We know you have been putting a lot of effort into your email marketing effectiveness. You are probably constantly sending out marketing emails, creating new target lists, adding contacts to the email account, and reframing the message to attract more audience. If working in-house did not reap results, you might have even reached out to a blogger outreach agency as such.
But, how effective is your email marketing? Is it giving you the results you want? The best way to understand an audience, identify what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and optimize a strategy is to track and evaluate your email marketing effectiveness. Since the email marketing ROI has touched $42 for every dollar spent, it has become crucial to keep track.
Your email marketing plan should include strategies for evaluating and analyzing its performance from the very start. Its measurability at every level is also an essential element of consideration. You might be aware of metrics like click-to-open ratios and conversion rates. Still, several best email marketing software, system tools, and lead-generation apps are for free.
That can help you gauge the success of your emails. These may include bounce rate, engagement rate, and overall ROI. This article will discuss the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you should track. We will also help you learn how to use those insights to measure your email marketing effectiveness and create your measurement plan.
Why Is It Essential To Measure Email Campaign Effectiveness?
As you know, Email Marketing is the use of an emailing platform to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers or clients. It is essentially direct mail — only that it’s done electronically instead of through the postal service. It’s the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using a digital mailbox.
By the same token, Email Publishing is one of the best marketing and lead conversion strategies.
Particularly, something that every long-lasting content marketer, outstanding brand, and competitive online business can successfully implement and utilize in their strategic marketing campaign plans. To get more lead conversions from potential customers.
Resource Reference: Email Marketing | A Step-By-Step Web Marketers Guideline
Notably, email publishing is a growing medium that includes a variety of different formats and styles. Furthermore, there are newsletters on an incredible number of subjects, some of which are on very specialized subjects. Realistically, the ease and speed of newsletter publishing allow for this diversity — some email newsletters are similar in style and content strategy.
More so, in comparison to printed newsletters or mini-magazines. Ultimately, these email newsletters function the same way a small zine or magazine does. And, they are then delivered to readers who subscribe to receive them. On the same note, some email mailing lists are actually discussion lists — acting as an ongoing virtual conversation.
Especially, with more messages than ever being delivered to all the subscribers of the group. On the same note, in order to keep from being overwhelmed by new posts to the group, some subscribers may subscribe to a digest form of the list. Further, the digest contains all of the messages posted either in a day or a week. Bundled together into one text document.
Not forgetting, there are also mailing lists that inform subscribers about updates to a website or updates on a specific product. But, what would your answer be if we ask you, between email marketing and social media marketing, what draws internet users towards online purchases? You may choose social media because of the influence of the digital era.
Resource Reference: Email Publishing | The Key Content Marketing Strategic Plan
Surprisingly, it is a great and effective email marketing strategy that attracts more customers. Unlike social media, where users follow brands for deals, email marketing helps bring direct customers and increases sales. Thus, measuring the effectiveness of your email marketing is crucial for both your overall business expansion and converting lead clients.
You will only be able to find your target audience, identify the gaps in your marketing model, or understand your existing client base if you know what is happening. And for that, you should include the tools to analyze your efforts. The best email marketing insights come from using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track your selected metrics.
The Essential Email Marketing Effectiveness Measurement KPIs
KPIs are quantifiable indicators that you may use to gauge how well your email campaign is doing concerning your objectives. Since we evaluate the real performance through KPIs against our objectives, you must compare the email’s KPIs to your predetermined objectives and tactics. So as to have a clear idea of your ultimate marketing goal performance.
Performance evaluation will be more successful if you compare your email marketing efforts to your KPIs and goals. When jotting down your objectives, keep SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) in mind. Because every brand has its aims and fundamental goals, each of its KPIs is unique, and so are the measurement methods.
Resource Reference: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) | The Top Best Software Tools
When you send emails using a marketing platform, it keeps track of how often people read them, click on them, and take other actions. Email marketing KPIs are measurements evaluating the effectiveness of your efforts. While this might look like heavy statistics, these reports are crucial because they illustrate how your emails perform over time.
And then, contrast it to the email marketing performance metrics of the industry. It’s critical to understand each KPI’s purpose and which KPIs are most significant for your company to get the most out of your reports and develop a measurement plan. Some of these KPIs need daily or weekly monitoring, while you can monitor others monthly.
