5 Email Marketing Metrics and KPIs You Should Be Measuring

Open rate

Open rate measures the percentage of subscribers opening your marketing email. To increase this rate, you need a catchy subject line. It should be clear, concise, and short in length, so that the whole line is visible when read on a smartphone.

Furthermore, it’s important to avoid using words that readers associate with spam, like ‘free’ and ‘steal’. Conversely, the more personalized approach of addressing the subscriber directly by using their name can make your email harder to ignore.

As such, the way you present your message is key. A/B testing, where a company sends out different versions of the same email, is a useful way of seeing which strategy is the most effective. Software like GetResponse calculates which variant had the highest success rate, therefore highlighting what’s working and what’s not.

Click-through rate

Ideally, an email is convincing enough for recipients to click on a link that forwards them to your website. The click-through rate KPI measures the percentage of times recipients click on links in emails. Therefore, a high rate can be a sign of an effective marketing campaign.

To increase traffic to your site, use a call-to-action button that stands out from the rest of the email. It helps if it’s big, colorful, and contains an imperative verb like ‘sign’, ‘get’, or ‘click’.

Designing such a button and generating a healthy percentage of click-throughs is more challenging than it sounds. Fortunately, there’s software out there that simplifies the whole process. AWeber is a 2-in-1 tool that not only helps you create catchy call-to-action buttons, but also provides stats on both open and click-through rates.

Bounce rate

Clicking ‘Send’ on an email doesn’t guarantee that it will reach the recipient’s inbox, as it can bounce. This means it doesn’t arrive, and you get an automated answer saying that delivery has failed.

It might not be your fault, as it may have bounced because the recipient’s mailbox is full. This is a soft bounce, as the problem is temporary and can be fixed. It can also be caused by forgetting to synchronize your email address with your marketing software, especially if you’ve recently changed the former.

Another variation is a hard bounce, which is when your email is permanently rejected, either because the recipient’s email is invalid, has been deleted, or your email address is blocked. When this happens, the email list should be updated, and those contacts removed.

Spam complaints

Most email providers have a button for reporting spam or junk emails. In other words, recipients can mark an email as unwanted. When this happens at an email list, the recipient automatically unsubscribes, and when this repeats on several occasions, your email address can be added to the email provider’s suppression list.

If the provider receives too many complaints about your list, it will filter your emails as unwanted. This means that even those who’d be otherwise interested in your content won’t receive your emails anymore, as they’ll land in the spam folder.

The reasons why recipients can report an email may vary, such as when they don’t recognize your email address and you don’t provide an easy unsubscribe process. Fortunately, spam complaints can be kept in bay by setting up a custom domain, never buying or renting subscriptions, and not sending too many newsletters in a short period of time.

Unsubscribe rate

This is the most self-explanatory KPI of the five. This metric shows how many people unsubscribed from your newsletters and other marketing emails. While it’s unfortunate and best avoided, it nevertheless teaches you the lesson that you might be overdoing something. In other words, you must change your approach and maybe your whole email marketing strategy.

Fortunately, convincing recipients to stay is possible even at the last moment. Instead of a tiny link at the bottom of the email, a visible unsubscribe button tells your subscribers that you deliberately offer this option. In doing so, they will feel that you respect their decision.

An automated message like ‘leaving already?’ may make them reconsider. This could also be an opportunity for you to ask them why they’re choosing to unsubscribe. Mailchimp‘s subscriber segmentation makes this easy to manage and helps you to convince subscribers to stay, or at least provide you valuable feedback to apply in future newsletters.

The success of your email marketing is dependent on these KPIs. Checking these rates regularly and making changes accordingly determines how successful you are in the long run. This can be a demanding task to begin with, but once a loyal subscriber base is established, you’ll only have to make minor adjustments to stay relevant.