You just kicked off a new email marketing campaign. Hurray! Now, is it a success? How do you know if your campaign is having the effect that you expected? To find out the answer you need to be monitoring your email marketing metrics. This is something that is easily forgotten in the planning and execution of a new email campaign, but is a crucial aspect in determining the campaign’s success.
So which email marketing metrics should you be monitoring? Here are six to get started with.
1. Delivery rate
This is the percentage of emails that you sent out and were actually delivered to recipients’ inboxes. This gives you an idea of the health of your email list by letting you know how many “bounced” or “bad” addresses there are on your list. You want the delivery rate as high as possible, preferably 95% or higher. If you find your delivery rate is decreasing over time you may want to re-evaluate how you are acquiring email addresses.
2. Open rate
This tells you how many times your email was opened. It lets you know if your headline caught your subscribers’ attention and made them want to open your email to see what was inside. It also tells you the times and days of the week when most of your emails were opened and what percentage of your email list is responsive to your offerings.
3. Bounce rate
This is the amount of emails that generated a delivery error. There are too different types of bounces, “soft” bounces and “hard” bounces. A soft bounce is usually caused by temporary issues such as network problems or a full inbox. A hard bounce is caused by a permanent issue such as the email address is invalid or doesn’t actually exist, which means the email will never be delivered.
4. Unsubscribe rate
If you receive a spike of unsubscribes after your email list received a particular email, you need to consider what might have caused this negative reaction. A few unsubscribes happen with any email campaign. However, if you get more than normal, it is a warning sign and should be looked into.
5. Click-through rate
This tells you how many people who opened your email were interested enough to click on the link you offered inside your email. If you offered more than one link, it allows you to track which link proved to be more attractive.
6. Conversion rate
This measures how many email recipients followed through on the call to action you placed in your email. For example, if you offered a special discount on a particular product, you can see how many on your email list took you up on that particular offer.
Email marketing can be extremely effective for businesses, but you will never know if your campaign was truly a success if you’re not tracking the right metrics. Now, if you’re looking for more information on email marketing I urge you to take a look at 10 undeniable reasons to love email marketing and 5 things everyone gets wrong about email marketing.
What other email marketing metrics do you rely upon for measuring your success?
