Email Analytics Unveiled: Metrics That Matter for Successful Campaigns
So, you’ve spent hours carefully crafting an email campaign. You’ve used templates to create the content, explored the psychology hacks that drive clicks and are eager to see results.
But your campaign falls flat.
It’s easy to get disheartened, particularly when you’ve put in so much time and effort. Moreover, you might think that your campaign was successful. After all, you sent it out to hundreds of people, right?
But how are you measuring this success? How do you know whether or not your content is resonating with your audience?
You need to start tracking key performance indicators (KPIs). Here, we’ll guide you through the crucial metrics you need to measure and how to leverage them to optimize future campaigns.
Why track KPIs?
If you’re not collecting data about your campaigns, then all your hard work may be going to waste. After all, there’s no point having beautiful and engaging content if it sits unread in the recipient’s inbox – or worse, their junk folder.
Today, web developers utilize various tools like platform.sh testing and deployment to help run and scale their websites. Similarly, digital marketers should leverage tools to optimize their emails.
These tools give us access to various metrics that give you unparalleled insights into the performance of your emails. When you know which metrics to analyze, you can quantify the success of your marketing efforts.
The data you collect will give you an insight into what works and what doesn’t, how engaged your audience is, and whether your emails are delivering a return on investment. You can then use this information to improve every email you send going forward.
Consider utilizing email tracking tools to gain valuable insights into the performance of your campaigns. By tracking metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates, you can optimize your email marketing strategy and drive better results. Email tracking provides unparalleled data that helps you understand how your emails are performing and allows you to make informed decisions to improve your campaign’s effectiveness.
5 KPIs for a successful email campaign
It’s one thing to want to analyze KPIs. It’s another to understand which KPIs you need to measure.
While marketers often track similar figures, it’s up to you which performance indicators you prioritize. This will vary depending on the sector you’re in – obviously marketing for family law is very different to selling entertainment systems – and what you are trying to achieve. Is this a brand awareness exercise? Or are you aiming to increase conversions?
With that in mind, consider the following metrics and what they might mean for your campaign. Then, decide on a definition of success that matches your company’s goals.
Click-through rate
Click-through rate (CTR) tells you the percentage of recipients who clicked on a specific link in an email. It combines two metrics: the number of people who opened the email (also known as open rate) and the number of clicks.
To calculate click-through rate, divide the number of people who clicked on the link in your email by the total number of emails you sent. Multiply the result by 100 to show a percentage.
CTR is a useful indicator of how relevant your emails are as it effectively measures engagement. If your email reaches 200 people but only 20 click on the link, there might be a disconnect that needs addressing.
Say a company is sending out an email about new cloud-based business communications solutions. A high CTR indicates that prospective clients receiving the email are interested in such a solution.
This metric therefore tells you about the overall success of your campaign – and more specifically, whether you are targeting the right people.
So, what constitutes a good CTR? This differs between industries, but the average is around 2-5%.
Remember that a low CTR doesn’t mean your emails are a lost cause. There are several key strategies you can use to improve CTR and your overall campaign. Ensure your content is relevant to your audience, personalize messaging, and utilize compelling call-to-actions (CTAs).
Conversion rate
A conversion is when a user successfully completes a desired action on a site, app, or other digital platform. The action could be anything from submitting a form to making a purchase.
Conversion rates play a crucial role in assessing how effectively a brand utilizes its online platform to turn traffic into revenue.
In email marketing, conversion rate measures the percentage of subscribers who received the email and carried out the desired action.
Since this action is usually the overall goal of the campaign, conversion rate is one of the most important metrics to track.
For example, let’s say your campaign targets law firms that may be interested in Assembly Software for legal case management. Chances are you want recipients to register for a demo or sign up to the platform – the number of people who perform this desired action makes up your conversion rate.
By tracking this metric, you can clearly see whether your target audience is interested in this software.
To calculate your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions (the number of people who took the desired action) by the total number of emails delivered. Multiply the result by 100 to find a percentage.
Again, average conversion rates vary drastically depending on your industry, campaign, and audience. But aiming for the 2-5% mark is a good goal.
If you’re missing this, there are a few things you can do to improve conversion rates. Consider segmenting the intended audience, creating more engaging call-to-actions (CTA), branching out with the email templates you use, or conducting A/B tests to compare different aspects of your strategy.
Of course, conversion rates will vary and can be impacted by everything from your industry and business type to the time of year, product releases, and key business objectives.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate is typically used to measure the percentage of web or app visitors who view one piece of content and then immediately leave the site. However, in the context of emails, bounce rate indicates the number of emails that couldn’t be delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox.
Of course, you want to ensure your perfectly crafted emails actually reach their intended audience. So reducing email bounce rates is a critical step in developing a campaign that works.
To calculate bounce rate, divide the number of bounced emails by the number of emails sent. Multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.
Keep in mind a bounce rate of 0% is practically impossible. But 2% or less is achievable, and of course, the lower the better.
There are two subcategories to keep in mind here. A “soft bounce” refers to a temporary block on a recipient’s inbox (perhaps because it’s full or the server is down). Meanwhile, a “hard bounce” indicates an invalid or non-existent email address.
To ensure you only send emails that will be delivered, it’s worth taking a few steps to minimize bounces. Validate your email list, use a CAPTCHA to ensure you aren’t sending to bots, and verify your domain. For example, businesses operating in Hong Kong will find a .hk domain name is an invaluable tool for building trust and credibility.
Overall ROI
ROI stands for return on investment. As an email analytic, it measures the revenue brought in by a campaign compared to the amount you invested in it. Calculating ROI is crucial because it lets you know whether a campaign is worth running or is a financial drain.
To calculate email ROI, divide the total revenue (money made) by the total investment (money spent). Multiply by 100 to get the final percentage.
It’s estimated that the average email campaign makes a return of $36 for every $1 spent. Don’t worry if you’re not yet reaching this target. The most essential thing is that your campaigns make more money than they cost to run.
You can increase email ROI via conversion optimization strategies, adding incentives to your emails, or A/B testing elements like subject lines and CTA buttons.
Unsubscribe rate
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the percentage of users who unsubscribe after receiving your email. This helps gauge how interesting and relevant your campaign is to your database.
To calculate your unsubscribe rate, divide the number of people who unsubscribed by the number of successfully delivered emails. Multiply the result by 100 to calculate the percentage.
Obviously, this is a metric you want to keep low so try to aim for 0.5% or less. A high percentage of unsubscribers is a sign that you need to rethink your campaign or data list.
Think about what drove recipients to opt out of future communication. Are you sending emails too frequently? Is the content you send digestible? Is your messaging relevant?
For the sake of your unsubscribe rates (among other factors), it’s good to be selective about who you send emails to in the first place. For example, if you were selling technology for attorneys, you would want to build up a subscriber list of users in the legal sector.
It’s always worth taking a tailored approach rather than spamming people at random. Moreover, it’s better to send fewer emails to a more active audience, so focus on quality over quantity.
To help engage your subscribers and reduce your unsubscribe rate, consider the following:
- Ask for feedback.
- Let subscribers select how often they receive emails.
- Only send relevant campaigns to segmented audiences.
Moving forward
Data is invaluable for today’s marketers. But there’s no use having this information at your fingertips if you’re not going to leverage it to improve your email campaigns.
By measuring the metrics covered in this article, you can ensure your quality content reaches and resonates with users.
Remember, you may choose to prioritize some KPIs more than others, depending on your sector and business objectives. Take our list as a toolkit and you’ll be on your way to delivering successful email marketing campaigns in no time.