When you are working on an email marketing, it’s important to have a strong strategy, but it’s even more important to have a way to track the success of your campaign. If you neglect to track different metrics in your email marketing campaign, you won’t have a clear understanding of whether or not the effort and time you are putting into the campaign is paying off. At the same time, you won’t be able to make changes that may help your email marketing strategy be even more effective. If you’re unsure of where to start when it comes to tracking your email marketing campaign, continue reading to learn more.
How to Create an Email Measurement Strategy
Before you start tracking your email marketing campaign, you need to have a clear understanding of three things: your schedule, your objectives, and your analytics. Every email campaign is different, meaning that every campaign will have a different variation of scheduling and goals, which changes how you analyze your data.
The first thing to decide is what you want your tracking schedule to be – whether it’s weekly, monthly, or campaign by campaign, you should check your progress against not only benchmarks, but previous performance. This will assist you in spotting the patterns across campaigns to find what shows improvement and what causes a decline. This data can then be compared against a specific type of email campaign, product type, particular customer components, or external factors that could be impacting your campaign’s performance.
Next, you need to ensure that your performance-tracking strategy aligns with your campaign goals and objectives. In the early stages of creating an email campaign, it’s imperative to establish clear goals and objectives, while at the same time thinking about the measurability of them. Not only will this help focus your campaign, but it will also dictate which metrics you should track more closely and how you define the success of the campaign.
Finally, it’s time to start going through your data and analyzing it. It’s important to understand how your data reflects your email strategy and analyze your audience’s interactions with your campaign. By understanding your audience’s behavior and learning about them, you can create content that is driven by that information and therefore, more effective.
6 Email Marketing Metrics to Track
Every email marketing campaign, like every business, is different, meaning that the goals you have for your campaign are unique. However, there are a few metrics that every email marketer should keep track of. Here are some of the most crucial metrics to keep an eye on.
Open Rates
Your open rate is the percentage of email recipients who open any given email you send them. This is one of the simplest and most used metrics by email marketers because it gives you insight into how engaged your email subscribers are and how effective your subject lines are.
At the same time, open rates can be unreliable due to the fact that an email is usually counted as “open” if the recipient also receives the images embedded in said message. Many email users have image-clocking enabled on their email service, making it so that even if they open your email, they will not be included in your open rate. The best way to look at this metric is by comparing it to your past open rates. For example, if your open rates this week are higher than last week, take a look at the emails you sent out and see what you may have done differently for this change to occur.
Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate (CTR) is a common metric to determine how your campaigns are performing by measuring how many people clicked on the links in your email. For example, if you included a link to redeem a coupon or offer, the CTR measures what percentage of subscribers clicked on the link. Your CTR gives your direct insight as to how many people on your email lists are interacting with your content, are interested in learning more about your business, or would like to redeem an offer.
Conversion Rate
While your CTR measures the number of people who click on your link, your conversion rate measures the number of people who clicked on the link and completed a specific action. This action will depend on your business and it could be anything from filling out a form, making a purchase, registering for an event, and more.
This metric gives you a unique insight into how your email marketing campaign is performing with your email subscriber list. Through this metric, you will be able to see how the conversions stack up against the time spent on your campaign, allowing you to further understand whether or not the money and time you are spending are paying off. This is an incredibly important metric because it helps you evaluate the overall success of your email marketing efforts.
Bounce Rate
A bounce rate is the percentage of your total emails that could not be successfully delivered to the intended inbox. Measuring bounce rates against your open rates will give you a clear idea of the quality of your email subscriber list. There are two types of bounces to track: soft and hard. A soft bounce is the result of a temporary problem with a valid email, and this problem includes a full inbox or a problem with the recipient’s server. The server may hold these emails for delivery until the problem is fixed or you can try re-sending the email message.
Hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address and means that your email will never be successfully delivered. When you notice a hard bounce in your metrics, you should immediately remove the email addresses from your email list because internet service providers use bounce rates as a key factor to determine the reputation of any given email sender. Having a high percentage of hard bounces could mean that your email subscriber list is full of fake, old, or mistyped email addresses.
