Enhance Email Designs by Tracking Email Metrics

The performance of any email campaign depends on email metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, and unsubscribes, which determine whether your emails are engaging enough for subscribers.

These are some of the more important metrics that you should be measuring on a regular basis if you want to create high-performing email campaigns and improve the RoI of your campaigns. By focusing on the right metrics, you can tweak your email designs and yield better subscriber engagement. So, here’s what you can do to enhance your email metrics…

1. Build Your Email List Organically

Use double opt-in to make sure that you send emails to subscribers who are actually interested in hearing from you. In this strategy, a verification email is sent to every user at the time of sign-up. Only if the user confirms the subscription, you can add him/her to the list. It is a good way to reduce the bounce rate, mainly hard bounces. In addition, clean your email list regularly to maintain a healthy list without any invalid addresses that hamper your email deliverability.

2. Abide by the Best Practices in Design

If you want the email metrics to be benchmarked against industry standards, it is imperative to follow the best practices in design. Avoid designing flashy or slow-loading emails. The text-to-image ratio should be 80:20 to bypass the spam filters. Create accessible emails that are readable by everyone, including specially-abled subscribers. You can use tools like MailingCheck and IsNotSpam to reduce the bounce rate or spam complaints.

3. Write Interesting Email Subject Lines

Whenever someone talks about low open rates for an email campaign, the first thing that comes to mind is the subject line and preheader text. Unless you write interesting subject lines that grab the recipient’s attention, you will not be able to drive desired open rates.

According to Convince & Convert, 35% of email recipients open their emails on the basis of the subject line alone.

Craft short and sweet subject lines that are tailor-made as per the subscriber’s preferences. Include the first name of the subscriber in the subject line as it is likely to drive a better click-through rate. It should match the email copy and pique the subscriber’s inquisitiveness. Use emojis in your subject lines if it matches your brand personality and industry type.

Look at the subject line examples below:

4. Think of a Nice Preheader Text

Open rates often go low because the emails do not have an elaborate preheader text. Never underestimate the power of a well-written preheader text. Your preheader text lets the subscriber know more about the purpose of the email. It should reinforce the subject line and entice the reader to open the email.

Here’s an example by Travelocity. The preheader text clearly conveys the gist of the email – “Enter promo code TRAVELOCITY10 at checkout.”

5. Have a Credible ‘From Name’

If the email recipients do not recognize the ‘from name’, it is less likely that they will open the email. Make sure your subscribers are familiar with the sender’s name and email address. To ensure this, you should get your email address whitelisted by asking subscribers to add you to their contact list. This will also reduce the deliverability issues and warrant your email’s inbox placement.

You can get an idea through the examples below.

6. Personalize Your Emails

The foundation of a good click-through rate is a personalized email copy. To drive a higher click-through rate, you should segment your list based on subscriber details like demographics, past purchases, buyer’s journey, etc. Segmentation will help you create smarter emails that are tailormade according to subscribers’ interests. As a result, you will be able to enhance your email engagement and get better conversions.

You should also employ the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and use tools like Seg, Automizy, or Google’s Cloud Prediction API to build more personalized emails. MailChimp allows you to use personalization tools, send time optimization systems, and A/B testing tools to optimize the email marketing process.

7. Make Your Emails Visually Appealing

Interactive elements add a dash of oomph to your emails and increase the likelihood of getting more click-throughs, eventually generating more conversions. It becomes even more important for occasion-based email marketing and holiday emails.

Consider adding rich media like relevant imagery, GIFs, cinemographs, and videos in your emails.

Boden sends out an interesting GIF in their email to promote a 20% discount offer.

8. Use Gamification

Gamification is a good tactic if you want to get reward-based engagement for your emails along with click-through rates and conversions. It enhances the user experience and encourages him/her to take the desired action. Figure out the interests of your target audience to build your gamification emails. You can try out something like a maze in your emails like EmailMonks did. It can build better brand visibility and give a leg up to your customer loyalty programs, too.

9. Design Your CTAs Prudently

The most important parameter influencing click-through rate is the CTA. Place the CTA such that it is easily noticeable to the recipient. Think of your mobile users while designing the CTA and make it easily tappable on small-screen devices. Choose the color and copy so that the user gets tempted to click through and visit the landing page or website for more information about the offer highlighted in the email. Use first-person copy in the CTAs rather than the second-person narrative. For example: “Download my free copy” works better than “Download your free copy.”

Travelocity does a good job of crafting ideal CTAs that are in line with the best practices.

10. Test Your Emails… ALWAYS

Before hitting the SEND button, do not forget to test the email. It should render well on all email clients, browsers, and devices irrespective of the screen size. Moreover, to ascertain whether a specific tactic is working for your emails or not, you should carry out A/B testing. These results will help you to create more effective emails with better metrics.

Wrapping Up

To sum up everything, RELEVANCE in content, as well as visuals, are the key to improving email metrics. Keep track of the metrics and keep iterating according to the data to achieve your stated business goals and unmatched results with your email marketing strategy.