Effective Ways to Use Email Marketing Metrics to Enhance Your Business

With email marketing emerging as a top channel for driving engagement in the early stages, it is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways of marketing for any business.

However, creating an email marketing campaign is one thing, and making it successful is another. So, how do you know if your email campaign is effective or not? How do you know if it’s working for your business? This is where email marketing metrics come in handy.

The success of an email marketing campaign depends hugely on email marketing metrics. After all, only when you measure your email campaign, will you be able to analyze its performance and take corrective measures wherever needed. Email marketing metrics are a critical indicator of your marketing performance. It not only helps you take necessary action based on real-time data but also helps to dig deep inside the customers’ interest levels in your products and services. However, it is imperative to define it properly if you wish to leverage it in the right way. Did you know poorly defined metrics are one of the major challenges faced by 26% of marketers?

So, what are the different kinds of email marketing metrics? How can you use them to effectively keep track of your email performance? Here’s everything you need to know:

1. Email Open Rate

Open rates are a simple way to track how many subscribers opened your email. It does so by embedding a unique tracking image within the email. When a subscriber enables the image, the email is considered ‘opened.’ This, in turn, can help you as a marketer to get a hold of the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy. Here’s how you can improve your email open rates:

• Engaging content: It’s very important to post content that can entice subscribers enough to open your email. So, make sure to spruce up your email campaign with creative and relevant content.
• Work on your subject line: Another great way to enhance your open rates is to come up with a strong subject line. Research well and know exactly what can grab your customers’ attention. Once you figure out your customers’ tastes and preferences, your email open rates will improve drastically.
• Work towards segmentation: 65% of marketers consider segmentation as an important marketing tool for fulfilling their marketing objectives.

So, make extensive use of segmentation and target your subscribers according to their gender, location, purchase history, etc. It will make your emails more personalized, thus improving open rates.

2. Click-Through Rate

Click-through rates refer to each unique click that a customer makes within your email. It gives you an exact illustration of your customers’ engagement levels. Here’s how you can improve it:

• Have a clear call-to-action (CTA): A clear CTA will help subscribers understand what exactly you want them to do. From enticing them to redeeming an offer, to motivating them, to reading a blog, keep your CTA clutter-free and precise. See how FLYWHEEL does it like a pro:

• Optimize your emails for mobile: with mobile becoming part and parcel of everyone’s life, it is critical to make your emails mobile responsive to improve your click-through rates. A mobile responsive email will make sure your email is visualized by subscribers with all the pictures and images intact. In fact, 66% of marketers are already using responsive templates for email marketing optimization.

3. Spam Complaint Rate

If a subscriber marks your email as spam, it falls under the spam complaint rate. It is critical to consistently check on this rate. If you don’t, it can severely damage your brand image and reputation. There’s even the risk of having a blacklisted email domain and you will not be able to send emails at all. Here’s how you can avoid this:

• Be honest with your subject lines: Honest and relevant subject lines are the key to avoid your email from being marked as spam. Therefore, make sure to give your customers what you promise in the subject line.
• Clean your email list regularly: Churning your email list once in a while is another great way of decreasing your spam rates. You can do this by keeping a close look at your active and inactive subscribers. If a subscriber has been inactive for a long time, send them a reminder mail. If they still don’t take action, remove them from your list.
• Have a consistent address: Sender reputation plays a great role in avoiding spam complaints. So make sure you send emails from a consistent address and garner your subscribers’ trust.

4. Unsubscribe Rate

It is the rate at which subscribers unsubscribe to your email campaign. Here’s how you can lower your unsubscribe rate:

• Give value: If a subscriber finds value in your email, they will never unsubscribe from your email. So, create value in your email campaign through relevant offers, discounts, and takeaways. TAILOR BRANDS does this creatively. Take a look:
• Consistency is key: Be consistent with your email campaigns. Did you know 45% of subscribers get annoyed if you send them too many emails? So, maintain optimal frequency. While too many emails can annoy subscribers, not enough can make them forget your brand. Therefore, choose a set time and send out your email campaigns accordingly at regular intervals.
• Give an opt-out option: It is important to make customers feel that they are in control of what they want to receive and how they want to receive it. So, allow your subscribers to opt out of your campaign whenever they want. See how Encircled makes it clear for their subscribers below. It not only helps filter your customer base, but you will be able to concentrate on subscribers who are genuinely interested in your products and services.

5. Conversion Rate

Conversion rates help you gain clear insight into the number of subscribers who clicked on your email link and completed a particular action. Since it lets you know how many subscribers actually converted, it is a great way of deciphering the exact return on your investment. Here’s how you can improve your conversion rate:

• Have a strong and compelling CTA: Having a strategically-placed, strong CTA is key to a high conversion rate. So, come up with a strong phrase, something that’s catchy, creative, and defines your brand at the same time.
• Work on CTR and engagement: Simple, subtle, and optimized emails are the best way to improve click-through rates and engagement. This, in turn, will work wonders for improving your email conversion rates.

6.  Email List Growth Rate

It allows you to keep track of the rate at which your email list is growing. However, a large number of subscribers in your email list is not an indicator of a healthy email list. A good email list can be small too, with subscribers who are genuinely interested in your services and offerings. So, be a little proactive when it comes to expanding your email list. From attractive CTAs to undeniable offers, give your subscribers everything that keeps them hooked.

7. Email Bounce Rate

The number of emails that never got delivered to your subscriber. There are two types of bounce rates: soft bounce rates and hard bounce rates. While soft bounce rates can happen for reasons like a full inbox, lengthy content, or the server being down, hard bounces happen because of a permanent email rejection, such as an invalid email address, deletion of an email address, etc. So, in order to counter the bounce rate, keep your email list updated regularly and remove bounced addresses from your list.

8. Email Delivery Rate

The number of emails that get delivered to the subscriber’s mail server. Here’s how you can improve your email delivery rate:

• Set a reminder: Keep sending customers regular reminders to add your email to their mailing list.
• Always add alt text: In order to make customers aware of the images included, always add text. This will let them know what the image is about, even if it’s not visible.

9. Engagement Overtime Rate

Engagement overtime rate helps you get a hold of the right time to send an email to a particular subscriber. It will help increase your email campaign’s open rates and click rates. You can easily automate this whole process, collect the data and target your customers when they are most likely to be available.

10. Overall ROI Rate

This is a very important metric for analyzing the overall performance of your email campaign. It gives an exact idea about your return on investment. So, track your email ROI rate and extract the data to figure out what resonates best with your subscribers.

Wrap Up:

In summary, these are the 10 metrics to help you understand and improve your email marketing strategy. Therefore, if you want a competitive edge, keep track of the above-mentioned metrics and see how it helps you achieve long-term email marketing goals.