Crucial email metrics have evolved with time, as people increasingly receive and respond to emails on mobile devices. The mobile revolution has affected multiple components of email marketing, from content to pre-headers, and data accrues quickly. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll rank the top eight email metrics for marketers.
Open Rates
Though email marketing has undergone significant changes, open rates are still the primary metric. Opens occur when recipients get emails and a 1×1 pixel is downloaded within the body of the email. While it’s an important statistic, it can be misleading, as not all recipients download images, and not all downloads are captured. Despite this, open rates are a relatively reliable indicator of how many audience members viewed a message.
Click to Open Rates
Click-through rates are determined in various ways. The first and most common option is to divide the number of people who clicked by the total number of delivered emails. The second is to divide the number of clickers by the number who actually opened the email. The click to open metric is more effective in determining an email’s effectiveness because it tells us if:
- The content is really engaging
- The CTA (call to action) is working
- The email is easy to digest and respond to
If you want to learn how your click to open rate will tell you what’s working and where improvements can potentially be made, you can read it at SharpSpring.
Mobile Open Rates
Open rates for desktops and mobile devices depend on time and day. For instance, desktop users typically open emails during normal business hours, while mobile users have higher rates on weekends and evenings. Establish desktop and mobile benchmarks and test varying send times. If your audience seems to prefer its mobile devices, optimize your send times to capture more mobile users.
Click and Open Rates by Domain
This email marketing metric tells you how well each of the biggest domains is performing. Most service providers break down each top domain’s open and click-through rates, allowing you to catch deliverability issues before they get out of hand. For instance, if your average open rate is 10%, but Yahoo addresses are opening much lower, there may be a filtering issue from Yahoo.
Unsubscribe Rates
Maintaining a benchmark for un-subscribers may help you understand why they’re leaving. Are people unsubscribing because of poor messaging, increased frequency, or low-quality offers? Your goal is to keep un-subscriber numbers as low as possible while allowing the truly uninterested to leave easily.
Conversion Rates
Your email marketing campaign has one goal: to bring more shoppers to your website. Typically, conversion rates are calculated by dividing sales by the number of emails delivered, opened, and/or clicked. It can be tough to attribute a conversion to an email due to the rise of multi-channel purchasing, but it can give you an overall idea of how well your marketing campaign is going.
Bounce Rates
There are two kinds of bounces: soft and hard. A soft bounce might be temporary, such as when emails are returned due to full inboxes. A hard bounce occurs when emails are returned from non-existent addresses. All emails have a bounce rate; after all, people change email addresses often. Your list provider should automatically delete hard bounces from your file to protect the list’s deliverability and integrity.
Per-Subscriber Revenue
Per-subscriber figures may help your marketing team understand the profitability of the email program. This metric is calculated by dividing a period’s revenue (usually one year) by average subscriber number. It’s a rough average, but it may help you determine your new subscriber break-even amount and establish an overall marketing budget.
The Bottom Line
Today’s email inboxes are more crowded than ever, and to help your company stand out from the crowd, you’ll need a compelling, well-crafted email campaign. However, even the best campaign is useless if you don’t track it. With these eight important metrics, you’ll optimize your marketing strategy and improve the company’s overall performance.
0
0
