Skip to content
(314) 849-6969 (314) 849-6969

Email marketing is one of the oldest digital marketing strategies out there. Because of its effectiveness, it has retained its relevance and continues to be one of the most widely used digital marketing techniques employed by brands of different sizes. But, as with anything, there are certain Email marketing KPIs that are overlooked.

Studies have shown that e-mails are still getting a fair share of attention from potential customers. Email is the best online fax service since you can save it in your inbox and it only takes a couple of seconds to send/receive a fax. E-mail is also the preferred method by users for brand communication. With that in mind, it should be given much importance to boost the effectiveness of e-mail marketing and make it a driver of conversions.

It is, therefore, crucial to check the quality of email campaigns. And a good way to do this is by setting key performance indicators and ensuring that your campaigns abide by these.

If you want to grow your business with email marketing, the following are email marketing KPIs that you should keep an eye on

Email Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking

1. Email Open Rate

The open rate is a metric that takes into account the ratio of people who opened your email against the total number of recipients of your email. Users tend to be choosy as to which mail they open, so you should make an effort to determine if your email is verified, and then make the necessary improvements as needed to have better numbers.

You should also consider that your click-through rates, as well as the conversion rates, would largely be based on your open rate, so it is of primary importance to boost your emails’ worthiness to be opened. 

There are lots of factors affecting an email’s worthiness to be open. Some of them are the sender’s information (the email should look legitimate), the subject (which should be inviting), and the preview of the email body (which should tease the receiver so that it will be read).

Don’t Overlook This Great Resource (ContactOut)

2. Email Click-through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rates refer to the ratio of emails whose links are clicked. It gives an idea of how effective your content is. If your content is engaging enough to drive your users to click the link that you want them to click, direct them to where you want them to be. It is essential for you to have winning content so that your click-through rate will benefit.

It is important for you to have a high CTR because your email marketing usually cannot contain everything, so you usually direct your potential customers to your site via a link on the email. Make sure that your strategy is inviting enough to entice your users to click on your links.

3. Email Bounce Rate

The bounce rate refers to the ratio of emails that could not be delivered from the totality of those you send. There are, however, two types of bounces: hard and soft. Soft refers to a minor, and often temporary bouncing of emails such as when the recipient’s inbox has no more space, and so incoming emails are unable to push through.

Meanwhile, hard bounce refers to the usually permanent inability of emails to push through because of invalid or deactivated email addresses. You should make use of an email address verification tool to ensure the emails on your list are in fact valid emails. You should remove hard bounces from your mailing list because this will further cause high bounce rates, which can be very negative.

You should also make an effort in improving your mailing list, not only in the number of recipients but also in the quality of the emails in it. With that, your success rate would be higher. 

Don't skip these email marketing KPIs

4. Email Conversion Rate

Conversion refers to the ratio of those who made a purchase or availed of service, as compared to the total number of intended recipients for your email. It is very important for you to check your conversion statistics because these are the concrete fruits of your labor for e-mail marketing.

Conversion is not all about making a sale but directing your users to the desired action such as subscribing.

If you want to improve your conversion rate if it is low, you should consider improving your call-to-action strategy as this is where your desired action lies. You should also endeavor to improve your copy so that your users would be more invited to do the desired action.

5. Email Spam Complaint Rate

Finally, you should also keep your eyes aware of the spam complaint rate, which is a measure of how many among your recipients have indeed received your email marketing campaign but chose to report you as spam.

This is very serious because, of course, you are not a spammer. Being labeled as spam prohibits that specific recipient from properly receiving your future communications. This also gives you a bad image from mailing services, which may lead to automatically having your emails tagged as spam.

You should give this KPI much attention, and it should be of grave importance for you to understand what leads to your recipients’ actions. Address it, and your spam complaint rate should go down.

Nevertheless, mailing services have acceptable spam complaint rate allowances so it should not cause too many problems when you suddenly get spam complaints. But when there are more reports than usual, there would be a problem.

Be Sure To Also Check Out This Resource

Final Thoughts

Email marketing is a great marketing strategy in your arsenal. But this will only bring about the desired results when done right. It is, therefore, essential to keep the above key performance indicators in mind so that your email marketing efforts would not be wasted. Give a try to the best drip email campaign software as it is one of the most essential and best ways to convert online customers.

It also should not end by just tracking these email marketing KPIs. It should always be your goal to improve the numbers so that the results would benefit you and your business. Track and improve. 

5 Overlooked Email Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking Video Synopsis

Author Bio:

Erin Feldman is an eCommerce business owner somewhere in California. Her past experience as a writer started when she was in college and her career, apart from covering technology, also includes, active lifestyle and social media.

Categories:  St. Louis Website Design

About the Author

James McMinn

Senior Digital Strategist

James is a savvy digital marketing specialist with a Masters of Science in Internet Marketing. For the past fourteen years, he has been specializing in SEO, PPC & Marketing Strategy. He has a super sharp analytical mind and a finely tuned creative eye for marketing initiatives that optimize brands.

View more posts by James or check out profile.