You always hear that email marketing is the best marketing strategy out there. But what people don’t tell you that is is not something you can master in a day or a week.
In order to be successful with your email marketing efforts, you need to spend time running various email campaigns and measuring their success rates. This will help you to learn what works well for your business and what doesn’t.
Hence, it is crucial for you to track email marketing analytics to truly understand the impact of email on your business.
Email analytics will help you identify exactly which email campaigns got you the highest results, what email marketing approaches were good or wrong, and how you can optimize your email marketing methods for the best ROI.
Today, you will learn about all the email metrics that you should be tracking to take your email marketing efforts to the next level.
Here, we will discuss
- Every email metric that you should measure.
- How to calculate each of these metrics the right way.
- In what areas you will be able to improve with each metric?
Eventually, you will have a clear idea about email marketing analytics and all its components.
So, let’s begin.
Importance of Measuring Email Campaign Metrics
Data-driven decision-making is crucial in today’s competitive market. Email campaign metrics offer the data needed to make informed decisions and optimize your email strategies.
You can identify what’s working and what needs improvement from different email metrics. For example, a low CTR could mean your email copy wasn’t well-written, whereas a high bounce rate would mean you need to improve your lead quality.
Based on your observation and running various email campaigns to get more data, you will be able to improve your email campaigns and start getting higher results.
Most email marketing tools, such as Mail Mint will help you with most of the email analytics of your campaigns. However, some of them, such as the email campaign ROI, will require you to calculate the data manually.
The idea is to use data to identify flaws in your emails and improve your email marketing skills so that very soon, you too can run email campaigns that will deliver high ROI.
Now, let us look at what email marketing analytics you should be tracking to bring the best out of your email marketing efforts.
Key Email Campaign Metrics To Measure
First and foremost, you have to track and observe some key email marketing analytics that will directly help you understand your campaign performance and improve email quality.
Following are the key email campaign metrics you must measure:
- Email Deliverability
- Email Open Rate
- Click-Through rate (CTR)
- Click To Open Rate (CTOR)
- Bounce Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
1. Email Deliverability
This is basically the email delivery rate. it is the percentage of emails that were successfully delivered to the recipient’s inboxes compared to the total number of leads in your email list.
Email Delivery Rate Formula:
- Email Deliverability = (Total emails delivered/Total emails sent) X 100%
For example, let’s say you sent 10,000 emails and 400 emails bounced, while 9,600 emails got delivered.
Then the email delivery rate will be (9600/10000) X 100% = 96%
This metric will help you understand the quality of your email list. Tracking it will help you work on two things:
- Understand if your lead generation process requires any major improvement.
- Decide on curating your lead list more efficiently.
A good email delivery rate is around 95% or above.
2. Email Open Rate
The email open rate is the percentage of recipients who opened the email compared to the number of emails delivered.
Email Open Rate Formula:
- Email Open Rate = {No. of emails opened/(No. of emails sent – No. of bounced emails)} x 100%
For example, suppose you have 5,000 subscribers. After running an email campaign, you noticed that 500 emails bounced and 1500 emails were opened.
So the email open rate will be {1500 / (5000 – 500)} x 100% = {1500/4500} x 100% = 33.33%
This email metric will help you understand
- the quality of the leads,
- how warm your leads are, and
- how well you have prepared the email content.
A good average email open rate may range between 19% to 39% depending on the campaign type and niche.
Here’s a guide on Email Open Rate and how you can improve it.
3. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The email click-through rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in the email compared to the total number of emails delivered.
Email Click-Through Rate Formula:
- Email Open Rate = {No. of email links clicked/(No. of emails sent – No. of bounced emails)} x 100%
For example, suppose you’ve sent a special discount offer via email to 5,000 customers. After the campaign is over, you notice that 4,500 emails were delivered (i.e., 500 emails were bounced), but only 90 people clicked on a link in your email.
So the email CTR will be {90 / (5000 – 500)} x 100% = {90/4500} x 100% = 2%
This email metric indicates the quality of your
- Email subject line
- Design of the email
- Email copy
- CTA Quality
The better you write, the higher your CTR will be.
