7 Key Email Marketing Metrics You Should Measure and Understand

7 Key Email Marketing Metrics You Should Measure and Understand

If you are using email marketing as a part of your marketing mix (you should be if you are a coach or consultant who wants to grow your business online), you know the importance of being consistent with your email marketing effort.

However, not only do you need to be consistent with the effort of creating and sending emails to your list, but you also have to consistently look at your numbers.  Your numbers tell a story and give you valuable feedback about your email marketing campaigns.

So what numbers should you be reviewing consistently?  In this blog post, I explore 7 metrics that you should measure and understand.

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  1. Deliverability Rate

    This statistic shows you how many emails on your email list were successfully delivered.  Now, this is a little bit of a controversial statistic because really what it is measuring is how many emails successfully left your Email Service Providers (ESP) server and was delivered and not returned as undeliverable.  The reason I say it can be a controversial statistic is because it is not measuring how many emails reached your recipients’ inbox, but how many emails successful left the ESP server without being returned.  In some cases, your email may get stuck in an individual’s email filter or it may go to the spam folder depending on how the recipients’ email is set-up, but it will still show up in your report as “delivered”.  Your goal should be a 100% deliverability rate.  However, you may be tempted to look at this number and feel that your email reached 100% of your recipients’ inboxes, but this is not the case.

  2. Open Rate

    This metric shows you of the emails that you sent, how many actually opened your email.  This is an important statistic because this number is actually your reach.  How many people are you actually reaching with your email?  So for example, if you have an email list of 100 and your open rate is 30%, you are reaching 30 people on your list.  It’s never realistic to think that you will reach 100% of the people on your list for various reasons.  The open rate varies depending on your industry and even company size.  According to ESP, MailChimp, 22% is an average open rateYour goal should be to have an open rate of 20% or higher.

  3. Click-through Rate

    This number shows you of the people who opened your email, how many people actually clicked on a link in your email.  This is a good number to gauge content engagement.  How many people are actually engaging with your content?  According to ESP, Constant Contact, the email industry overall reports average click through rates around 6% of emails opened.  Your goal should be to have a Click-through rate of 5% or higher.

  4. Soft Bounce Rate

    This statistic measures how many emails were returned because of a soft bounce error.  A soft bounce can occur for various reasons including a person’s email inbox is full, a server issue, etc.  Each case is suspected to be temporary and in many cases your ESP will continue to try to send to that email address if it is a soft bounced email.  According to MailChimp, the average soft bounce rate is 0.58%.  Your goal should be to try to keep your soft bounce rate below 0.50%

  5. Hard Bounce Rate

    This metric shows how many email addresses bounced for permanent reasons such as invalid email address, email address no longer exists, etc.  When the email bounced because of a permanent reason, most ESP will not email to that email address again even though the email address can remain on your list.  According to MailChimp, the average hard bounce rate is around 0.47%.  Your goal should be to have a hard bounce rate below 0.40%

  6. Opt-out Rate

    This number shows how many people have decided to opt-out of receiving your email campaigns.  It is important to pay attention to this number as people may be opting out because of the frequency of emails received by you.  If so, you may want to consider cutting back on the frequency.  However, it’s important not to take this number too seriously because people are inundated with email now so they many opt out of receiving your email because their inbox is too full or your content may not be resonating with them, which simply means they are not a part of your ideal target audience.  Therefore, don’t take it personally when people opt-out of your email campaigns.  According to MailChimp, the average opt-out rate is around 0.23%Your goal should be to have an opt-out rate below 0.20%.

  7. Conversion Rate

    This number is not necessarily maintained by your ESP, but is usually measured in your website or landing page analytics.  The conversion rate shows you how many people actually reached a page on your website or a landing page and actually clicked through to take some type of action like submit their email address, or purchase a product or service, etc.  The conversion rate is important to track because conversions are ultimately what you want for your business.  This number actually shows if your email marketing campaigns are working or if you need to tweak something on your website or landing page.  According to WordStream, the average conversion rate is 2.35%Your goal should be to have a conversion rate of 2.5% or higher. 

These are just 7 Email Marketing metrics that you should measure and understand.  What Email Marketing metrics, if any, are you paying attention to?  Be sure to comment below.

Also, consistently keeping track of your metrics can be difficult.  If you need assistance with creating a successful email marketing plan, which includes templates to keep track of your email marketing metrics, contact us to schedule your FREE Email Marketing Success Strategy Session.

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Posted by Nadine Mullings  |  Comments Off on 7 Key Email Marketing Metrics You Should Measure and Understand  |  in Email Marketing, Email Results, ESP, Marketing, Marketing for Coaches, Marketing for Consultants

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