Email – like any channel – comes with a wealth of data. Some are directional. Some are actionable. And some may simply not apply to assessing the effectiveness of your campaign.

Ultimately, the metrics that will matter most to gauge campaign success are guided by the business goals associated with your email strategy. A consumer-focused campaign that nurtures customers and drives sales at an ecommerce destination is going to have a different set of KPIs than a B2B campaign for an SaaS product. However, the email metrics that show the campaign is resonating are consistent, regardless of the customer target.

What are the most common email metrics?

The following are some of the most frequently reference metrics in email marketing.

  • Open rate: Percentage of opens compared to overall sends. Strong open rates tend to be 20-25%, with variance by industry.
  • Click through rate (CTR): This is the percentage of clicks your email campaign received.
  • Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of people that unsubscribe from communications.
  • Deliverability rate: The percentage of email sends that make it to your audience’s inbox, compared to those that bounce or are marked as spam.
  • Bounce rate: Rate of emails that were not delivered due. This can be due to soft bounces, such as an email inbox being full, or hard bounces, such as incorrect email or emails that are rejected by the recipients’ server.
  • Conversion rate: The rate at which recipients converted on the campaign goal (i.e. make a purchase, booking a call with sales).
  • List growth rate: This is the rate at which your list grows (or shrinks). The growth of your email list is driven heavily by other marketing channels, such as paid search advertising. However, the retention of those subscribers is driven by the quality of the campaign content.
  • Spam complaint rate: The rate at which your subscribers mark the content as spam. This is most often the result of users who don’t recall subscribing to your emails, or to recipients who object to a perceived high frequency of communications.

What are the 3 most important email metrics?

Here are the three email metrics to keep the closest tabs on. Although all metrics listed above are important, the three below are key indicators of how successful your email campaign is at reaching and engaging your subscribers.

  1. A high open rate indicates you are marketing to an qualified audience
  2. A high click through rate indicates that you are providing a compelling story and feeding the consideration process
  3. A high conversion rate indicates that your email campaign is achieving its business goals by combining a qualified audience with quality content, enabling them to act on engaging with your product or sales team.

Although the other metrics listed are all indicators of campaign health, ultimately the three listed above are the ultimate gauge of campaign success and will tell you if you are on the right track.

©2023 Huck Strategies, LLC

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