How To Measure The Performance Of Your Email Campaign

Email marketing and EDMs are a great way to reach your customer base and most email marketing platforms (like Mailchimp, for example) offer extensive performance data that you can use to gauge the efficiency of your email campaigns. However, like many platforms when you get an extensive set of data feedback it can be very overwhelming to analyse. Which is why we’re going to cover the 5 most important metrics you should be keeping an eye on when doing an email campaign. This way you can correlate insights and improve your email campaign performance as well as your overall campaign ROI.  

1. Open Rate and Click-Through Rate

Open rate –  is the percentage of email recipients who have opened your email.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) – is the percentage of your email recipients who clicked on a link that exists inside your email. 

Don’t get them confused!

The first metric you should be looking in terms of your overall email campaign performance is your open rate. If your email hasn’t been opened then your message hasn’t been delivered. One of the best ways to improve your open rate is to test engaging subject lines.  although you want an engaging subject line make sure it’s relevant to the contents of your email. You also have the option to test the “time of day” your emails are sent out to see whether that has an effect on your open rate.

Click through rate is a measure of value and reveals the percentage of people who are interested in your content and want to know more. The general purpose of email campaigns is to either drive traffic to your website or get customers to contact you after receiving the email. If your content is personalised and relevant to the reader you should also receive a higher click-through rate (clicking through to your website or replying to your email). To improve your CTR, work on perfecting your email content, personalising the message and nailing the call to action messages!

2. Conversion Rate or Reply Rate

Conversion rate – is the percentage of your email recipients who have completed a desirable action (for example, a purchase or response).

Conversion rates show how many people followed through the whole sales funnel that you have set up. Depending on where your email campaign sits in the funnel may change what you consider as a conversion. And also depending on your industry your conversion action can vary significantly and some may be harder to track than others. You should also take into consideration other factors that contribute to your conversion rate other than your email campaign, in case there are other areas causing a bottleneck in your funnel. 

3. Campaign ROI

Your ROI is the overall return on your investment for your email campaign.

That is, dollars earned from sales minus dollars invested, divided by dollars invested. This metric can be tracked monthly to measure your revenue from email marketing. When sales are the primary goal for a business having a high ROI is important in order to scale. 

4. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate – is the percentage of total emails sent which weren’t successfully delivered to your recipient mailboxes.

Emails bounce because of wrong or non-existent email addresses – these are called hard bounces. Bounces may also occur if the recipient’s email server is unavailable or overloaded. Like when their mailbox is too full or if an auto-reply has been set up while they’re on vacation. Receiving servers that have blocked incoming mail may also contribute to an increase in bounce rate. However, all of these are considered soft bounces. You might be thinking this has nothing to do with your actual email contents however it can affect your domain credibility. 

Keeping a low bounce rate is important because a higher bounce rate indicates that your emails aren’t going to your customer mailbox. In this case, you should look at ways to clean out your mail list or optimise your lead capturing strategy. Having a bounce rate of ~3% is safe but anything higher or lower should be kept in check. 

5. Unsubscription Rate

Your unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who have decided to leave your mailing list.

Have a high unsubscribe rate (anything above 2%) means your customers aren’t satisfied with your email content and don’t want to hear from you anymore! Make sure your unsubscribe rate is low by emailing just enough to keep in touch with your client base but not so frequently that people will start to get annoyed. It’s also a good idea to note what your content is providing in relation to unsubscriptions. Are you satisfying your customers’ needs? Why did they sign up for emails in the first place? Are your emails offering something of value to your clients?

Now that you have a better understanding of email marketing campaign metrics, you’re ready to review your past campaigns and see what you need to work on. Need help with analysing your data and creating a campaign that suits your business goals and needs? Don’t hesitate to contact us and get started on improving your email campaigns today!