One of the best things about digital marketing is the ability to gauge your performance. Measuring the results can help you analyze your campaigns and identify the areas that need improvement so you can hit your marketing goals.
And with approximately 4.03 billion people using email, it continues to be one of the most effective communication tools, and conversely, one of the most important channels for digital marketing.
If you want to maximize your email campaigns to its full potential, monitoring the right metrics is crucial. According to Marketo, measuring the right metrics could provide valuable insights that can help you devise a strategy that will take your campaigns, and ultimately, your business to the next level.
In this article, we’ll discuss the strategies on how to measure the performance of your emails and how you can use this to optimize your campaigns.
How to Measure your Email Marketing Performance?
Tracking your email’s performance is the most efficient way to analyze what’s working and what needs improvement. The first step is to identify the right metrics that will help you reach your goals. Depending on what you want to achieve, you’ll need to monitor some metrics more closely than others.
Outlining your marketing objectives should always be done at the start of your campaign. Once you’ve outlined your goals you need to determine how to measure them. Evaluating the data can help you learn about your target market, their behavior, and interests so you can take some actionable steps.
A well-executed email marketing campaign can increase your sales, generate more leads, acquire new clients, maintain customer loyalty, and lower your marketing expenses. Each campaign is unique, particularly if you have a specific goal in mind.
In addition to measuring your email marketing campaigns, you can also consider using Red Stag Fulfillment’s outstanding fulfillment services to grow your online business.
Important Metrics you Must Track
There are different types of metrics that require regular monitoring. Here is a list of the metrics you need to track regularly.
Open Rate
Open rate refers to the percentage of users that open your email. This metric is vital because it determines whether your customers are opening your emails and reading them. Once a subscriber receives the images embedded in the email only then can it be identified as opened.
The average open rate is around 24%. An open rate can be used as a comparison tool when analyzing your data.
For example, this metric can help you measure last week’s open rate versus this week’s data. Thus, giving you an insight into how customers are responding to your emails. It can help you determine which strategies work best and allow you to adjust your strategy if you aren’t hitting the results that you want.
This metric can give you insight into factors such as the effectiveness of your subject line and how far along the sales funnel your subscribers are, among others.
Delivery Rates
The delivery rate is the percentage of emails delivered that did not come back as a bounce. A bounce can be classified as hard or soft. An invalid email address, non-existing domain, or a blocked internet protocol (IP) address can result in a hard bounce.
A soft bounce, on the other hand, takes place when the recipient’s inbox is full, the email is too big, or if the server is down. Make sure your subject lines and content do not contain words that are usually blocked by spam filters. Otherwise, your email may be tagged as spam.
This metric also determines the quality of your email list. The higher the delivery rate, the better chances you have of getting your message across to the right audience. While the goal is to deliver 100% of your emails, a good delivery rate should generate at least 95%.
Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) determines the percentage of customers that clicked on a link or CTA in your email. This metric gives you an insight into customer engagement, how many actually read your email, and how many just browsed it. Over time, it also provides insight into what percentage of your audience finds your email content interesting.
While measuring engagement is the main goal for tracking CTR, you can also use it to gauge the performance of your link/CTA placement, media type used, and interest/email fatigue.
According to Campaign Monitor, the ideal click-through rate would be around 2.6%.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of unsuccessfully sent emails. If a significant number of your emails don’t even reach their intended recipients, then the other email metrics won’t matter much.
Here are some tips to reduce your email bounce rate:
- Get expressed permission from your subscribers and allow them to control these permissions
- Verify your domain
- Send non-spammy emails
- Use a quality email marketing platform
Before sending emails, make sure to verify your email list first as a poor sender reputation can also lead to a higher bounce rate.
Unsubscribe Rate
This metric indicates how many people are no longer interested in getting messages from you. A high unsubscribe rate can also damage your sender reputation.
It also means that you need to revisit your email marketing strategy because your campaign isn’t working. Whether it’s the timing, volume, or content, you need to find a way to lower your unsubscribe rate and resolve this quickly as possible.
Generally, an unsubscribe rate below 0.5% is ok, with a rate below 0.2% being good, and being above 0.5% meaning you have work to do.
To avoid unsubscribes, there are a few things you should be regularly doing. This includes updating your email list regularly, making your emails mobile-friendly, segmenting your email list, and personalizing your messages.
Another technique is to A/B test your emails to evaluate what strategy works best. Whether it’s the subject line, media types, or CTA placement, testing to see which elements actually resonate with your subscribers can keep your subscribers interested in what it is you have to say. Ultimately, improving your content and making it more relevant to your readers can also prevent them from clicking on the unsubscribe button.
Conversion Rate
This measures the percentage of customers that completed a goal action after reading your email. For example, your goal is to get your subscribers to sign up for an event, the number of recipients who registered will serve as the basis for your conversion rate. While this doesn’t always need to reflect sales, it’s still a crucial metric to monitor as it’s an excellent indicator of how effective your email marketing is and provides greater insight into your ROI.
It’s important to note that every email you design should have a specific purpose you’d like to accomplish. It could be something like driving traffic to your end-of-season sale landing page, or having them subscribe to your YouTube channel.
These types of actions help usher subscribers along the sales funnel, so you should be thoughtful with crafting your email drip campaigns.
