What are Email Marketing Metrics and KPIs?
KPIs, as their name implies, give you the means to make decisions on your campaign objectives. By taking advantage of their aid, you can evaluate how well your campaign is doing by looking at one, two, or even three data points.
A balanced scorecard should be used to produce the best outcomes from metrics associated with email marketing. But let’s not overlook the difficulty of establishing objectives and measurements. You need to keep trying and testing until you uncover the ideal combination for your brand.
How to measure email marketing success
A business typically keeps track of its campaign’s accomplishments by establishing a series of objectives. The email metrics should be able to reach the desired objectives, however, it is important to consider both deliverability and how well the content is performing.
Keep this in mind and determine the steps to gauge the effectiveness of email marketing.
1. Learn about measurable metrics
Every business owner should investigate what precise measurements they can use to help them develop more successful strategies.
The main focus should be deciding on the criteria you can use to assess the campaigns. You can concentrate on the beneficial features that would drive customers to buy eventually, as determined by these measurements.
2. Set up goals
In addition, outlining the measurements assists in establishing email marketing objectives. Are you intending to employ it for bringing customers back, to dispatch plentiful newsletters to maintain viewers, or to aim to heat prospects with an individualized notification?
Every campaign must have an achievable objective. Every email may not produce the desired result. Some may not even generate revenue.
3. Define the KPIs
Done with the goals? Great! Now you can start defining KPIs. It is important to take into account both positive and negative performance indicators, like an increase in revenue or open rate, as well as a rise in unsubscribe rate. It suggests that you should revisit your Key Performance Indicators if you want to achieve your objectives.
4. Track metrics
This is often overlooked, which can signify a subpar result for efforts. However, tracking metrics is accessible with customer data platforms. A platform such as this allows you to monitor activities related to emails.
5. Evaluate
Assessing the success of every marketing endeavor is simpler in concept but more difficult in practice. You should evaluate on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis at times.
- Daily – Check open rate, open rate variation, bounce rate, and soft bounce rate.
- Weekly – Check overall campaign performance, campaign conversion, click-through rates, spam complaints, unsubscribe rate, active audience trends, and revenue reports.
- Monthly – Check revenue per customer, open per customer, mobile open rate, spam score, and email client share rate.
6. Improvisation
Establishing clear KPIs allows for the identification of elements that need to be enhanced. Unhappy with the conversion rates but still beating benchmarks? You could concentrate on some other element to better the relevant worry.
Grasp how metrics relate to each other, then create the plan. Reporting can take a while. You explain the fundamentals of a funnel, for example, your patrons, criteria for your target audience, and how often to send emails. Once the issue is fixed at this point in the funnel, your outcomes will be improved.
Importance of tracking email metrics
Before looking at the figures, make sure you comprehend the motivation behind monitoring the metrics in order to create the most competent email-promoting plan.
With email marketing, you can gain insight into how recipients interact with your content. That’s why tracking is important. It is impossible to gauge how successful your content is with followers without it. In this manner, you can determine the things to do and avoid and institute a few modifications.
Perhaps the email headings are stylish and convince people to open it, though the body of the email is not persuasive and thus doesn’t keep folks engaged, causing them to unsubscribe. Grasp the issue, and address it by setting an objective and determining Key Performance Indicators and measurements.
Email marketing metrics and KPIs to track
As you get started, bear in mind that each email marketing effort is unique with its own objectives and keys to success. Examine the statistics that can be included in email advertising efforts.
Email audience trend
The end objective of any email effort is to attain more followers. You gain some, and you lose some. It is comprehensible that there may come a time when the number of subscribers drops. Realizing the potential of this problem at an early stage aids in avoiding the issue of a decrease in the number of subscribers.
An email audience trend examination reveals whether the number of subscribers is increasing or decreasing and identifies the individuals who are reading the emails. It may be a result of a variety of reasons such as preserving data security. You can find the ratio of opt-ins and opt-outs by dividing them by the total number of subscribers and multiplying the result by 100.
Active audience trend
Are subscribers increasing? Sounds good. It is important to keep track of the increasing (or decreasing) number of active viewers. But who do you consider an active audience?
These customers have demonstrated the most involvement via email, therefore generating the most money. It is important to frequently communicate with them via invoice emails, gratitude messages, or sales offers. Hence, email marketers must heed the matter at the outset if they become aware of a drop-off in interaction.
An organized re-involvement plan can aid in maintaining the spectators engaged.
Clickthrough rate
This is the portion of your audience that clicks on a link when they open your email. It is clear that your content is effective when there is an increased click-through rate because it means people are engaging with it by clicking the links. It appears your content isn’t fitting for your target population or isn’t of interest to them at the moment given the low click-through rate.
Tracking CTR is extremely important because it can demonstrate the efficacy of your email in generating new business, as the recipients need to click in order to take any action. Boosting CTR can be achieved by improving the overall experience users have when viewing your email. Does it have a layout that draws the reader to the call to action? A UX designer being involved can greatly contribute to the success of the click-through rate of your email.
