Open rate is one of the popular email marketing KPIs that has long been used to determine campaign success.
However, evolving data regulations and privacy protection features enforced by email clients have made this metric an unreliable measure of success.
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature gives users more control over their data, allowing them to stop marketers from knowing if they have opened an email. As such, solely relying on an open rate can lead to skewed insights and misguided decisions.
That’s why email marketers need to track other metrics beyond the open rate to get a clear picture of their email marketing campaigns.
This article highlights other email marketing KPIs that deliver more valuable insights to help you build an effective marketing strategy.
5 best email marketing KPIs
1. Click-through Rate (CTR)
If your campaign aims to drive users to your website or other marketing resources, then clicks and click-through rates are two of the top email marketing KPIs you need to track beyond the newsletter open rate.
The clicks metric tracks how many recipients have clicked a link in your email. This can be linked to a landing page or product pages on your e-commerce store.
Those who know how to embed Google reviews on websites can also add a link in the email that takes users to the review page on their website to show social proof and earn the trust of their audience.
The click-through rate metric measures the percentage of email recipients who have clicked a link in your email. The formula for calculating the click-through rate for your email campaigns is as follows:
CTR = Clicks / Delivered Emails * 100
These metrics are important email marketing KPIs to track because they tell you how well your campaigns are performing. Recipients can open your emails but that counts for very little if you want them to direct them to other assets.
The clicks and CTR metrics will help you know how many of your email subscribers have clicked a link in the email. With this information, you will know what to do to get more people to act.
2. Conversion rate
The conversion rate is an email marketing KPI that gives the percentage of subscribers who have answered your call to action and performed the desired action. This can be to download an ebook, fill out a survey, or make a purchase on your website.
The formula for calculating the conversion rate is:
Conversion Rate = Users who completed an action / Total emails delivered * 100
For e-commerce marketers, this is one of the important email marketing KPIs since it's tied to their overall goal of generating sales for their businesses. You can use any of the tools from this email tracking software list by Attrock to measure the conversion rate and learn how effective their emails are at driving sales.
If your conversion rate is low, some of the strategies you can implement to convert more people include:
- •Offering incentives
- •Personalizing your messages
- •Optimizing your email template design and message
- •Improving your CTA buttons
Below is an example of an email with an incentive to encourage subscribers to shop at the store:
3. Bounce rate
While it’s tempting to focus solely on the emails that were delivered, don’t make the mistake of ignoring the bounce rate when assessing your email campaigns.
Bounce rate is a useful email marketing KPI that tracks how many emails were not successfully delivered to recipients. This metric is calculated as follows:
Bounce Rate = Bounced Emails / Total Emails Sent * 100
The bounce rate will help you assess the health of your email list and empower you to take the necessary action to improve your delivery rate.
As you track this metric, bear in mind that there are two types of bounces:
- •Soft bounce: caused by temporary issues such as the recipient's inbox being full and unable to receive more emails at the moment.
- •Hard bounce: caused by serious issues such as entering an invalid address or the recipient blocking your domain.
While there’s nothing you can do about the soft bounces (besides hoping the recipient clears their inbox soon) there are measures you can take to reduce your hard bounces and improve delivery rate. They are:
- •Regularly cleaning your subscriber list to maintain a healthy email list
- •Removing inactive subscribers
- •Using the double opt-in method to ensure subscribers give valid emails
4. Email sharing rate
The email sharing or forwarding rate is an engagement metric that helps you track how many people have forwarded your email to others.
Most email layouts incorporate share buttons that recipients can use to forward the email to someone else. The email sharing rate will let you know how many people have clicked on the share buttons to bring your email content to the attention of others.
As such, this metric will help you determine how share-worthy your emails are. You can calculate this email marketing KPI using the formula below:
Email Sharing Rate = Number of Email Shares / Total Emails Sent * 100
Undoubtedly, every marketer wants to have a high email share rate, but you should treat every email forward as a positive. This is because each forward represents an endorsement of your email content and an opportunity to build your email list.
Suitable strategies you can implement to grow your email sharing rate include:
- •Incorporating video content in your emails to convey information quickly. You can create engaging videos using free tools to save on video editing costs.
- •Adding share buttons strategically in the email
- •Providing rewards to motivate users to share your emails
The image below shows an email with a video to increase engagement and social shares.
5. ROI
Lastly, the other email marketing KPI you need to track to determine the effectiveness of your email campaigns is ROI. ROI stands for Return on Investment and measures how much revenue an email campaign generates against the total spend.
The formula for calculating ROI is as follows:
ROI = Total Revenue from Email Campaign / Total Spend * 100
If your email marketing ROI is not at par with your industry average, some of the strategies you can implement to improve it include:
- •Running A/B tests to find what’s working
- •Using dynamic content to boost customer engagement
- •Incentivizing your emails
Conclusion
Tracking email marketing KPIs should be part of your marketing strategy from the start. But beyond the open rate, be sure to monitor the metrics highlighted in this post to get a clearer picture of your campaigns and gather more valuable insights to improve your email marketing strategy.
This guest post was written by Reena Aggarwal. Reena is the Director of Operations and Sales at Attrock, a result-driven digital marketing company.
