Email marketing is an effective, non-intrusive way to build more profound relationships with your audience, nurturing the bond between brand and consumer. The only problem is that once you’ve hit send, it can be challenging to gauge the efficacy of your campaign without clear feedback.
With the help of email marketing analytics, you can fine-tune your existing approach and develop strategies that truly resonate with your subscribers. In this guide, our marketing experts explain what email analytics is, its benefits, and the key metrics you should track.
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What Is Email Analytics?
Email analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing data from your email campaigns. It helps you track key metrics like open rates, clickthrough rates, and overall subscriber engagement to measure your email marketing performance, enabling you to make smart adjustments, even mid-campaign.
By tracking various delivery, conversion, and engagement metrics, you can gain valuable insights into how your subscribers interact with your emails.
The Benefits of Email Analytics
Having a solid email marketing strategy is paramount for a well-rounded online presence and building more personal relationships with customers. But what can you gain from smart email campaign analytics? Here are a few benefits:
- Increased ROI
- Better targeting and personalization
- Enhanced content marketing strategy
- Improved customer relationships
1. Increased ROI
Email marketing already delivers a high return on investment, with an average return of $36 for every dollar spent in the case of this marketing channel. By analyzing your open rates, conversions, and other important metrics, you can make your campaigns even more effective, improving both cost efficiency and achieving your marketing objectives.
2. Better Targeting and Personalization
With email analytics, you can better understand and segment your subscribers, as well as identify the best-performing types of email content. This helps you create more personalized messages that build brand trust and ultimately, drive more conversions. Personalization can be as simple as using the subscriber’s name in the email or sending targeted content based on their preferences or interaction history with your business.
According to a 2021 report from Litmus, nine out of 10 marketing experts see personalization as a key component in any effective business strategy, while 80% of buyers prefer brands that offer personalized experiences.
3. Enhanced Content Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is just one part of your overarching content marketing strategy. However, if you analyze the data pulled from this channel, you can also identify the most popular content formats your subscribers engage with the most. These insights can also be implemented in other areas of your content strategy as well, boosting performance across channels.
4. Improved Customer Relationships
By understanding your subscriber’s preferences through email analytics, you can share valuable updates, news, or other relevant information. Customer behavior tracking also enables you to offer exclusive deals, birthday vouchers, and other small perks that strengthen your relationship with customers.
According to Optinmonster, 99% of people check their emails at least once a day, with some opening their inbox more than 20 times a day. Such numbers give email marketers plenty of opportunities to connect with their lists through email.
How To Measure Success in Email Marketing
Below is a short breakdown of how to approach and measure analytics in your email marketing strategies:
- Understand the metrics: Know which key performance indicators (KPIs) you can measure, what challenges come with evaluating these metrics, and how to make decisions based on your findings.
- Determine your objectives: Clearly defining your goals is pivotal. Are you aiming to re-engage customers, raise awareness, or drive direct purchases? Your goals will determine the metrics you should focus on and the steps you take based on your data.
- Define your metrics: Once your goals are set, define the metrics you’ll be tracking. Pay attention to both rising and declining metrics to spot trends that may require adjustments or strategy shifts mid-campaign.
- Track your metrics: You can automate performance tracking with the help of different digital marketing analytics tools. These allow you to easily pull cohesive reports from the gathered data.
- Evaluate: When evaluating campaign performance, it’s vital to know which metrics you should monitor daily, weekly, or monthly. For instance, open and bounce rates should be checked daily, conversion and revenue reports weekly, and spam core checks and revenue per customer monthly.
- Improve your campaign: Significant changes to your strategy take time, but when you’re confident in your numbers, you can use them to tweak your future campaigns to yield better results. Understand how different metrics influence each other and focus on key variables to test which combinations bring you the most success.
Email Campaign Analytics: Common Metrics
After discussing the basics of email analytics, let’s go over the most important metrics you can track to improve your campaigns:
- Open rate
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Conversion rate
- Forwarding/sharing rate
- Bounce rate
- Overall ROI
- List growth rate
- Unsubscribe rate
1. Open Rate
This metric measures the percentage of recipients who open any of your emails. Experts suggest that a good open rate will vary between 17 to 28%. To boost your open rate, you can create attention-grabbing headlines.
However, some marketers argue that relying solely on open rates often leads to more challenges than useful insights. They recommend focusing more on click-through rates instead, as opening an email may not mean full engagement or that subscribers have read the content in its entirety.
While open rates do have value as a metric, they should be used more as a comparative metric. For instance, you can compare your open rates week after week to see if the changes you’re implementing lead to increased engagement.
2. Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
Clickthrough rate (CTR) measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on at least one link in your email. To calculate CTR, divide the number of unique or total clicks by the number of emails sent, and then multiply the result by 100.
CTR is often considered a “daily” metric because tracking clicks doesn’t require much time. By having a daily number, you can track how your click rates change over time. It also shows you how many people on your list engage with your content and brand via email.
CTR is frequently used in A/B testing to drive more clicks in your emails. It can help you assess whether specific headlines or content changes lead to improved engagements and whether your emails are intriguing your audience.
3. Conversion Rate
After clicking through your email, the next step will usually be a conversion, such as downloading an eBook, filling out a form, or making a purchase. In other words, the conversion rate measures the percentage of recipients who performed the desired action in your mail.
You can calculate the conversion rate by dividing the number of subscribers who completed the action by the number of emails sent, and then multiplying it by 100.
Conversion rates are among the most important metrics for helping you see whether you are achieving your email marketing goals. This metric is closely linked to your email's call-to-action (CTA), which should align with your marketing objective.
