Email marketing is a powerful marketing tool in today’s digital landscape as it enables your business to reach the target audience directly and personally. This marketing strategy involves sending emails to their target audience to promote the products and services provided by the business. It is important to ensure that the email campaigns put in place are effectively working and to do this, it is crucial to track peculiar email marketing metrics. This shows how emails sent out are performing and highlights the areas for improvement.
This blog will delve into the 5 most important email marketing metrics you should track and how to effectively instil them into your business. The Basics of Email Marketing: A Beginner's Guide, is the perfect guide to learning about the basics of email marketing whether you are a beginner just starting to implement the email marketing strategies into your business, or an expert trying to revise on what can be improved in the ongoing implementation of email marketing strategies in your business.
Email marketing can be tricky which is why it is important to plan out how to make it effective. Here are 5 important email marketing metrics that you can track and how you can implement them in your business;
5 Important Email marketing Metrics To Track
Open Rate
The open rate is the percentage of email recipients who open a particular email that a business has sent. This is a fundamental email marketing measurement metric as it shows how interested your target audience is in the content you are producing and how well your email subject lines are performing.
The open rate shows whether your subject lines are catchy enough to attract the audience’s attention to prompt them to open the email. A higher open rate indicates that your target audience finds your emails credible and valuable whereas a low open rate will suggest that your content is not resonating with your target audience. This will show you whether any changes are required or not and enable you to make necessary changes to the subject lines and content of the email to connect better with your target audience. The following pointers can be implemented to improve your email open rates:
Craft a Compelling Subject Line: This is the most important as it is the first thing that your recipient looks at and it will determine whether the recipient opens the email or not. When writing an email subject line, you can either use attention-grabbing language, create a sense of urgency, or pose intriguing questions. Don’t make it too lengthy as it will divert the recipient’s attention. Avoid spammy words as these can trigger spam filters that will enable your recipient to not look at the mail.
Optimise Timing – The timing of when you send the email will have a significant impact on the open rates. Analyse your target audience’s behaviour to understand what time they are active on their laptops or phones. They are more likely to open an email when a notification pops up while using their electronic devices. The optimal time is usually mid-morning and mid-week but this can vary according to your business’s target audience.
Personalise Your Emails – This step allows you to build a rapport with the recipients and establish a connection with them. Personalisation goes beyond addressing the recipients by their names; it entails tailoring the email contents that are calculated by analysing their past behaviours, demographics and preferences. Remember, personalised emails are more likely to be opened and read by your target audience. According to a 2022 McKinsey report, 71% of consumers expect businesses to offer personalised communication and 76% do not open their emails if they are not personalised.
Test Different Approaches – Conduct A/B tests to determine which subject lines and other personalisation techniques work best for your target audience. After using two different approaches, collect data from both, evaluate which approach makes a significant change in the open rate and integrate it to refine your email marketing strategy. To learn more about how to perfect your A/B tests, read A/B Testing for Email Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide. It is a detailed guide on A/B testing and how you can implement it effectively.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This measures the percentage of recipients who click on a link that is attached to the email sent. This email marketing metric is important to understand the engagement level of the content being sent in emails to your target audience.
CTR is more helpful than open rate when you want to learn the level of engagement your business has with the target audience as it shows how many found the content interesting enough to click the link and not only open the email. A higher CTR suggests that your email content and call-to-actions (CTA) are effective and are engaging with the target audience. When the CTR reduces, it shows you that the content is no longer engaging and that there should be some changes that need to be made. Here is what you can consider while making your CTR more effective:
Create Engaging Content – This is the most important aspect when increasing your CTR. Ensure that your content is relevant and valuable to the target audience. There are many ways where you can make the content more engaging; such as using images or videos to intrigue the recipients and keeping the content short and sweet so that it is ready to read and visually appealing. Integrating all this in your email content can greatly increase the CTR as you can grab the recipient’s attention.
Design Compelling Calls-to-Actions (CTAs) – You have to make sure your CTAs are concise and compelling and this can be achieved by using action-oriented language. You can experiment by changing the font sizes, colours, and styles to see which works best with your target audience.
Segment Your Emailing List – Segmenting allows you to send specific emails to specific groups within your target audience. This is a tailoring technique that will increase your engagement with your audience as you can send targeted content to the relevant audience thus ensuring that the recipients receive email content that will be of their interest.
Test and Optimise – You have to conduct A/B testing in this metric too as it allows you to understand what content is going to appeal to your target audience. Keep experimenting with designs, fonts, and other engaging content to understand what makes your CTR the most effective. Remember, there is no right answer to this! Read our article on Crafting Engaging Email Newsletters Your Audience Will Love which outlines the pointers that will help you create effective email content for your audience.
Conversion Rate
This shows the percentage of email recipients who have completed a desired action that was required, for example, purchasing a product or service or filling out a form, sent in the email. This email marketing metric directly correlates to revenue as it calculates how many recipients have completed the task required of them as mentioned in the email. This will help you measure the effectiveness of the email marketing strategies deployed.
A high conversion rate simply means that you are receiving effective responses from your target audience and the email content sent out is persuading and engaging. This is why it is important that you have a high conversion rate and the following can be taken into consideration for increasing the same:
Ensure Your Landing Pages are Optimised - Landing pages should be relevant to your target audience and should be properly tailored to receive a higher conversion rate. The main guidelines for these landing pages are that they have to be appealing, easy to find necessary information, and have a clear call-to-action (CTA).
