The Email Marketing Metrics Every Campaign Should Be Based On

Gaining mastery of email marketing takes time and effort. However, as a content creator, you don’t need to be an expert to deliver amazing email marketing campaigns.

Incorporating best practices and the use of metrics can help you overcome some rookie mistakes and optimize your emails for enhanced engagement.

It is important to know how to estimate the outcomes of your endeavors so you can take the measures needed to improve your content marketing game.

As a content creator venturing into email marketing, you have to take time to establish your campaign goals.

For instance, metrics for a lead-gen campaign would differ from a campaign that closes those leads. You use these metrics, to reflect on your performance, and optimize future campaigns for better performance.

So in this article, I’ll look at email marketing and breakdown important metrics you should track.

So let’s get started.

What are the 15 email marketing metrics every campaign should be based on?

1. Open rate

This is the simplest KPI in email marketing. It is crucial to know how well subscribers are receiving your mails. The open rate monitors the total number of subscribers that opened sent messages.

Open rates can offer you an insight into the latency of your subject line copy. For instance, subject lines with the first names of receivers stand the chance of being opened by 26%. Other tactics, such as utilizing emoticons in your subject lines or keeping the subject line simple, direct, and short, can boost your open rates.

Most email campaigns generate open rates as high as 30.5%. If you’re generating a higher open rate, that’s a progress indicator. These statistics should inform your next campaign and position it in the right direction, especially if you have not been recording success with your goals.

2. Click-through rate (CTR)

The CTR metric enables you to know the performance of your campaigns. CTR estimates the number of individuals that click links in your message. For instance, if you embed a link to ‘redeem offer,’ the click-through rate would track the percentage of receivers that clicked the link.

There are several tactics to boost your CTR while crafting your emails. For example, you could embed links in strategic spots and include eye-catching and unmistakable CTA tabs that receivers can click to redeem their offer. 

CTR is usually lower compared to open rates. The average CTR for email campaigns is pegged at a just over 11% but in particular industries it can go lower than 4%.

3. Conversion rate

Unlike CTR that estimates the number of people that click links, the conversion rate goes beyond that and tracks how many of them completed the action.

For example, let’s say you embedded a link for subscribers to take part in your Black Friday sale. The conversion rate shows the number of people that completed purchases during the sale.

The rate offers you an insight into your ROI. When you can determine what you spend and how many prospects are converting, you will find it easier to know if your effort is paying off.

On this basis, you can also optimize your email marketing strategy to have follow-up email system in place for successful purchases.

Pro-tip: Your conversion rate should be one of your focal points within any marketing campaign report you create.

4. Bounce rate

The bounce rate tracks the number of email addresses that did not receive your message during an email campaign. The soft bounces monitor temporary issues with email addresses while the hard bounces monitor permanent issues.

You can gain a more solid understanding of the quality of your list by estimating the bounce rates concerning the open rates.

A high percentage in the hard bounces means your email list contains fake addresses, old email addresses or those with an error.

You can minimize the bounce rates by introducing a double opt-in whereby subscribers are requested to verify email addresses and authenticate that they are interested in receiving messages from your brand. This will help ensure your email list is clean and high-quality.

5. Total number of unsubscribes

It is easy to estimate unsubscribers. Email providers inform you of the number of individuals that opted out of receiving your email. You can locate this email marketing metric on your metrics dashboard.

The smaller the number, the better. Nevertheless, this is an excellent indicator to manage your subscriber list better.

You provide your subscribers the chance to unsubscribe and determine the type of content that you want to receive from you and when. This goes a long way in improving customer satisfaction.

6. List increment rate

This email marketing metric monitors the growth rate of your email list.

This can be calculated by subtracting the numbers of unsubscribers from the number of new subscribers; the result is then divided by the aggregate number of addresses on your list, multiplied by 100.

This can help you devise a plan to grow your list, engage with new subscribers, and gain loyal subscribers.

