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How to Measure Email Marketing KPIs – PLUS Tips to Drive Business Growth

There is no such thing as “going with the flow” in the business world. When our money and our business are involved, we would rather rely on data, analytics & colorful graphs. If you were looking for some help on how to measure email marketing KPI’s to govern your email automation with efficacy, you’ve come to the right place!

Keep reading to pick up some pro advice on measuring your email marketing analytics and grab some free .tips tot drive business growth while your at it!

First, Let’s Discuss Your Open Rate (OR)

Email marketing is one of the easiest types of marketing to measure because you own the content, the list, and every bit of your data. Smart marketers use this as an opportunity to use their data to draw insights that help them take action.

So the first thing that we are going to talk about is Open Rate. What is Open Rate?

Well, open rate is the percentage of people who actually open your emails, out of all of the people that you sent an email to.

How is Open Rate Calculated?

Simple… Take the total emails opened and divide it by the total emails delivered… And then multiply it by 100.

Example of How Email Open Rate is Calculated:

Okay, let’s say you sent an email to 1,000 people.
Out of that 1,000, let’s say that 100 people actually opened the email
Open Rate = 100 divided by 1000 times 100 would = 10%

Your open rate would be 10%.

What Influences Email Open Rates?

The open rate is mainly influenced by the subject line.

If you want to know an easy way to improve your open rate, just go through your mailbox and see if you see any other examples of interesting headlines. Do they have something in common?

Here are some good examples that I found in my inbox:

1. Many of them use my first or last name.
2. They use numbers to indicate listicles or to convey discounts.
3. They convey their excitement if there is something is new, updated or super interesting.
4. They use emojis
5. They use thoughtful questions
6. Use words that invoke excitement, urgency or exclusivity

The key to good open rates is not using the same trick every time. If you put your recipient’s name in the subject in every email, they will start blocking them out. Keep your subject lines new and interesting, switching up your tactics to get the best results.

Now, here are some things not to do with your email marketing:

Email Marketing No Nos:

Don’t use lazy subject lines, or subject lines that are too flowery. If you promise your readers the sun, moon, and stars, you will sound like those guys that we all hate who are now the reason that non of us will ever know if we’ve really won anything…

You know then ones…

Comngratulations! Eric Allson is the WINNER of $50,000!

Don’t SCREAM in your subject lines by using all capital letters.
Don’t lie and use dirty tricks to get people’s attention. Keep them relative to the topic of your email content, and genuinely try to help people. The same marketing tactics that worked 200 years ago will still work today, it’s the inescapable truth of supply and demand.

People hate it when you say, “Free Amazon Gift Card!” in the subject line and then try to sell them a toaster oven. Those people SUCK!

Now, Let’s Talk About Click-through-rate (CTR)

So what is Click-Through Rate?

Easy… Click-Through Rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on one of the links included in your email.

How is Click-Through Rate Calculated?

Click-through rate is calculated by taking the total number of unique clicks and dividing it by the number of emails delivered, then multiplying times 100.

Example of How Click-Through Rate is Calculated?

Let’s say that your total emails delivered was 1,000 again.
Let’s say that out of that 1,000, you got 150 clicks on link #1, and 50 clicks on link #2.
So, your total clicks is 200 in this case.

Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) would be calculated like this:

150+50 = 200 divided by 1000 times 100 = 20%

So your CTR is 20%

Dependent upon: Content, CTA, Responsiveness of your email design

This metric tells you how ‘engaged’ your audience is in your brand and content. CTR helps you judge the performance of your A/B testing or multivariate testing emails.

The content of your relational email should be inspiring, informational, or educational. Are you telling them something new or something they already know, but in a fun and simple way? People should bother enough to read it.

Just providing great content and value in emails is not enough. You have to lead the reader to the next step. The next step is guided with a clear call to action.

What do we mean by clear CTA?
It means that:

It is distinctly visible among the rest of the content. Draw people’s attention to it by making it clearly visible with enough white space around it.
If you are using it as a hyperlink, make the copy obvious.
It is specific. Use a precise copy of what will happen when the reader clicks on the button/link.
It is placed after you have given some context about the emails.
Use text that’s not too pushy, e.g. choose to say ‘Learn More’ instead of ‘Buy Now’.
Have one CTA above the fold.