Simplify the Conversion Process - The conversion process should be as easy as possible to avoid any miscommunication with the audience. Reduce the steps required for the audience to complete an action and any other barriers that would complicate any actions you want them to take from the email.
Use Clear and Compelling Call To Action (CTA) - It is highly recommended that you place your CTA’s where they cannot be missed, along with writing strong and engaging CTA’s. It is important to ensure that the CTA’s leave no doubt in the minds of the target audience about why they should embrace the given course of action.
Leverage Social Proof – People are sensitive to what others are doing especially when it comes to the latest trends and their decisions are affected by the same showing that what others do can at times prove useful. It is important for people to trust your business and to build this trust, you can use reviews and testimonials from experts who have been your clients. This will help you create a loyal customer base and spread your brand name.
Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of emails that were not delivered directly to the inbox of the receiver. It has a ripple effect on the overall email marketing metrics and can affect your reputation as a sender.
There are two types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces. Hard Bounces refer to the event in which an email cannot be delivered at all because of permanent errors such as an invalid email address. By definition, a soft bounce refers to a situation where an email cannot reach its destination due to transient reasons such as a full inbox or a server problem.
Both types of bounces are fatal since a hard bounce indicates that individual messages are being returned as undeliverable, while soft bounces are also problematic as they harm your email delivery and reputation. This is one metric you should not have a high score in. To reduce your bounce rate, ensure you implement the following:
Regularly Clean Your Email List – You should have a process for list-pruning where you can delete all the invalid and inactive email addresses. Before you are ready to begin your advertising campaign, make sure you verify the email addresses you have for their authenticity using various tools that are available online such as NeverBounce, Emaillistverify, ZeroBounce and many more.
Use Double Opt-In Methods - Double opt-in is a process that entails the recipients who have signed themselves up for a particular subscription and being required to click on a link to confirm the subscription. This helps in checking whether the email addresses belong to the individuals who have subscribed to your list and also shows that they are interested in the emails you have sent them.
Monitor Your Email Sending Frequency - A few tips on how to effectively consider sending frequency are: Always be aware of how often you are sending your emails and change the frequency according to the reaction of your audience. It is also possible that increasing the frequency of emails can increase the bounce rates hence you have to limit the number of emails sent per day.
Avoid Spammy Practices - Do not fill your emails with words with obscene language or taboo words, and do not overuse special characters like @, #, $, %, etc. Make certain that your emails are not violating anti-spam laws and put the unsubscribe feature in a visible place. For more information on how to ensure your emails do not go to the recipient's spam, see our page Compliance Essentials: Building a Permission-Based Email List.
Unsubscribing Rate
The unsubscribing rate refers to the percentage of consumers who opt out of your mailing list as they are no longer interested in the products and services your business provides. It is an important email marketing metric because it helps to better understand the interest of your audience and the relevance of the materials sent in the email.
A high unsubscribing rate suggests that the content does not meet the needs of the target audience or that the frequency of the email is too high. To track the unsubscribing rate, follow the statistics of recipients who have stopped receiving emails from your end. This will help you determine and modify the content of your emails to persuade the audience to stay subscribed. To minimise your unsubscribe rate, consider using the following methods:
Ensure your Content is Relevant and Valuable - It’s very important to tailor-make your content and needs according to your audience. To ensure this is followed, you can use segmentation which will help you understand what your audience preferences are. Once this is done, personalise the emails for each of the segments you have created.
Allow Subscribers to Manage Their Preferences - Ensure your subscribers have the flexibility to unsubscribe from any emails they receive and choose which sort of emails they want to continue receiving. This helps to lower the risks of subscribers leaving your emailing list.
Avoid Sending Emails Too Frequently - Another crucial way of effectively using this email marketing metric is to regulate the frequency of your emails to ensure they interest your viewers. Excessive sending of emails may lead to a higher number of complaints by subscribers which will result in more unsubscribe rates. For further information on how to send automated emails at a friendly rate, click the following link to A Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing Automation.
Use Clear and Compelling CTAs - Your CTAs should be placed where the most eyes go on the page and catchy with persuasive words helping you to engage with the audience. Ensure that you explain the benefits that you want the audience to gain by pursuing the intended action described in the email.
Conclusion
Let's take a quick look at the 5 email marketing metrics that were outlined in this blog: open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate and unsubscribe rate – all of which will tell you about your campaigns’ success and guide you to make the right changes. As mentioned earlier in the blog; to get email marketing metrics working effectively, it is necessary to review the reporting periodically and consistently. For a comprehensive understanding, revisit our page; The Basics of Email Marketing: A Beginner's Guide.
Each of these metrics are important and when monitored, you will be able to get insight into the behaviour, the preferences of your target audiences as well as the engagement level towards different campaigns, hence being able to improve the outcomes of the email marketing campaign. Each industry has its own benchmarks when considering email marketing metrics so it’s important to research what the average rate for a metric is in your industry. For example, in the retail sector, open rates range from 18-25% whereas in the technology sector, the range is 15-18%.
Knowing these metric rates in your industry will help you set a reasonable goal for the email marketing strategies implemented and help you identify the areas you can improve on. Just remember, that no email marketing campaign is perfect and can be effective from the start. The best step is to use the data and information collected to make improvements and iterations continuously.
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