(New subscribers – unsubscribes) / total email list x 100
e.g. (20 – 10) / 1000 x 100 = 1% increase

7. Spam complaints

Nobody wants their emails to be labeled as ‘spam.’  While you may want to ignore this, it is crucial to pay heed to the complaints.

Email solution providers monitor spam complaints while ensuring quality. They can block or limit your accounts if your spam complaint rate is getting too high.

Your email marketing service provider can track this rate, but you should track it yourself to ensure there is no technical issue with your emails, such as broken links or substandard copywriting.

Keeping your spam complaints low is the key to high email open rates.

8. Email sharing/forwarding rate

This rate estimates the percentage of receivers who shared your social media content or forwarded it to a friend.

Social media has a huge impact on content engagement and forming relationships with customers. Having brand evangelists can make a difference in this regard.

The sharing or forwarding rate helps you determine the number of brand evangelists you have. It also shows the percentage of subscribers that recommend your emails to their family and friends.

It is crucial to develop brand evangelists via email marketing because 81%of consumers make buying decisions that are influenced by the social media posts of friends.

9. Engagement over time

If you want to generate accurate data on the appropriate time of the day to send a message, it is important to track your engagement over a given period.

You can leverage email automation provided by your email solution provider to send messages based on the triggers or behavior of your customers. By identifying the best time to send an email, you can generate higher click rates and open rates for emails that are not automated.

Some providers have this feature automated and will collate the data for you. Even if they don’t, it’s recommended you track this on your own and know the best time for your niche and subscriber base.

10. Total ROI

Overall ROI is another email marketing metric you need to track for your campaigns.

You can estimate this by subtracting the money spent on the campaign from the total money made in sales from the campaign, then divide the outcome by the full cash invested in your campaign, multiplied by 100.

Email marketing is a relevant input you can make with the highest ROI in your digital marketing strategy.

(Total money made from sales – money spent on campaign) / money spent on campaign x 100
e.g. ($5000 – $2500) / $2500 x 100 = 100% return on investment

11. Email sharing rate

This metric depicts the number of times a recipient shares your email via social media, excluding sharing email to email.

This metric can be estimated via the ‘share this’ button embedded in your email. You can divide the total number of ‘share this’ by the total number of emails sent, then multiply it by 100 to get your email sharing rate.

(Total shares / number of emails sent) x 100
e.g. (100 / 5000) x 100 = 2% of recipients share your email

12. Mobile open rate

Mobile click rates function more or less like the desktop rates but factor in mobile gadgets such as tablets and phones.

Mobile rates are most times lower than desktop click rates as users consistently operate multiple windows and other difficult browsing tricks. These habits are easier on desktop compared to the phone.

Therefore, you should keep this factor in mind as you form your email engagement procedures. You could, for example, use email editors to enhance the design and viewing experience for mobile users.

13. Domain open rate

This rate is crucial to guarantee the success of your deliverability.

It allows you to know what percentage of individuals are opening the emails from a specific email solution provider.

This will inform you of the necessity to troubleshoot problems with the spam filters of some specific domains.

14. Domain click rate

Just like the open domain rate, you can see the number of individuals that are clicking your messages in a specific email solution provider.

You can detect if a particular email provider is having an issue with their spam policy by performing comparisons of different providers. Calculate the average click rate of all providers, and compare it with individual email providers to get your domain click rate.

15. Revenue per email

This indicates your ROI by calculating the revenue that each email generates.

This figure can enable you to figure your best performing emails, and which of them contribute the most to your overall ROI.

By doing so, you can replicate this recipe for success with future campaigns.

Boost your marketing with these metrics

Whether you’re entering the email marketing game or already an experienced veteran in the area, staying on top of your metrics is important to generating and continuing your success.

The metrics you use can provide helpful insights into building your email marketing campaigns. By collecting handy data on your user engagement, you can stay focused on the evolving goals for your campaigns.

This will help you fine-tune your content strategy and deliver the ultimate customer experience.