A good average email CTR may range between 1% to 3%.
Here’s a guide on maintaining high Email CTR.
4. Click To Open Rate (CTOR)
The click-to-open rate (CTOR) is one of the new additions to email marketing analytics that marketers have started using. It is basically, the percentage of recipients who clicked on email links compared to the number of emails opened in your email campaign.
Email Click To Open Rate Formula:
- Email Click-To-Open Rate = (No. of email links clicked/No. of emails opened) X 100%
For example, let’s say you’ve sent an email to 5,000 customers. After the campaign is over, you notice that 2,000 emails were opened, but only 90 people clicked on a link in your email.
So the email CTOR will be (90 / 2000) x 100% = 4.5%
What this does is, it only takes into consideration, the emails that were actually opened. So, it will give a clear indication of how well your email copy was written, how good was the email body design, and if the CTA was strong enough, without worrying about the subject line or other technicalities.
This will help with more curated email analytics to improve the campaign performance.
A good average email CTOR ranges between 6% to 17% depending on the industry and the lead segment.
5. Bounce Rate
The email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that did not reach recipients’ inboxes. It is a crucial part of email analytics that helps you understand how efficient your lead list is.
It can be classified into two types:
- hard bounces (permanent delivery failures) and
- soft bounces (temporary delivery failures)
Email Bounce Rate Formula:
- Email Bounce Rate = (Total Bounces/Total Emails Sent) X 100%
For example, suppose you’ve sent an email to 8,000 customers. After the campaign is over, you noticed that 4,00 emails were bounced.
So the email bounce rate will be (400 / 8000) x 100% = 5%
The bounce rate is the direct indicator of how authentic your email list is. If the bounce rate is high, then you have to improve the quality check of the leads that you collect. You may do it by using double opt-in confirmation emails and reCaptcha for lead forms.
A good email bounce rate should be below 2%.
Here’s a quick guide on how you may reduce your email bounce rate.
6. Unsubscribe Rate
The email unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your email list compared to the total emails delivered.
Email Unsubscribe Rate Formula:
- Email Unsubscribe Rate = (No. of Unsubscribers/No. of Emails Sent) X 100%
For example, let’s say you sent 5,000 emails and 4,500 emails were delivered. And then, 50 people unsubscribed from your email list.
So the unsubscribe rate will be (50 / 4500) x 100% = 1.11%
A high unsubscribe rate means your prospects were unhappy with your email for some reason. It could be due to a spammy email or due to too many emails sent in a short time.
A good email unsubscribe rate is below 0.5%.
Advanced Email Marketing Analytics To Measure Success Rate
Besides tracking the campaign email analytics, you may also measure email metrics for several other aspects to understand the success rate of your overall email marketing efforts.
7. List Growth Rate
The list growth rate is the percentage of email list growth compared to the total emails you currently have.
Email List Growth Rate Formula:
- {(No. of current users – No. of users in last monitoored period)/No. of users in last monitored period} X 100%
For example, last week you had 3000 subscribers. Today, you measured your email list grew to 3120 subscribers.
So the email list growth rate is {(3120 – 3000)/3000} X 100% = {120/3000} X 100% = 4%
This is a clear indication as to how well your lead generation efforts are working.
You may choose to measure your list growth rate on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
A good email list growth rate is about 2.5%.
8. Conversion Rate
The email conversion rate is the percentage of people who converted into a customer compared to the number of emails delivered.
Email Conversion Rate Formula:
- (No. of leads converted/No. of emails delivered) X 100%
For example, suppose your email’s main goal was to convert your leads in to purchase your paid course. You sent out 5000 emails out of which, 4500 were delivered. After the campaign, you found that 500 people from your email list ended up purchasing the course.
So the email conversion rate will be (500/4500) X 100% = 11.11%
The email CR is a part of the email analytics that shows a more specific success rate of your email campaigns. It helps you understand if your promotional emails are on par to reach your revenue goals.
There is no fixed expected conversion rate for emails because different people may have different goals with their email campaigns.