List Growth Rate
This metric tracks the rate at which your email list is growing. It’s natural to experience attrition, which puts the onus on continually building a list made up of highly qualified leads. This entails making your entire digital marketing strategy to use.
For example, using the data from your website blogs, you can get an idea of which visitors are highly interested in what you’re offering. The same can also be said for engagement on your social media content.
Email Marketing ROI
As alluded to earlier, it can be tricky to measure ROI in email marketing as sales aren’t the only kind of profit that stems from emails. This is also the reason why you need to be monitoring different kinds of metrics.
While some metrics may have less tangible dollar values, there’s still a way that can help you measure ROI. For example, there are certain SEO tools that can help you estimate the value of a lead.
As noted by SendPulse, say you sell USB cables, if an average sale is $150 and your site converts at 3%, the value of a lead could be:
$150 x .03 = $4.5
From here you could get your estimated gain by multiplying the number of conversions derived by your email campaign by the value of a lead. Alternatively, you can estimate the average ROI using the formula:
No. of conversions made x cost of an average order
But if you wish to skip out on all the math and data gathering, you can use tools like Sleeknote or any of the other email marketing ROI calculators available.
How to Optimize your Email Campaigns
Optimizing your email is one way to ensure that your email marketing enjoys improved conversion rates, helping you increase profit. Here are some proven methods on how you can optimize your email campaigns.
Write engaging subject lines
Your subject line is the first thing your customers will see when they receive your email. As such, it’s important to create an impactful first impression and entice recipients to open your email.
Remember to keep your subject lines short and straight to the point while using engaging words. And while you want to create an impact at first glance, you also want to be truthful and not lead your recipients on. You want to let them know exactly what to expect when they open your email.
Add a touch of personalization to your subject lines whenever possible. This gives it a familiar tone. Also, people have been found to keep reading if their name is on the text. You should also add preview texts that allow recipients to get a better idea of what’s inside the email while still making them want to open it.
Use a newsletter service
An email newsletter service helps you create and send newsletters to your subscribers in a more efficient way. Additionally, this tool provides reporting, automation, optimization, and management services to simplify the process.
One of the most efficient newsletter services is SendinBlue. This tool is user-friendly and has all the important features you need in a newsletter along with an algorithm that guarantees effective email deliverability. You can create your emails using drag and drop, HTML code, or Rich Text Editor. SendinBlue is also able to send automatic follow-up emails and bulk emails.
Personalize your messages
Personalizing your messages is a great way to build trust and make your subscribers feel that they matter. For example, you can send them an email of a product that perfectly complements their last purchase. You can also direct them to a blog post that makes them learn more about a product they viewed.
Send valuable content with relevant CTAs
These days, it’s often more important to build relationships with rather than continually selling to your customers. Everywhere they go, they’re bombarded with sales pitches of some sort. This means that if you’re actually able to present them with something that’s valuable to them whether it’s more information about their interests or something that addresses their pain points, you’re able to stand out from the noise.
Of course, you still want to attach a relevant CTA to these types of content. For example, if you sent them an informative video, you could have a CTA asking them to either share it or subscribe to your channel.
Well-thought-out CTAs transform leads to conversions by encouraging quick action. CTA buttons drive more engagement than texts or links and should be directed to a landing page that highlights your product or service. CTAs that work well include short action words such as “Claim your discount now” or “Reserve your limited slot,” while creating a sense of urgency.
Build short sign-up forms to optimize the list growth rate
A lot of businesses tend to neglect the importance of building short sign-up forms. This tool helps generate leads that are necessary for growing any business. Just make sure once they sign up, the link redirects the customer to a landing page that provides valuable information about your product or service.
A subscription sign-up form is vital in any digital campaign because it converts potential customers. Subscribers will be asked to share their information and in return, you can provide offers or other promotions. Additionally, integrating social media into your sign-up forms such as Facebook or Google provides a faster and convenient way for customers to register.
Consistently provide value through your emails
One of the most effective ways to persuade your subscribers to buy your product or service is to build the relationship by providing consistent value. When your customers look at your brand as a consistent source of value, this, in turn, builds trust. And when they trust you, it’s easier to engage them, and ultimately, convert.
Apart from being relevant, informative, and useful, consumers respond better to eye-catching graphics and images. Use this to get their attention and keep them interested. Integrating images into your emails gives it a higher chance of engagement and increased conversion rate compared to messages that only contain texts.
Speaking of which…
Reduce text and optimize calls-to-action
Most people don’t have the time to go through their emails. They’ll likely open your email and quickly browse through it. Therefore, you need to get their attention with as few words as possible. You can craft a simple yet straight-to-the-point email and end it with a CTA so that subscribers will know exactly what to do next.
When creating CTAs, always use action words to attract customers and refrain from using generic texts such as “enter” or “submit.” Instead use phrases such as “try it for free” or “get your discount now.”
Provide means for social sharing
Social sharing buttons make it easy for your subscribers to share your message with their peers. This tool also gives you insights into what social media platform generates more awareness and engagement from your audience. It’s also a good way to know which type of content resonates with your subscribers.
Takeaway
Apart from outstanding fulfillment services, a properly executed email marketing campaign results in stronger client relationships, better leads, and ultimately, higher sales. Utilizing the best tools and metrics can help you execute your campaigns to reach your marketing goals.