The only way to measure the return on investment (ROI) of an email marketing campaign is to monitor performance down to the individual message level.
This means that marketers must dive head first into the sea of analytics in order to find insights into the successes and failures of their email campaigns. By doing this, marketers can learn how to optimize future messages for better performance.
However, there is currently little in the way of standards when it comes to email analytics - even though there are undoubtedly some metrics that every marketer should be aware of. Luckily, Website Magazine has compiled a list of some of the most valuable metrics available, in order to help marketers take a step closer to receiving better results in the inboxes. Check them out below:
This metric measures the number of emails opened against the number of emails that were delivered. A high open rate is a good sign because it shows that a message was not only delivered to the intended recipients, but that the subject line was also enticing enough to receive a click. That being said, marketers should keep in mind that an opened email doesn't necessarily mean that the recipient engaged with the message.
The bounce rate refers to the proportion of email addresses that failed to receive a message. However, there are two different types of bounces - a soft bounce and a hard bounce. A hard bounce is the result of a bad address or technical failure, which means that marketers should remove these addresses from their list. Conversely, a soft bounce occurs when a mail server is temporarily unable to accept an email, which could be the result of a full inbox or even an automatic vacation message. This means that the message may be seen eventually, but marketers should pay attention to these subscribers and remove them from their list if messages are continuously bounced.
The click rate compares the total number of clicks a message receives to the total number of messages that were opened, which can be valuable for measuring engagement rates with specific messages. That being said, marketers can also pay attention to the click-through rate, which refers to the total number of clicks a message receives compared to the total number of messages delivered.
Conversion rate is among the most important metrics to monitor because it is a very good indicator of the return on investment of an email campaign. This metric refers to the total number of conversions compared to the number of messages that have been delivered. On the other hand, the adjusted conversion rate compares the total number of conversions to the total number of clicks.
Marketers can measure their email campaign's average order value by dividing the total revenue of conversions by the number of total conversions.
To determine a campaign's success, marketers can measure how much revenue each individual message brings in by dividing their campaign's total revenue by the number of messages that have been delivered.
This metric is a good indicator of how strong a subscriber list is, marketers simply need to divide the number of messages delivered by the number of messages sent.
A high unsubscribe rate is a sign that an email campaign's content isn't relevant to the marketer's subscriber list. This metric can be discovered by dividing the total number of unsubscribed addresses with the number of messages delivered.
This metric tells marketers how many times a message was forwarded from the original recipient to a new recipient. The forward rate can be calculated by dividing the number of messages forwarded by the number of messages delivered.