Some may expect only to get link clicks, whereas others will expect to get clients to join a community, purchase a product, book appointments, etc. Each of their conversion rates will be based on the goal they had. If you send an email to make your leads join your social community, then the CR will be determined based on how many of your leads join by the end of the campaign.
9. Device-Specific Email Campaign Metrics
You may take your email marketing analytics even more specific with metrics such as the open rate and CTR based on the device used.
This will help you understand if your email is optimized for certain devices while underperforming for other devices.
For example, you may have a high CTR on a PC, but a poor CTR on mobile phones. This means you have to optimize your email design or mobile phones.
i. Customer Distribution Per Device Type
You may track the percentage of emails that were opened on each device.
For example, after delivering an email campaign to 1000 subscribers, you may notice that 50% of them have read the email via PCs, 30% read the email via mobile phones, 10% opened the email using a tab, and 20% did not open the email at all.
This will help you understand which type of users are part of your email list. If your expected target audience is supposed to be mobile users, then you probably don’t have the right lead list. In that case, you need to work on improving your lead collection process.
ii. Desktop Email Open Rate & CTR
Desktop email open rate is the percentage of people who opened your emails using a PC compared to the number of emails delivered.
Desktop email CTR is the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your emails while opening it using a PC, compared to the number of emails delivered.
ii. Open Rate & CTR On Mobile Devices
Email open rate on mobile devices is the percentage of people who opened your emails using a mobile phone compared to the number of emails delivered.
Email CTR on mobile devices is the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your emails while opening it using a mobile device, compared to the number of emails delivered.
iii. Open Rate & CTR for Tablets
Email open rate on tablets is the percentage of people who opened your emails using a tablet device compared to the number of emails delivered.
Email CTR on tablets is the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your emails while opening it using a tablet device, compared to the number of emails delivered.
Overall, these email campaign metrics will give you a good idea of the distribution of your leads per device and how well they are performing.
10. Spam Reports via Email Sending Service
You would want to make sure your emails do not end up going into the spam folder of your prospects when sending emails.
Always monitor the spam reports via your email-sending service to understand the reputation of your email domain.
Most email-sending services will let you monitor how many spam reports you have received compared to the number of emails you sent.
You may hope to get a maximum of 1 spam count for every 1,000 emails sent. More than that, you will be blacklisted by most email clients and always send emails from your domain to the customer’s spam folder.
Here’s a simple guide on how to tackle spam reports.
11. Individual Email Engagement Rate
Tracking your leads’ engagement rate on an individual level will help you understand the preferences of your subscribers more efficiently.
i. Avg. Open Rate
This is basically the percentage of unique email opens compared to the number of times you delivered emails to him/her.
Average Individual Email Open Rate Formula:
- (No. of unique email opens/No. of emails delivered) X 100%
So, if you have delivered 30 email campaigns to a user and he opened the email 27 times, then the avg. open rate for this individual will be (27/30) X 100% = 90%
This indicates how much a user considers your emails as important and how likely he/she is to take action.
ii. Avg. CTR
The average email click-through rate for an individual is the percentage of unique email link clicks compared to the number of times you delivered emails to him/her.
Average Individual Email CTR Formula:
- (No. of unique email link clicks/No. of emails delivered) X 100%
So, if you have delivered 30 email campaigns to a user and he clicked on the email links 18 times, then the avg. CTR for this individual will be (18/30) X 100% = 60%
This indicates how much successful your email campaign was in terms of email copy, design, and offer, towards this individual. If the rate is high, it means you can run similar campaigns in the future to get good results.
iii. Avg. CTOR
The average email click-to-open rate for an individual is the percentage of unique email link clicks compared to the number of unique email opens out of the emails you delivered to him/her till now.
Average Individual Email CTOR Formula:
- (No. of unique email link clicks/No. of unique emails opened) X 100%
So, if you have delivered 30 email campaigns to a user and he opened 27 of them, while clicking on the emial links 18 times, then the avg. CTR for this individual will be (18/27) X 100% = 66.67%
This gives you a more specific insight into how likely this individual is to take action even if he opens the emails.
12. Revenue Per Subscriber
This is a vital metric that helps you understand the ROI of your email marketing activities.
Here, you calculate how much revenue you actually make per subscriber.
