Email is still the best way to reach your audience. But as strong as that is, emails are not going to cut it. And, to be able to unlock the full potential of your email campaigns, you need to know what’s working (and what’s not), hence the importance of email marketing analytics. Metrics give insights into what’s working, what’s not, and what you need to tweak in your strategy for better results.
This blog will discuss the top marketing performance metrics to track, services that provide easy analytics, and actionable tips to use data to succeed. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert at email marketing, this guide will show you how to use data to drive your campaigns.
The Importance of Email Marketing Analytics
Picture choosing your email campaign by going off of just a hunch. Without readily available data, it is very difficult to tell if your efforts are working. Email marketers benefit immensely from analytics to:
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Fitness test yourself and see if you’re meeting your goals.
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Spot user behavior trends.
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Identify where changes are needed.
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Explain the effects of email marketing on stakeholders.
For example, let’s say one of your email drivers is driving hundreds of clicks but no conversions. This means that if you can get to the root of that conversion you can improve the process to provide better results.
Top Email Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking
Open Rates
Open rate is simply the percentage of recipients that opened your email. It will shed light on how well your subject line is doing and the time of the day you sent the email.
Formula: (Emails opened ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
What it indicates:
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A high open rate indicates good subject lines and interest from your subscribers.
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Low open rates may indicate your content isn’t relevant, the timing was off or your audience isn’t exactly interested in what you are offering.
Click-Through Rates (CTR)
CTR is a measurement how many people have clicked a link in your email once they’ve opened it. High CTRs indicate that you have compelling content and effective CTAs.
Formula: (Number of clicks ÷ Number of opened emails) × 100
What it indicates:
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A high CTR indicates engaging content and CTAs.
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A low CTR might indicate vague connections or sparse goodwill offering.
Conversion Rates
This is the metric that will most immediately interest you and let you know how many people did the thing you want them to do after they clicked on your email—whether that’s buy something, sign-up for a webinar or download a guide.
Formula: (Number of actions completed ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
What it indicates:
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How effective is your email design, landing page and offer.
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Either weak campaigns, or user friction at the post-click level.
Bounce Rates
Bounce rate is the percentage of emails that were not delivered successfully. There are two types:
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Hard bounces: An email address that doesn’t exist or an account is closed.
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Soft bounces: A temporary problem such as a full inbox or server issue.
Formula: (Bounced emails ÷ Emails sent) × 100
Calculation: 100 * 6 ÷ ((10 – 0) + 6) = 100 * 6 ÷ 16 = 100 * 0.375 = 37.5%
I hope that makes sense?
What it indicates:
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You can pin high bounce rates on the hairy eyeball and it is your signal to clean your email list.
Key Email Analytics Tracking Tools
Now that you’ve learned what metrics to measure, let’s dive into the right tools to use to gather and understand your data.
Google Analytics
And tracking user actions well beyond your email campaigns, you can do that thanks to Google Analytics and its powerful tracking capabilities. With UTM parameters, you can track and see how email clicks turn into website activity (like sales or sign-ups).
Email Marketing Platforms
Integrated analytics is available on all-in-one platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact and HubSpot. They allow you to monitor open rates, as well as link clicks, and essentially provide a comprehensive analysis.
Heatmap Software
By using heatmap tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg, you can visualize how your subscribers interact with your emails. By doing this, you can see where people are clicking or even dropping off, which will help you identify which parts to change in your design or layout.
How to Analyze and Apply Data to Improve Campaigns
It is important to remember that collecting data is only the first step. The real power of email marketing lies in the interpretation and application of the data.
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Segment Your Audience:
By comparing the performance metrics of your different audience segments, you can build more personal emails to target them.
Example: Younger audiences might relate better to bold imagery and engaging video content. Industry professionals might find informative, text-heavy emails more appealing. -
Identify Trends:
By identifying trends across the data data, you can optimize the timing, tone, and content of your emails. -
Fix Pain Points:
Analyzing which emails are underperforming, email troubleshooting will be very easy.
Example: If your CTO you suggests low conversion emails statistics, try to identify the gaps between the email click and the intended action. There may be just too many elements on the landing page, or the CTA might not be clear enough. -
Report and Improve:
Use this data to regularly generate reports in order to display progress over an extended period of time. Displaying this data across your team or business allows everyone to see what is effective, and helps maintain increased effort.
The Role of A/B Testing in Optimization
A/B testing is a practice that effectively improves emails over time. It helps test different versions and sees which works better than the other. The basic process begins with:
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Make two versions of your email with only that variable switched.
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Send each variation to a small percentage of your audience to compare performance.
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Roll that higher-performing version out across your list.
For one, you can experiment with subject lines that are phrased as questions (“Are You Struggling with Email Marketing Analytics?”) open better than bills.
Best Practices to Achieve Accurate Monitoring and Reporting
Here are some best practices when it comes to making sense of your email marketing analytics:
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Use Clean Email Lists: Clean your email lists frequently to lower the bounce rate and enjoy a higher deliverability.
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Track Goals: Make your success metrics always crystal clear. Do you want conversions, downloads, a response?
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Use Consistent UTM Tags: If you want to dig deeper into your analytics, add tagged links within your emails, and use something like Google Analytics to get a better idea of which links performed best.
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Regularly Review Your Data: Study your measurements post-campaign, and alter your gameplay for campaign No.
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Be Compliant: Abide by email laws such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM on permissions and privacy.
Elevate Your Email Marketing
Email marketing metrics aren’t just data points in a graph, they’re the key to building meaningful, engaging campaigns that speak to your audience. If you’re tracking the right metrics, using powerful tools, and refining your strategy all the time, it’s a winning combination.
Are you ready to unlock the potential of email marketing analytics? Start making incremental, data-driven changes today and lift your campaigns higher.
Rosemary Barker