Mobile click rate
The rate of clicks on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets is identical to the click rate. The rate of clicks on mobile devices is usually lower than the rate of clicks on desktop computers, for clear causes. Users manipulate Safari, Chrome, or other web browsers that each have a distinct design.
Using a desktop computer to search the internet is simpler than using a phone or other mobile device which only allows one browser. You should remember that on some weekends (based on who the target audience is), there is the greatest involvement of people on mobile devices. Although the bulk of their work takes place earlier in the day, professionals tend to be the most active towards the end of their work hours.
Mobile open rate
When composing an email message, remember that recipients may be reading it on either their computers or their handheld devices. Consequently, making the content more suitable for a small screen is desirable. Make sure that the content you are optimizing for mobile devices is performant across all major email providers.
For example, hardly anyone (only 0.1%) uses Outlook, whereas the vast majority (70%) are using iPhones, thus impacting the mobile open rate. It can be difficult to recognize what kind of device a client is using, consequently, using email marketing software designed for small businesses to craft optimized emails is a good idea.
Conversion Rate
- What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form or purchasing a product.
- How to Calculate It: (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100
- Example: 400 people who completed the desired action ÷ 10,000 total email delivered * 100 = 4% conversion rate
Once someone opens an email, you will usually try to get them to accept your proposal – that is, to do what your email asked them to do. If you are sending an email with someone’s ability to get a free e-book, then the person who actually downloads it would be known as a successful conversion.
The importance of conversion rate is clear, as it is directly connected to the goal of your email marketing, through the call-to-action specified in your email. As such, the conversion rate is one of the most significant indicators of how successful your email marketing campaign is. (We’ll discuss more specific goal-related metrics later.)
To determine the success of your emails, you must link your email platform to your web analytics system. You can identify the source of a click from a particular email campaign by making individualized tracking URLs for your email links.
Bounce Rate
- What It Is: The percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox.
- How to Calculate It: (Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100
- Example: 75 bounced emails ÷ 10,000 total emails sent * 100 = 0.75% bounce rate
There are two types of bounces that can be monitored: “hard” bounces and “soft” bounces.
A soft bounce occurs when there is a temporary issue with a legitimate email address, like an overflowing mailbox or an issue with the recipient’s mail server. The person receiving your email may store it until any issues are solved, or you can attempt to re-send the email to a “soft bounce.”
A hard bounce is when an email is sent to an address that is either not valid, no longer active, or does not exist so it cannot be successfully sent. It is essential that hard bounce addresses be removed from your email list as soon as possible, for ISPs take into consideration the rate of bounced emails when assigning a reputation to the sender.
List Growth Rate
- What It Is: The rate at which your email list is growing.
- How to Calculate It: ([(Number of new subscribers) minus (Number of unsubscribes + email/spam complaints)] ÷ Total number of email addresses on your list]) * 100
- Example: (500 new subscribers – 100 unsubscribes and email/spam complaints) ÷ 10,000 email addresses on the list * 100 = 4% list growth rate
In addition to evaluating the effectiveness of your call-to-action (CTA) based on performance metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rates, you should also monitor the size of your mailing list – noting any gains or losses. Your goal should be to develop your list in order to expand your reach, target more people, and make yourself known as an expert in the field.
Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate
- What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network, and/or who clicked on a “forward to a friend” button.
- How to Calculate It: (Number of clicks on a share and/or forward button ÷ Number of total delivered emails) * 100
- Example: 100 clicks on a share/forward button ÷ 10,000 total delivered emails * 100 = 1% email sharing/forwarding rate
The sharing of your email with others by its recipients is essential, although it doesn’t look like it, which is why you should measure it as one of the most valuable metrics.
Why? Because this is how you generate new contacts. The people who are on your mailing list are already in your records. Although the primary emphasis is still converting leads, this doesn’t do much to aid you in getting new prospective customers. Suggest to your readers to spread your email among their peers if the material was advantageous, and begin monitoring how many fresh people you can incorporate into your list this method.
Overall ROI
- What It Is: The overall return on investment for your email campaigns. In other words, total revenue is divided by total spending.
- How to Calculate It: [($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100
- Example: ($1,000 in additional sales – $100 invested in the campaign / $100 invested in the campaign) * 100 = a 900% return on investment for the campaign
This is the most fundamental way to determine your rate of return from an investment, but there are many different ways to measure the profitability of your email campaigns. The kind of business you own may determine which one you prefer.
You should be able to calculate the total return on investment of your email marketing campaign, similar to any other marketing channel. Put in effect an SLA system in which you grade different kinds of leads based on how profitable they could be for your business if you have not already done so.
Navigating Email Marketing Metrics
The bottom line? Be wise in choosing the metrics you should keep an eye on and ensure that you have a reliable way of gauging the performance of each email sent, the standing of your email list, and the overall progress toward your desired outcomes. If you can figure out each of those elements, you are taking the correct steps to be successful with email promotion.
Leave a Reply