Email marketing’s advantages include high levels of personalization, direct communication with prospects, and driving traffic to your website via messages. And the cool thing is that whether you have a website selling camping gear or an online casino with games like top online casinos, email campaigns are relatively cheap to run. They’re also perfect for results-driven marketing because the outcomes are easy to measure. You can use tools like Mailchimp or Google Analytics to get numbers on a wide variety of metrics. But before you attempt to track all of them, make your life easier, and start with the five most important ones. There are all of them you need for success in the online world.
1. Open the Rate of Your Email Marketing Campaign and Ways to Increase It
To find out what your open rate is, first divide the number of opened emails by the number of all recipients. Then multiply the result by a hundred to get the percentage. If your open rate is somewhere between 17-23%, you’re on the same level as most businesses. However, if the number is under 15, it means your campaign is ineffective in addressing your audience, and your email marketing strategy needs improvements. Here’s how to boost the open rate:
- Make your content more exciting by adding videos and images to it. Plus, if possible, use storytelling to make your point. Entertaining and engaging emails ensure that your readers will open the messages in the future as well.
- Make the subject lines catchier. They need to captivate the attention, press on scarcity (for example, a 24-hour discount offer), and above all: remain clear.
- Think about your timing. Perform A/B testing to find out the exact times your customers are most likely to read your messages.
2. Click-Through Rate
The Click-through rate shows how many of your email recipients click on links in your messages. It’s an indicator of whether people skim your content or are genuinely interested in your offers. And the better your click-through is, the more conversions you can hope to get.
But what’s the first thing to do if your email marketing analytics show an alarmingly low click-through rate? The quick answer is to make your content more relevant to readers. Survey your customers to find out what interests them and cater to their preferences. It makes them much more likely to follow your links to sales pages and your website.
3. Conversion Rate Measures Your Success
Conversion rate is a central key performance indicator (KPI) all marketers should follow. It shows how many of the prospects turn into paying customers and how much money the business makes. All the other email marketing KPIs should ultimately work towards improving the number of conversions. And although making more sales is a topic that deserves a separate lengthy article, let’s cover some basics that can increase the conversion rate:
- Keep the emails short and to the point. Your readers have plenty of other things to do than consume your content. Be quick and concise with your offer.
- Segment your audience to make sure the messages get directly to people who are interested in them.
4. Bounce Rate – Some Emails Never Reach the Inboxes
Bounce rate stands for the percentage of emails that don’t get to the recipients’ inboxes. The typical reasons are that the email addresses in your list are either fake or not active anymore. Sometimes a server overload can also cause an unusually high bounce rate. But if the number is consistently over 2%, you should start cleaning up your email list and delete all non-active addresses.
Also, consider offering users the double opt-in option. It means that anyone who enters their email in the opt-in box to receive your newsletter has to confirm the request before becoming a subscriber. It’s a great way to make sure your email list gets filled with people who are genuinely interested in hearing from you.
5. Spam rate
Spam rate is another number you want to keep as low as possible. It shows the number of recipients who marked your email as spam. Again, the double opt-in is one way to make sure only interested people receive your emails.
You should also pay close attention to how your subject line looks. If it comes off as pushy or loud (using all caps and lots of symbols), it has a high chance of getting the spam mark. Instead, keep the subject line simple, as if you’re writing to a friend.
Conclusion
So this was our list of the most important metrics for your messaging campaigns. You can use pretty much any available email marketing tool (MailChimp is perhaps the most celebrated one) to track these numbers. They inform you whether your efforts to reach your audience via emails are successful or not, and enable you to make accurate adjustments to your campaigns.
Next, subscribe to the mailing lists of some of your favorite brands to see some email marketing examples for inspiration. And start devising your own messages. Emailing is still a surprisingly efficient revenue machine, and it’s time for you to tap into its power.
What are the most important metrics to track in email marketing in 2021, in your opinion? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Author’s bio:
Arthur is a copywriter and an online marketer who specializes in email marketing campaigns. He believes emails are still the most efficient way to reach new customers and keep the existing ones. Arthur also likes to keep himself up to date with the latest trends and write articles on the best marketing practices.
