We all have goals, right? Exercise more, spend less—you know the drill. The same is true in email marketing. Whether your goal is to grow subscriber lists, generate more leads, or convert more customers, you’ll need to understand the impact of your campaign efforts. Check out these email metrics to measure your success.
Open Rate: How many people opened your message?
Perhaps the most obvious metric, open rate reflects the people who open your email, normally expressed as a percentage of the total number of emails delivered. Non-segmented, low-quality email lists may decrease your email open rates, as can poor subject lines and deliverability.
Positive Communication Rate: How many recipients opened your email without the intent of unsubscribing?
Your positive communication rate determines the percentage of recipients who opened your email without intending to unsubscribe. Calculate your PCR by subtracting unsubscribes from opened emails, then dividing by the number of opened emails.
Click-Through Rate: How many people are clicking your links?
Your click-through rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on a traceable link in a given email. Ideally, each link is counted only once, even if it is clicked multiple times. Considered a “day-to-day” metric, click-through rate calculates performance for each individual email you send. The intention of your click-through rate is to find new ways to generate more clicks throughout your emails while gaining direct insight into how many recipients are engaging with your content. Determine your click-through rate by dividing your unique clicks by the number of emails delivered to give you a percentage.
Positive Interaction Rate: How many recipients are interacting with your message links?
Your positive interaction rate determines the percentage of recipients who interacted or clicked through your email. While the subscribe link is considered an interaction, PIR does not take these requests into account. Calculate your PIR by subtracting unsubscribes from click-throughs, then dividing by click-throughs.
Conversion Rate: How many people are responding to your call-to-action?
Your conversion rate is the number of desired responses, whether it be filling out a form or purchasing a product, divided by the number of messages delivered. Once a recipient has opened your email, your goal is for them to take your desired action. For a higher conversion rate, focus on creating a strong call-to-action in your emails to convert more recipients.
Bounce Rate: How many of your emails aren’t being delivered?
Your bounce rate determines the percentage of your total emails that were unable to be delivered to your recipients’ inboxes. Hard bounces result from attempting to send your email to invalid, closed, or non-existent contacts. Soft bounces are a bit more promising, resulting from a temporary problem with a valid email address, whether it be a full inbox or server issue. Once the issue is cleared, your message can eventually reach the inbox. Mitigate your bounce rate by keeping your list up-to-date, teaming up with Redi-Data for a full suite of list hygiene and data services to maximize the effectiveness of your list.
Unsubscribe Rate: How many recipients unsubscribed from your email list per message?
Your unsubscribe rate measures how many people unsubscribed of receiving future messages from you as a result of a particular campaign, calculated by the number of unsubscribes divided by the number of messages delivered. Lower your unsubscribe rate by segmenting your lists based on interests to provide relevant content. If you’re unsure of your recipients’ interests, surveys and polls are a great place to start. In addition, monitor your email frequency to prevent overwhelming your recipients.
Churn Rate: How is your list growing or not growing?
Your churn rate impacts your list growth efforts, accounting for unsubscribes, complaints, and hard bounces in a given period of time. If your growth efforts don’t outpace your churn rate, your list remains the same size or gets smaller. Because it is always easier and less expensive to keep the customers you have than acquire new ones, monitoring churn is a good step in monitoring success.
So, how successful was your last campaign? Superior email results require the right strategy as well as the most up-to-date list and deployment technology. Trust the email experts at Redi-Data with your next campaign so that you can turn the best data into better business.