Bounce Rate
It’s the percentage of people who didn’t receive the email in their inbox.

How to calculate

Bounce Rate = (Total number of emails bounced/Number of emails sent) * 100

Example:
Total emails sent by you: 1,000
Emails that reached the inbox: 970
Total Emails that bounced = 1000-970 = 30
Bounce Rate = (30/1000)*100 = 3%

Dependent Upon: Sender’s IP reputation or validity of email address

A soft bounce occurs when either the recipient’s mailbox is full or the server is down or the message is too large for the recipient’s inbox. This is a temporary issue and you can ignore it if it’s not too high.

A hard bounce occurs when the email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. Sometimes, people might make a typo or intentionally add an invalid address to just get a hold of your free lead magnet.

So the best thing to do is to immediately remove hard-bounced email addresses. This will improve your sender’s reputation too, eventually ensuring high delivery rate.

List Growth
The rate at which your email list is growing. You can calculate it weekly or monthly. Once you choose a time period, then stick to it to make accurate comparisons each time.

How to calculate

List Growth = [((Number of new subscribers – (Number of unsubscribes)) ÷ Total email addresses on your list] * 100

Example:
No. of Total email addresses on the list = 1,000
No. of new subscribers = 200
No. of unsubscribers = 10
List growth = ((200-10)/1000)*100 = 19%

Dependent Upon:It is dependent upon your subscriber acquisition strategy.

You should optimise all the sources to gather emails. Like, look at the conversion rate of your landing page. You can run some social media ads directing people to your signup form or landing page.

List growth is important because eventually some people will churn out of the list or become non-engaged so you should keep adding new contacts. And of course, higher the list size, more the business and impact of your work.

List growth won’t always go upwards, especially if you are in seasonal business or your volume is very high. Here is a snapshot from a list of 100K members. As you can see, the list growth keeps fluctuating.

Unsubscribe Rate
It’s the percentage of people who opted out of receiving your emails.

How to calculate

Unsubscribe Rate = (No. Of unsubscribers/Total email delivered into the inbox) * 100

Example:
No. of total email addresses on the list: 1,000
No. of unsubscribers: 5
Unsubscribe rate = (5/1000)*100 = 0.5%

Dependent Upon: Content, Quality of your email list, Frequency of emails

If your content is not adding value to the subscriber, or it’s too hard for them to go through the content, they will unsubscribe. So make sure you get some feedback on your content.

If your content is valuable but still if your unsubscribe rate is high, then maybe the audience you are targeting is not right. This is where you focus on the quality of the list for your particular business or content.

The frequency of your emails is also important. It shouldn’t be so frequent that people get irritated. Also, it shouldn’t be so delayed that they don’t remember signing up or relating to your brand. Thus, unsubscribing.

Every time you send an email, there will be some churn, so don’t worry if someone unsubscribes. It’s better than a non-engaged audience. But if there are unusually high unsubscribes then you need to look at your strategy, content, and the kind of audience you are attracting.

To find out why your subscribers are leaving, you can add a short survey for people to fill out when they hit the unsubscribe button.

But make it optional. If unsubscribing it too hard, then the next step the reader will take is to mark your emails as spam. And we want to avoid that to maintain a good sender’s reputation.

How to compare?
There are two kinds of benchmark to see if your metrics are good or not: Industry benchmarks, and your own benchmarks.

Industry benchmarks can be looked at once and then you just try to stay in the ballpark figures. But you should pay attention to your own benchmarks.

The best way to have your own benchmarks is to compile data over a period of time – over a few months. Then you can compare weekly numbers with your benchmark to see if they are on track, growing or declining.

Wrap Up
Paying attention to email analytics will help you better grow, maintain, and convert your email lists. That will boost revenue, impact and your influence. So don’t just send an email and forget. Track the key metrics we discussed above.

You don’t have to deal with calculations and spreadsheets of numbers all by yourself. These days, most email marketing softwares provide an analytics dashboard that you can look at after every campaign or over a period of time.

If you are looking for an email marketing software that can help you gather these important pieces of data and provide them in easy to understand dashboards, then you should try SendX. You can take a 14-day free trial that will give you access to all the features, analytics, reporting and charts. You don’t even need a credit card to access the free trial. So give it a try today.

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