The purpose of this is to determine in advance whether the specific campaign is a success or a failure and steer the direction and style of the campaign differently to generate more revenue. It will also give you an idea of the campaign you want to withdraw from and the ones you want to continue in the coming months. Let us discuss these in detail.
1. Bounce Rate
When a server denies an email, it bounces. It would be best to examine how effectively your email and landing page content fit together to see how much time users spend on your website after being directed there by the email.
A low bounce rate influences a high sender reputation. Your sender’s reputation suffers when there is a high bounce rate since it indicates that content is not being delivered or seen. Your content could face a hard bounce or a soft bounce. A hard bounce denotes an email that could not be delivered due to a persistent issue, such as an invalid email address.
A temporary problem can cause a soft bounce with the recipient’s server, such as a full inbox. We calculate bounce rate as a percentage of the number of emails bounced by the number of emails successfully delivered.
2. Open Rate
The open rate compares the number of emails sent with the numbers opened. It puts all your lines to the test and gives you a rough insight into what entices your customers and what catches their eye enough to get them to check out your mail.
You can also gauge engagement statistics using comparable information, such as how frequently users opened your mail after receiving it, the last time the user opened it, and the receivers who opened it the most. By all means, your email subject line is a significant factor when it comes to elements that are affecting your open rate.
Therefore, if your open rate is low, you should look into your subject line and find something more attention-grabbing. Calculating the open rate is done by dividing the number of emails opened by the number of emails sent (minus the bounced emails), multiplied by 100.
3. Unsubscribe Rate
If you are wondering why your list size is shrinking, it is probably because your emails are ineffective. People unsubscribe more quickly than they join a subscription. So your customers are unsubscribing more frequently than new ones are joining.
Conversely, if your emails follow a proven strategy, your list size will either stay the same or increase progressively. Be that as it may, you need some of the topmost metrics to help calculate your email subscribers list growth rate and conversion rate.
Consider the following elements:
- The number of new customers
- The number of unsubscribes
- The total count of subscribers
The unsubscribe rate can be affected by misleading subject lines, infrequent or excessive emails, and if the ‘from’ section isn’t recognized. Check your unsubscribe rate weekly and change what isn’t working. You can find your unsubscribe rate by dividing the number of your email list unsubscribers by the total number of emails delivered.
4. Click-Through Rate
Moving on, just as the name suggests, click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of email recipients who click on any given link in your email. The link could be a call to action, an offer, or a resource that stands out from the other content.
It is a crucial indicator to track weekly, as the main objective of your campaign will be to get your subscribers to click on a link inside your email. This rate shows your subscribers’ interest in your content and reflects engagement levels.
You can ensure a better click rate by checking the anchor texts that go with the link, their positions in the email, and the number of times the link is mentioned in the mail body. The click-through rate is calculated by dividing the number of users who have clicked on the link by the total emails you sent.
5. Conversion Rate
Many people will receive your mail and click the link. By definition, the conversion rate is the percentage of people who took the desired action from the link – for example, making a purchase or filling out a form. The conversion rate is your measurement of the Return On Investment (ROI) in that case. Hence it determines the success of your email campaign.
Depending on the people turning into conversions through emails, you must ensure your email is optimized for conversions. Like other metrics, you can calculate the conversion rate by measuring the percentage of desired actions taken upon sending the mail to the total number of emails sent.
6. Campaign ROI
The conversion rate does help you determine the ROI, but the exact return on investment is also a measure of how well your campaign is doing. Calculating the ROI can be complex, but there is a simple method that you can apply.
Perse, by subtracting your sales from the campaign investment, and then dividing it by the total investment, and multiplying the result by 100. It’s a substantial quantitative measure of the effectiveness of your campaign, so you must calculate it monthly.
7. Device Statistics
In reality, device performance statistics provide useful information on your customers’ devices as used to view your emails. But, how is this data valuable? Well, when creating content, optimizing it for the most likely device is very crucial.
Since different devices show the same content differently, this may significantly alter how segments on the page interact with the content sent to them. For instance, when you know your target audience is youth, and youth mainly uses their smartphones to access mail and documents, you should optimize the data accordingly.
