = 5%. Ideally, the spam rate should be less than 2%. However, this varies depending on the industry.
#5 Return On Investment
The easiest method to measure your marketing performance is to look at your return on investment, or ROI. This measure determines how much money you made for every dollar you spent. For example, a campaign that cost $100 to conduct but made $120 had a 20% return on investment.
Email marketing costs include the cost of email marketing services as well as the number of hours your staff worked on the campaign. All sales generated as a consequence of email marketing are included in the return.
However, determining the actual amount you spent on a campaign can be challenging, making the return on investment more difficult to quantify than many other email marketing metrics. When you combine this data with additional indicators, you may get a more accurate picture of your email marketing success than if you just look at ROI. It can shoot to 4400% and even higher, provided that you play your cards well.
Why Did I Ask You To Track These Basic Email Metrics
The simple answer is that you should never complicate email marketing. You can definitely go through 20-30 odd email metrics on a regular basis but it’s not worth it since they are required when you undertake an email audit for fault finding. It would be best if you track these five email metrics on a regular basis so you can verify that your efforts aren’t skewing away from your intended results. As an email marketing company, we find that it is natural to have some variations in the detailed metrics depending on how you are designing your email templates, their themes, and the sales seasons. But, responding to such variations frequently can do more harm than good.
Summing Up
Even though email marketing is the oldest technique in the book, it is still the biggest bang for your bucks. It’s always a good idea to invest in analytics to assist you in figuring out what’s wrong or right with your campaign and how to fix the areas that are causing you concern. Start with these five metrics to take measures for improving your email marketing strategy.
Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.
