Email marketing is unarguably one of the most cost-effective and quick methods for customer outreach. Marketers prefer email marketing over others as it provides the highest ROIs in the industry as compared to other popular digital marketing channels. However, to ensure cent percent success in your email marketing campaigns, you need to identify and monitor some important email marketing KPIs and metrics.
As an email marketer, you must understand the basics of a KPI, its types, and ways to track and monitor them. In this article, we are discussing all this in detail.
What is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator)?
As the name implies, key performance indicators or KPIs are quantifiable units that help to measure your email marketing campaign performance against goals you have set to achieve. Any marketer works hard to improve these indicators to meet their goals. These units indicate whether or not you’ve been successful in achieving your goals. Without them in place, you have no way to calculate your campaign success.
Best Email Marketing APIs to Track
Following are the major email marketing KPIs that should be measured and monitored to ensure campaign success:
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate in an email campaign indicates the percentage of emails that failed to reach the recipient’s inbox for any reason. Technically two types of bounces occur during an email campaign namely soft bounce and hard bounce. A hard bounce can occur due to a permanent error like a nonexistent email address. On the contrary, server issues preventing email delivery are considered soft bounces.
It’s easy to calculate the bounce rate. Divide the number of bounces by the total number of emails sent and multiply by 100.
Open Rate
The campaign’s open rate indicates the total number of emails opened compared to the total number of emails sent. Email open rate is the most important KPI so far. The unit indicates how interested your subscribers are in your offerings. Open rate increases if your email content is well-optimized, and has attention-grabbing subject lines.
The open rate of 20 percent is said to be a good one. To get the open rate of an email campaign, divide the number of emails opened by the total number of emails sent and multiply by 100.
Opens by Device
As the name implies ‘opens by device’ tells about the device your emails are being opened on. The metric measures the number of times emails were opened by device type. By analyzing this metric you can easily find out the devices your subscribers are using to open the emails whether desktop or mobile. Based on these findings, you can optimize email design and content for each device type.
Click through Rate(CTR)
Click-through Rate is another important email metric to measure. It indicates how many users have clicked on the links within the email once it’s opened. Opening an email isn’t enough unless the links within the email are clicked. If this is the case, it’s time to optimize your marketing efforts.
Adding enticing and attention-grabbing CTAs encourages your subscribers to click on a CTA. A CTR above 4 percent is said to be a good Click-through rate. To find your email CTR, divide the number of emails opened by the total number of emails sent and multiply by 100.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate of an email campaign indicates the rates at which your subscribers are interacting and engaging with your email content. Conversion rate tells you about the recipients who both clicked on a link in your email and took the desired action(s) such as subscribing to your newsletter or buying a product/service that email promoted.
Despite clicking your links within the email if users are not converting, check if your CTAs. They may be inefficient or misleading. Another reason behind lower conversion rates is that your subscribers don’t find your offer valuable.
You can calculate the email conversion rate of a given email campaign by this formula. Divide the number of times the desired action was taken by the total number of emails delivered, and multiply that number by 100.
Unsubscribe Rate
The Unsubscribe Rate indicates how many contacts have opted out of receiving your newsletter and other emails in the future. The metrics present a deeper insight into your email contact list and the content of your email. An increase in unsubscribe rate is a sign that you are quite frequently sending emails. It may also be the case that your content isn’t providing your subscribers any value at all.
It’s easy to calculate the unsubscribe Rate of an email campaign. Simply divide the number of unsubscribes by the total number of emails delivered and multiply by 100.
Email ROI
This is an important metric that unveils your Return on Investment from an email campaign. Email ROI measures the revenue you’ve generated through your campaign in comparison to how much amount you’ve spent on the campaign. Good ROI indicates that your email marketing efforts are going in the right direction. In case you’re not impressed by your Email ROI, revisit and reconstruct your ongoing email strategy.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.