While a bounce rate doesn’t directly link to your email marketing campaign goals, this is a metric you should keep an eye on to ensure that there are no deep issues with your emails. Having too many hard bounces can make your company look spammy to an internet service provider, which has the potential to further harm any future email marketing campaigns you wish to do.
Overall ROI
The overall return on investment (ROI) is a metric that determines how cost-effective your email marketing campaign is, making it a key metric for campaigns that have a goal of making a profit. While executing an email marketing campaign can be costly, it has the highest ROI out of any other digital marketing strategy. This makes email marketing extremely effective, so it’s imperative to keep an eye on your overall ROI to determine the success of your campaign and make changes as needed.
Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of email recipients who unsubscribe from your list after opening any given email. Just like an open rate, this isn’t always a reliable metric to give you a full view of the quality of your email list. Many users can get tired of receiving email messages and won’t bother going through the formal unsubscribe process and will instead stop opening, reading, and clicking on emails. This is why it’s important to measure subscriber engagement through CTR and conversion rates so you can keep an eye on unengaged subscribers and can consider removing them at some point to ensure that those receiving your emails are the ones actually engaging with them.
How to Determine the Right Email Marketing Metrics Based on Your Goals
Now that you have a clear understanding of the key metrics to measure, it’s time to go over which metrics to watch based on your goals. Because every email marketing campaign has different goals, there are specific goals that can help you have a clear understanding of how to best reach those goals.
Unengaged Email Subscribers
It’s important to keep an eye on your unengaged subscribers and consider removing them from your email list because they can hurt the overall deliverability of your email marketing strategy. Email clients may learn about the low engagement rates of your emails and deliver your email straight to “junk” folders, meaning your email will technically be sent as delivered, but probably won’t be seen.
Generated Leads
If one of your main goals is growing lead generation, you should be focused on sending emails that offer lead-generation content. This means that your emails should include content that requires the recipient to fill out a lead capture form in order to access the content. You should also prioritize tracking how many leads you are capturing every day and month. It’s important to keep in mind that you have options on what specifics you would like to focus on, whether that be all leads generated, new leads added to your database, etc., depending on what your priorities are.
Subscriber List Rate of Growth
If your focus is growing the top of your marketing funnel – attracting more visitors to your site, signing up more blog subscribers, etc. – your goal will probably be growing your email subscriber list. Your emails will likely include calls-to-action such as “Join Our Email List” or “Subscribe to Our Blog.” This means that one of the most important metrics you should focus on is the growth of your subscriber list.
Conversion Rate: Lead to Customer
Let’s say that your goal is more focused towards the middle or bottom of your marketing funnel and you’re looking to convert existing leads into customers. If this is your focus, the emails you’re sending are likely emphasizing your business and your product or service. When looking at which metrics to track, you should focus on your lead-to-customer conversion rate and be sure to track how closely you’re trending to your goal at any point during a month.
Take Action from Your Email Marketing Metrics
Once you have all of your desired metrics, you may be wondering what to do next. When it comes to tracking your email marketing campaigns, even the most detailed analytics are useless if they’re not used to guide changes in your campaign. The most important thing you can do after you started to track your metrics is to draw insights from the data and apply them in valuable ways.
A good email marketing platform will gather and report important metrics, but the key is to humanize metrics in order to continue the success of your campaigns. For example, when your metrics show a dip in the engagement of your emails, compare them to other relevant data and figure out what is causing the decrease, then come up with solutions to put your campaign back on the right track. The longer you track your email campaigns, you will have more data and be able to create better campaigns on a short and long-term basis.
Partner with a Website Agency for Expert Email Marketing Services
Tracking your email marketing campaigns is the best way to examine all aspects of your marketing strategy and decide what is working and what isn’t. Americaneagle.com is a digital marketing and web design company with a team of email marketing specialists who can help take your strategy to the next level. We work with B2B and B2C businesses around to world to ensure their email marketing strategy is working to its fullest potential. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business soar.
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