10 Email Marketing Metrics to Measure and What They Tell You

Marketers that use data to drive decisions are among the most successful. In fact, data-driven companies are more likely to have a competitive advantage, are more likely to increase profitability, and are six times more likely to be profitable year-over-year, according to Forbes.

However, to experience this type of success and to adequately glean insights from data, it’s vital to know which metrics to track. When it comes to email marketing, there are a multitude of different metrics that will provide insights into the performance of different campaigns.

While there are several different email metrics you can track depending on what you need to know, there are 10 that everyone should track all the time. No questions asked. Here they are.

1. Metrics that determine engagement and success

One of the first things any email marketer wants to know is how well their email marketing campaigns are performing in terms of customer engagement and overall success. There are several metrics that will help you capture insights about your success, but here are 5 every marketer must measure.

Email Open Rates. Email open rates tell you how many subscribers opened your email. Measuring this metric can tell you how engaging your subject lines are. Quick tip: Subject lines that use a subscriber’s first name can result in an open rate increase of 26%.

Email Click Through Rate (CTR). Email click through rate measures how many people clicked on the links in your email. This metric tells you how enticing your link text and calls to action are.

Conversion Rates. Conversion rates are one of the more exciting metrics. They tell you how many subscribers completed an action like registering for a webinar, providing information for a follow-up call, or scheduling a demo.

Unsubscribers. Unsubscribers tells you how many people opted out of your email list. When these numbers are high, you know you may need to make adjustments to your segments, increase personalization, or check to make sure your lists are up-to-date.

2. Metrics that measure quality

Not only do you want to measure the engagement and success of the actual emails you are sending, but you want to measure the quality of your lists and the emails you are sending. These two metrics will give you important insights to help you make sure you are reaching the right people.

Bounce Rate. Bounce rate tells you how many email addresses didn’t receive your email. If bounce rates are high, then it may tell you your list quality is poor and you need to make more efforts to reach more relevant subscribers.

Spam Reports. Spam reports tell you the number of time your email was marked as spam. If you are following old practices that include writing poor subject lines, not customizing your from name, and/or not offering an easy option for people to opt-out, you may experience high spam rates.

3. Metrics that measure appeal over time

Finding out that people are sharing or engaging with one email campaign over an extended period of time is like winning the email marketing lottery. To find out which campaigns are the most appealing, you’ll want to measure the following two metrics.

Forwarding/Share Rates. This metric measures how many people either forwarded your email or shared it with someone else. The higher this number, the more shareworthy your content is.

Engagement Over Time. Measuring engagement over time tells you how your email performed over a specific period of time. This may be helpful in telling you how appealing your email was over time or during a specific duration of time. For example, you may want to measure a Black Friday email campaign over a week to find out how much engagement you received and when you received the most engagement.

4. Metrics that measure overall campaign success

Finally, every email marketer should measure metrics that tell how well a campaign performed over time. This can tell marketers how much money a specific campaign affected the bottom line of the company.

Revenue/Sales Rates. This metric tells you how many orders or sales were generated from a specific campaign. Over time, this number will tell you the types of email campaigns that are resulting in the highest sales rates.

Return on Investment. Return on investment tells you the overall ROI for your campaigns. You can find this by taking the total revenue divided by total spend. When email marketing is done right, it has some of the highest ROI rates out of any digital marketing strategy.

Wrap Up

If you make it a priority to measure the 10 metrics listed above, you’ll be able to tell how your campaigns are performing and make adjustments to improve performance. For a quick review of the top metrics to measure, check out the infographic below.

Source: 10 Metrics Every Email Marketer Needs to Track by Campaign Monitor