8. Forward/Share Rate
On one hand, the proportion of your email receivers who forwarded your email to a friend or shared it from inside your message is your forward (or share) rate. Even though this metric may not appear crucial to track, you should improve it.
On the other hand, if your current leads are forwarding your emails, it signifies that they are promoting your business and bringing in new leads for you.
The formula for calculating the forward/share rate is:
(Number of clicks on sharing button/total number of emails sent)x100
That said, in order for things to work out as expected, you should try to keep rewarding your old customers for getting new leads and sharing your content.
The Simple Steps To Create A Working Email Measurement Plan
Technically, there are different methods available to publish an email newsletter or mailing list. As a matter of fact, some are much more efficient than others. And, on the one side, the most inefficient method is to use an email address book or to send the emails out individually. On the other side, more efficient methods include utilizing software programs.
In addition to free online services or professional list hosting services that charge a fee. Another yet important key is that software for mailing lists is offered by web hosting providers. But it can be complicated and difficult to use for those who are not technically proficient. Above all, free online services are effective and easy to use.
Resource Reference: Email Subscribers List | 10 Key Steps For More Newsletters Signup
However, be aware that most of these services run small ads on the newsletters and emails you deliver to your subscribers. Similarly, most professional email marketing services range greatly in price, but you won’t have to deal with any unwanted advertising. That aside, the measurement plan illustrated in the next field outlines the KPIs that have been established.
As well as the key performance metrics that can be used so as to measure them effectively, and the objectives and goals of your email marketing strategies. Your measurement plan must include accountable, concrete, and data-driven steps at every stage. With that in mind, below are the simple steps that you can utilize to create your own email measurement plan.
Step #1: Design Your Objectives
What aims does the email marketing campaign have? What kind of value do you produce for your clients? What are the goals of your company? Set your objectives, whether they are to increase sales, increase market share, encourage customer loyalty, or raise brand awareness.
Step #2: Choose Your KPI Metrics
Your KPIs are the tangible, measurable indicators that tell you how well or how badly your email campaign has performed. Your KPIs, for instance, would specify how you would boost cross-selling if your goal were to improve sales.
Step #3: Measure Performance Level
You must measure how effective your campaign has been. Otherwise, you will have no idea of its success and whether you should use it moving forward. Select the appropriate metrics per your objectives to calculate the campaign’s effectiveness. For example, if your objective is to increase sales, an average number of items per transaction could be a measure.
Step #4: Analyze And Implement
By this point, you should have a list of goals, KPIs, and the results of your email campaign’s measurement. When you have all the data mentioned above, assess the findings to learn what worked and what didn’t and what changes you need to make for the upcoming email campaign. If you are running multiple campaigns, it will also help you list the campaigns that you will want to stop and the ones you want to continue in the months coming forward.
In Conclusion:
All your measurements and efforts are meaningless if they are not used to inform change. Drawing insights from the data is one thing, but the real expertise is using them. For instance, you may be happy to have a high click-through rate, but you might realize that it only holds for desktops. Then again, you must try to optimize your content for smartphones as well.
Although it’s simple to fix, the initial intuitive step requires some human knowledge. Important metrics are gathered and reported by an intelligent email marketing platform. But, the true challenge is giving those graphs and data a personal touch.
When engagement metrics show a decline, examine the data, compare it to any relevant context, and determine the issue’s root. After that, employ innovative strategies to refocus the campaign. Always remember, that the more you measure your campaign, the better your chances of increasing your email marketing effectiveness, for better outcomes, and success.
Other Related Resource References:
- MailPoet | The No #1 Email Plugin For WordPress Websites
- MailChimp | #No Email Marketing Platform For Webmasters
- Why Emails Go Into Spam Box | The Simple Steps To Fix Such Issues
- How To Write Compelling Emails | 10 Tips Plus Steps To Do It Right
- HubSpot | #1 Inbound Marketing, Sales Plus CRM Service Software
That’s it! What’s your take on this guideline? Do you think that there is something else worth mentioning? Well, you are welcome to share your additional suggestions, thoughts, recommendations, opinions, or even contribution questions (for FAQ Answers) in our comments section below. Or rather, feel free to Contact Us anytime, if you’ll need more help and support.
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