Measuring Your Email Marketing Success

Any digital marketing campaign should be tracked, analyzed, and optimized for success. And this is possible through user-friendly email tracking systems. If you know what’s working, you can build upon it and maximize your marketing campaign. Check out how to measure your email marketing success and the important metrics to consider. 

How to Measure Your Email Marketing Success

The first step to measuring your email marketing success is to pick the right time. Create a plan and schedule on how you will track your campaign continuously. Should you do it weekly or monthly? Remember that growth does not depend on one measurement. You’ll only see it if you track various measurements at a specific rate.

Ongoing measurement allows you to compare previous and current performances and notice upwards or downwards trends. 

The following process is to create your goals and objectives. You can’t measure your email marketing success if you don’t exactly know your aims. These clear goals and objectives will also determine your KPIs or key performance indicators. 

Some metrics are more important than others. For example, you may track downloaded images on emails but many recipients block this feature on desktop. A low open rate doesn’t always mean it has reached a low number of persons. Some are simply reading a text-only version.

Some useful KPIs include the actual activity done within the email. Your email tracking system should be able to monitor leads or actions. 

The next step to measuring email marketing success is to see what’s working. The metrics below will help you deconstruct the progress of your digital marketing efforts.

Metrics for Measuring Email Marketing Success

The following metrics or KPIs will help you understand the degree of your email marketing success. These data can be in the form of graphs or summarized reports, depending on the software you’re using.

Open Rate

Open rate refers to the amount of opened emails compared to the amount you delivered. Some measuring tools count re-opens as a first one. If this is the case, the actual open rate may be lower than the result. 

As mentioned, the open rate is not the most important metric that will determine your email marketing success. But it can help you test which subject line is working and which one is not. That’s because the subject line is the first thing they see, which makes them open the email. 

Some metrics that are similar and linked with open rate include:

• When your email was last opened.
• Which email is most opened.
• How many times the campaign was accessed. 

Click-Through Rate

This key performance indicator refers to the percentage or number of recipients who clicked a link in your email. This may assess how effective your CTA is. It’s also more important than the open rate because it shows any action done upon opening the email. 

Depending on your campaign goals, the click-through rate may be the most essential KPI. It can be the primary determinant of your email marketing success. 

The Click-through rate is equivalent to the number of click-throughs over the number of messages delivered. 

Bounce Rate

This refers to messages that were sent but did not arrive in the inbox. You can calculate it by dividing the total number of emails that bounced by the amount of messages you sent. Then, multiply by 100. 

There’s a so-called hard bounce and a soft bounce. Soft bounces are caused by temporary issues with the email address. For example, the recipient’s inbox may be full. Your email to them will be held until their storage clears up. Meanwhile, a hard bounce is due to a non-existent email address. Or the email address could be closed or invalid. 

Always check your list of subscribers so you can remove these email addresses. Your analytics may be affected by these null addresses. Internet service providers (ISPs) utilize this metric as a key factor to indicate an email sender’s reputation. 

Conversion Rate

This KPI is different from the click-through rate. After clicking the link, you could be asked to fill out a form or check out your cart.

Some email campaigns have another goal after the recipient clicks the link. This conversion is the actual action that will fulfill that. For example, you may want them to answer a survey, download your book, or watch a video. 

It’s also one of the most vital KPIs that is directly tied to the CTA in your email. The only way to measure your conversion rate is by integrating your email and analytics. Try generating unique links for tracking. This method will help you determine the source of the click, whether it’s from your first campaign or the other. 

List Growth Rate

This refers to the rate at which your list of emails is growing. This is not a CTA metric, but you have to monitor this to see if your audience is expanding. Growing your list also helps you position yourself in the industry.

Unsubscribes

The number of your unsubscribers should be fewer than the number of your new ones. But it’s normal for people to opt-out of your audience. Keep tracking this metric so you know if your content is beneficial to your receivers. If you notice an unusual spike in your rate of unsubscribers, there might be an issue you need to solve. 

Spam Score

This key performance metric observes the rate where your audience labels your emails as spam. If your analytics show a high spam rate, it means your subscribers may not be satisfied with your emails. This scenario may influence your deliverability and reputation. 

Campaign ROI

Your campaign ROI is the overall return for your email campaign. An email tracking platform may not be able to calculate this. So you can calculate this by subtracting the amount you invested from the amount of sales. Then divide it by the amount you invested.

© Image credits to Will Mu