4. Forwarding/Sharing Rate
This rate shows the percentage of readers who clicked on the “share” or “forward to a friend” buttons. While this metric might seem minor, it's a powerful tool for generating new contacts. Though your current subscribers are already in your database, encouraging them to share your content can help attract and convert new potential leads and customers.
The Forwarding/Sharing rate is a valuable metric for identifying which types of content get the most shares and forwards. Use these insights to inform your future campaigns, drive engagement, and generate more potential leads.
5. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate measures the percentage of emails that fail to reach your recipient's inbox. To calculate it, divide the number of bounced emails by the number of successfully delivered messages, and then multiply it by 100.
There are two types of bounce rates: “soft” and “hard.”
- The first or soft bounce is the result of temporary problems with valid mail addresses, such as server issues or a full inbox. These emails might eventually reach the inbox if you resend the email later or the technical issue clears up.
- Hard bounces are usually tied to nonexistent, closed, or invalid addresses. These cannot be delivered and should be removed from your list immediately, as high bounce rates can negatively affect your sender reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
While bounce rates don’t directly impact your marketing objectives, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep an eye on them. They can help you identify underlying issues with your email list and avoid being flagged as a spammer by ISPs.
6. Overall ROI
This metric helps you determine the overall return on investment for your email campaigns. To calculate ROI, divide the total revenue generated by your email campaigns by the actual spend. While ROI is usually strong in email marketing, it's still important to track this metric to see how well your efforts translate into actual or potential value via this channel.
Monitoring ROI helps you see the bigger picture — whether the efforts you put into your email campaigns are worth your time and money in comparison to your overall strategy.
7. List Growth Rate
Tracking list growth rate is straightforward — besides driving more conversions and engagement, you also want to expand your audience and reach more people with your content. Your list growth rate measures how quickly your subscriber list grows.
Unfortunately, subscriber lists tend to decay over time, with an average loss of 22.71% per year. This means that tracking your number of subscribers is essential to maintain an effective email marketing strategy and ensure that your campaigns are still reaching and engaging a growing audience.
8. Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of users who opt out of your email list after opening one of your emails. While this metric is related to list growth, it’s not always a reliable indicator of your overall list health. Some subscribers may have grown tired of your branded messages but are even more frustrated to go through the tedious unsubscribing process. Instead, they just won’t open, read, or click on your messages.
This is why relying more on CTR and conversion rate is a much more effective way to measure campaign efficiency. Only after that should you look at unengaged subscribers and think about removing them from your list.
Which Metrics Should You Track?
Before sending out and analyzing your emails, it’s essential to pinpoint your exact goals to know which metrics to track. Here are a few tips to align your goals with crucial metrics
- List growth rate to expand your reach
- Engagement rate to address unengaged subscribers
- Lead generation to capture new leads
- Customer conversion rate to turn leads into customers
1. List Growth Rate To Expand Your Reach
Focus on expanding your reach by tracking how quickly your subscriber list grows. Use compelling calls to action in your site content, such as “Join Our Newsletter” or “Subscribe” to drive more traffic to your site and get more subscribers, effectively growing the top of your funnel.
2. Engagement Rate To Address Unengaged Subscribers
Address the issue of unengaged subscribers by measuring engagement rates — how actively your subscribers interact with your emails. While having a huge email list may seem impressive, it’s better to choose quality over quantity. Having many unengaged subscribers can hurt email deliverability; low engagement rates can raise red flags with email clients, causing your emails to end up in spam or junk folders automatically without being seen or opened.
While purging your subscribers might seem counterintuitive, it’s a great way to keep your database healthy and ensure you focus your efforts on leads who want to open your messages.
3. Lead Generation To Capture New Leads
If your focus is lead generation, then focus on sending out content that captures leads, such as forms or access to gated content. Track the number of leads captured to assess how well your emails are converting prospects into leads and adjust your strategy as needed.
4. Customer Conversion Rate To Turn Leads Into Customers
Ultimately, you’ll want to turn those leads into paying customers. With email marketing analytics, you can focus on the middle and bottom of your sales funnel with targeted email content.
Create emails that highlight your services and products and use clear CTAs like “Watch a Demo,” “Start a Free Trial,” “Get in Touch” or “Buy Now.” Track how different CTAs impact your lead-to-customer conversion rates to identify which approaches work best.
Email Marketing Analytics: Wrapping Things Up
Remember, having a large subscriber list doesn’t always mean your efforts are maximized in email marketing. It’s sometimes better to have a smaller, more engaged audience. Providing the type of content they value and engage with regularly can help build trust, leading to higher conversions, increased sales, and stronger brand advocacy over time.
To achieve these goals, consistently monitoring your email marketing analytics is crucial. That said, consider reaching out to an expert team who can help analyze your campaign performance and implement the necessary changes to reach your marketing objectives.
Email Marketing Analytics FAQs
1. Is email marketing worth it?
Yes, email marketing is a worthwhile undertaking. It offers high ROI and can help strengthen brand-customer relationships. Additionally, investing in email marketing is essential for a well-rounded content marketing strategy.
2. Do you need original content for email marketing?
While simply adding a few lines and linking to your latest blog article will suffice in most cases, original and tailored content often yields better results. Personalized and segmented content can drive more traffic and conversions to your site, which can be highly beneficial, especially if you are looking to boost sales or traffic to your site.
3. How does the future look for email marketing?
Machine learning and AI will likely enhance the hyper-personalization of email content, while automation will make launching emails and setting up campaigns even more straightforward than before. To stay relevant, marketers should identify any shifts in technology and customer behavior to leverage the full potential of email marketing and other channels.
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