Email marketing remains one of the best digital marketing strategies of the century, primarily because it is an effective way for businesses to stay in touch with their audience or clients.
However, for business owners who have been able to key into the benefits of email marketing, another challenge is knowing the exact email marketing metrics to track and which ones are the most relevant to their marketing goals.
Email marketing metrics give a business owner or marketer an insight into the effectiveness of their email campaigns. With these metrics, you can analyze your users’ behavioral patterns, from when they get your mail to their final click.
Knowing what kind of content produces a specific reaction will empower you to redefine your email strategy to suit your audience’s tastes.
What are email marketing metrics?
Email marketing metrics are data points that measure how subscribers are interacting with your email campaigns.
You can think of email marketing metrics as your analytics. It analyzes every content or email campaign against every subscriber. Metrics show you the interaction pattern from the point of receiving the mail to the action of each subscriber.
Without these metrics, you are like a plane pilot without a navigation system. It is a big sky out there.
It doesn’t matter how optimized each campaign is; if you cannot accurately predict users’ interaction, you cannot tell if you need to fly higher with a specific type of campaign or make an emergency landing.
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Benefits of tracking email metrics
As earlier discussed, there are different benefits of tracking your email marketing metrics, including:
- increased return on investment
- increased engagement
- increased conversion
- high open rates
- reduced unsubscribe rates
- high customer retention rate
The truth is that most of these benefits are linked.
For example, when you track your campaign metrics and create targeted email campaigns, you can increase the open rate for your emails, which automatically increases engagement and might prevent a user from unsubscribing.
Also, with an informed call to action based on your collected data, you can increase conversion, retain existing customers, and get your return on investment within a few months.
Key email marketing metrics to track for 2024
Are you considering taking email marketing seriously in the coming years? Here are some key email marketing metrics you need to track:
1. Delivery rate
This email marketing metric calculates the percentage of emails that have successfully passed through all the email filters and reached your targeted audience.
It means that it was neither reported as spam mail nor bounced back.
The success of your email marketing strategy cannot be properly evaluated if it doesn’t reach the user’s inbox. Tracking the delivery rate of your email campaigns can help you identify issues with your email marketing platform’s server infrastructure, email list hygiene, or the relevance of your content to your email list.
Ideally, the delivery rate of your email campaigns should be between 90% to 98%.
To calculate your delivery rate:
Delivery rate = number of successfully delivered emails ÷ number of emails sent x 100
2. Bounce rate
This metric helps you keep track of the percentage of your emails grouped under the undeliverable category by the mail server.
There are two different types of bounce rates:
- Hard bounces: These emails are returned to the sender because the recipient’s email address is non-existent, invalid, or closed.
- Soft bounces: These emails are returned to the sender because of a temporary issue, such as a full inbox or server outage.
When subscribers make a mistake in the email address provided while filling out the signup form, any message you send out will “hard bounce” back to you since the email address provided was wrong.
Meanwhile, if the recipient has a full mailbox, it will “soft bounce” to you.
Soft bounces can sometimes be held in the recipient’s server and automatically sent when the issue has been fixed, but you can decide to resend all your bounce emails after a while.
To calculate your bounce rate:
Bounce rate = number of bounced emails ÷ total number of emails sent × 100
3. Open rate
This is one of the most used and important email marketing metrics to track.
The open rate metric provides insight into the effectiveness of your subject line optimization by showing the percentage of subscribers who opened your email.
When a newsletter is sent, the relevance or urgency of the subject line triggers a recipient to open it. The subject line is the first thing displayed on an email notification besides the sender’s name.
With an impressive and buzz-worthy subject line, you can exponentially increase your open rate.
To calculate your open rate:
Open rate = number of emails opened ÷ number of emails successfully delivered × 100
4. Click-through rate (CTR)
Sometimes referred to as the click-to-open rate, this is one of your key email marketing metrics that gives you an insight into how your marketing emails are performing.
Beyond open rates, the click-through rate metric shows if your subscribers are clicking on the links in your emails or taking a desired action.
It shows you the effectiveness of your call-to-action, the relevance of an added resource, or your subscribers’ interests in a product or service.
A low CTA can also indicate a flaw in your content. It could be that the content is irrelevant to the added resources or your target audience.
To calculate your click-through rate:
Click-through rate = number of clicks ÷ number of emails opened x 100
5. Unsubscribe rate
The email unsubscribe rate is the percentage of subscribers who opt out of your email list after receiving an email. A high unsubscribe rate discourages businesses as it decreases brand reach, engagement, and return on investment (ROI).
If your brand is experiencing a high email unsubscribe rate in its campaigns, it suggests that touch-ups are needed. The unsubscribe rate may result from sending too many emails that are no longer relevant to your target audience.
However, one positive aspect of people unsubscribing is that it might be an excellent way to get rid of inactive and unresponsive subscribers.
To calculate your email unsubscribe rate:
email unsubscribe rate = number of unsubscribers ÷ number of delivered emails × 100
6. List growth rate
This email marketing metric calculates the increase in the number and sometimes frequency of email subscribers over a set period.
This helps you ascertain the effectiveness of your email list acquisition strategies and identify any needs for change.
For example, a low list growth rate could indicate that your lead magnet is not as enticing to your audience as you initially thought, and you may need to make informed decisions about changing it.
To calculate the list growth rate:
List growth rate = (number of new subscribers – number of unsubscribers) ÷ total number of emails × 100
7. Conversion rate/return on investment (ROI)
What differentiates your conversion rate from your click-through rate is that while the CTR tells you how many subscribers clicked on a particular link, the conversion rate tells you whether they took the desired action after clicking.
For example, if you include a link to a product you have, the CTR will tell you how many people clicked on the link, while the conversion rate will tell you how many people made a purchase.
The conversion rate is crucial to determine your return on investment.
To calculate your conversion rate:
Conversion rate = number of those who clicked ÷ number of emails delivered × 100
How do I track my email marketing metrics on MailDrip?
Here’s how you can track your email marketing metrics on MailDrip:
- Login to MailDrip account
- Go to ‘Drip Campaigns’ and click on any of the email sent that you want to track
- Click on recipients.
- Click on the icon under ‘Add Recipient’ at the top right
- Download CSV file
Conclusion
Tracking email marketing metrics starts with first understanding your email marketing goals.
Without understanding or knowing your email marketing goals, you may end up tracking metrics that are not relevant to you or your business.
However, identifying your most relevant email marketing metrics will help you make informed, data-driven decisions that will increase your chances of achieving your marketing goals.
With this strategy, you can increase engagement with your content, conversion rate, and list growth rate.
Sign up on MailDrip and start tracking your email marketing metrics today!
READ MORE: 9 BEST STRATEGIES TO REDUCE EMAIL UNSUBSCRIBE RATES
Frequently Asked Questions
What are email marketing metrics?
Email marketing metrics are data points that measure how users are interacting with your email campaigns.
Which is the most important metric for tracking email marketing?
The most important metric for tracking email marketing is the click-through rate (CTR), which evaluates engagement and campaign success.