Revenue Per Subscriber Formula:
- (Total revenue earned from email campaigns/No. of subscribers)
So, if you have earned about $100,000 last quarter from a ist of 500 subscribers, then the average revenue per subscriber, then it would mean you are earning about $20 on average per subscribers.
If you compare this with your overall expense, you will be able to determine if it is a good ROI.
13. Avg. Revenue Per Email Campaign
This is one of the crucial email campaign metrics that can help you determine if you are on track with your campaigns. In this case, you calculate how much revenue you usually earn per email campaign on average.
Avg. Revenue Per Email Campaign Formula:
- (Total revenue earned from email campaigns/No. of email campaigns)
You may measure this on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis to see how much revenue you make on average.
14. Email Campaign ROI
This is an email analytics that is specific to each campaign. Here, you measure how much you managed to achieve in terms of ROI when launching an email campaign.
Email Campaign ROI Formula:
- (Revenue earned from a campaign – Amount spent in a campaign)
To calculate this, you need to take into consideration, every possible expense you encounter when running an email campaign, for example, the hourly cost of people handling the campaign, equipment deficiency cost, fixed cost in office allocated for the resources involved in running the campaign, cost of tools used, etc. Plus, you need to calculate the revenue you earned from the customers after taking action from the email campaign.
Overall, you will get an estimate of how much money you are making by running a specific type of email campaign. If the ROI is positive, then you should replicate similar campaigns in the future. If the ROI is negative, you have to analyze what went wrong and what you should avoid in upcoming campaigns.
15. Overall Email Marketing Analytics
You should always have an overview of how you are doing in terms altogether.
Hence, you should have a dashboard to track the overall email marketing analytics for your business.
This will include the following:
i. Average Email Open Rate
It is the average percentage of email open rate for all of your campaigns within a given period of time.
Average Email Open Rate Formula:
- Sum of all email campaign open rates/Total no. of email campaigns
For example, last week, let’s say, you sent about 2 email campaigns. The 1st email campaign had a 37% open rate whereas the second email had about 30% open rate.
So the average email open rate for last week would be (37+30)/2 = 33.5%
ii. Average Email Click-Through Rate
This is the average percentage of email CTR for all of your campaigns within a given period of time.
Average Email Open Rate Formula:
- Sum of all email campaign CTRs/Total no. of email campaigns
For example, in the last two weeks, let’s say, you sent about 3 email campaigns. The 1st email campaign had a 5% CTR, the second campaign had a 1% CTR, and the third campaign achieved a 7% CTR.
So the average email CTR for last two weeks would be (5+1+7)/3 = 4.33%
iii. Average Email CTOR (Click-To-Open Rate)
It is the average percentage of email CTOR for all of your campaigns within a given period of time.
Average Email Click To Open Rate Formula:
- Sum of all email campaign CTORs/Total no. of email campaigns
For example, last week, let’s say, you sent about 2 email campaigns. The 1st email campaign had a 15% CTOR while the second campaign had a 8% CTOR.
So the average email CTOR for last week would be (15+8)/2 = 11.5%
iv. Average Email Bounce Rate
This is the average percentage of email bounce rate for all of your campaigns within a given period of time.
Average Email Bounce Rate Formula:
- Sum of all email campaign bounce rates/Total no. of email campaigns
For example, in the last two weeks, let’s say, you sent about 3 email campaigns. The 1st email campaign had a bounce rate of 7% CTOR, the sceond campaign had a 8% bounce rate, and the third email camapign had a 3% bounce rate.
So the average email bounce rate for last two weeks would be (7+8+3)/3 = 6%
Author’s Note
Measuring email campaign metrics is a crucial step in optimizing your email marketing efforts and driving meaningful results for your business. By analyzing different metrics you gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns and the engagement levels of your audience.
These email metrics allow you to make data-driven decisions, refine your email content, and deliver more targeted and personalized campaigns.
Whichever business or service provider you are, is necessary that you start implementing email marketing analytics. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of your audience and optimize your campaigns for maximum impact
Experiment with different strategies, test new approaches, and continuously refine your email marketing efforts based on the insights you gain.
