Email marketing is, by its nature, quite invasive. It’s the modern equivalent of going to the market and experiencing a stallholder shouting his deals; you’re sending a message directly to the consumer to ask them to buy your product, use your service, download your media; you’re asking them to answer your call to action. Whether they receive that information on their smartphone, tablet or on their computer, you are getting in touch with them. You are engaging with the consumer, but in most cases they will have asked you to do so, or at least won’t have asked you not to. This is where email marketing differs from spamming or blanket emails; the recipient has asked you to contact them about what you’re marketing, to include them in your campaigns. How can we ensure we include the right people in the right campaigns? This is where the use of metrics comes in.
Metrics, or key performance indicators (KPI’s), allow us to evaluate and improve marketing campaigns. They are a method of measuring the relevant success of a particular strategy, which helps maintain a positive ROI in terms of time and resources used. In short, metrics are a measure of how well an aspect of a campaign performs; this information can then be used to improve the overall strategy. You want to be sending the right emails to the right people so that, ideally, each email sent is converted and for the consumer it means they’re not bombarded with emails about products and services they have no interest in. This is a list of the ten most useful metrics for ensuring that your email marketing campaign is as successful as possible.
1. Open rate – The open rate metric gauges exactly how many of your emails were actually opened by their recipients. Its main function is to show you which subject lines are generating the highest open rates, but it’s not the most reliable metric as it’s hard to measure accurately. Emails which aren’t fully opened by the email provider, such as those that don’t show untrusted images and content, don’t count toward the open rate. It’s best use is an indicator of interest but not as an accurate measure of exact numbers of opened messages.
2. Clickthrough rate – arguably the most important metric, the clickthrough rate is a measure of how many recipients opened the email and followed the contained links to engage with your content. It is the metric that allows you to measure several other aspects of the email as it shows you which subject lines are attracting the most attention, which links lead to the most clicks. It points to the most successful ways to get consumers interested in what you have to offer. Content Marketing companies such as Upworthy have had a great deal of success increasing clickthrough rates in recent years by creating intriguing and engaging subject lines for their content. The higher the clickthrough rate, the higher your conversion rate is likely to be. If your clickthrough rate is markedly higher than your conversion rate, then your email marketing campaign is doing its job but something else isn’t quite up to scratch.
3. Conversion rate – this metric shows how many recipients answered the call to action in your email, converting interest into action. It shows how many recipients engaged positively with your content; it measures how effective your email was in real terms, showing how many people received your email and went on to do whatever you suggested that they do.
4. List growth rate – your list growth rate measures exactly what it suggests; it reveals the rate at which your list of recipients is growing. The bigger your list, the bigger your potential audience, which in turn means a larger potential conversion rate. The opposite of the list growth rate is the list decay rate, which tells you how your contacts list is shrinking over time.
5. Share rate – the share rate shows how often your email was shared by your list of recipients, potentially increasing your list growth rate without much effort on your part. It could be as simple as encouraging a recipient to forward the email to someone they know who’ll find it useful. As a result, you may find your consumers generating new contacts for you.
6. Action rate over time – this is a fairly specific metric which shows how many recipients answered the call to action contained within your email over specific periods during the day. It allows you to maximise your conversion rate by sending your emails during the periods which show the highest level of interaction: send them at a time when the recipient is most likely to read and engage with the email’s content.
7. Bounce rate – the bounce rate tells you how many emails were returned unopened to the sender. A soft bounce is where the email reaches the recipient’s server but is returned, usually due to the recipient’s inbox being full, so it may be worth keeping their contact details and including them in further marketing campaigns. A hard bounce is more final, as the recipient’s address is either unreachable or not in use. Depending on whether the bounced email was a hard or soft bounce, you may still be able to contact the recipient at a later date. It is important for email marketing campaigns to keep the bounce rate as low as possible, as a high bounce rate can lead to being listed as a spammer, which can cripple a campaign.
8. Spam complaint rate – this is an extremely important metric to keep your eye on. It is a measure of how many recipients have complained about your emails by labelling them as spam, which will limit your ability to contact them and other recipients in the future. The most important marker of the spam complaint rate is that it shows you, the sender, how many people don’t want to engage with your content. Either you’re sending too much and bombarding them, or they just aren’t finding your content interesting enough. To keep your spam complaint rate as low as possible, it’s best to keep your content interesting and your emails infrequent enough that they don’t become annoying.
9. Unsubscribe rate – on the face of it, unsubscribe rate doesn’t seem that important to an email campaign, as most people won’t go to the effort of unsubscribing from a mailing list when they have easier options of deleting the messages or leaving them unopened. It has two important markers of importance, however; it shows a marketer that either the recipient is no longer interested in the products and services the marketer offers, or else the recipient has had enough of receiving the marketer’s emails. In either case, the unsubscription rate gives us useful information about current methods and future campaigns.
10. Spam percentage – an email’s spam percentage is based on the number of links and spam trigger words and phrases contained within the email. The higher the spam percentage, the more likely an email will be flagged as spam by an email provider and will therefore be less likely to reach its intended recipient. Obviously, this doesn’t help anyone as the consumer doesn’t know what you’re offering which in turn means that they won’t be able to contribute to your open, click through or conversion rates. Plus, who has ever checked their spam folder for useful emails to link to their friends?
These ten metrics are a broad overview of the measurable aspects of an email campaign. In some cases it might be useful to further subdivide these metrics further, while in others they can be combined. It all depends on the main aims of your email campaign, as for example if your main aim is to increase your contacts list then the main concern in term of metrics will be your list growth rate as it is a measure of the success of your campaign. If your campaign has different goals, other metrics will be of greater concern, but almost every conceivable campaign will have useful metrics listed in the above list.
Ultimately, these metrics alone won’t make your campaign a success, it’s the proper interpretation of what the metrics tell you which allows you to make changes to your methodology, which in turn should provide more successful results.
