There are about 25 metrics in email marketing. But only 7 of them - the key ones - are used to calculate the effectiveness of mailings. Some companies do not follow them either, focusing only on ROI, considering it a monetary indicator of the success of campaigns. But there are other indicators that directly or indirectly affect the profitability of email marketing in business. We decided to dot all the “i” and show which parameters in email marketing are important and which are not worth wasting time on.
#1: Open Rate (OR, email open rate)
Shows how many recipients have opened the email. Technically, its level depends on the quality of email delivery: the fewer messages "bounced" or ended up in SPAM, the higher the Open Rate:
OR=((number of recipients who opened the email)/(number of delivered emails))*100%
Open Rate needs to be analyzed daily. His fluctuations from email to email show what can be improved in email strategy:
- What email topics are of interest to your subscribers - the higher the OR, the more relevant the topic;
- What day of the week to send the mailing;
- What percentage of recipients read messages and not just keep them in their inbox.
In non-technical terms, OR is an indicator of the effectiveness of an email marketer. With an honestly assembled base, high-quality segmentation and an engaging headline, it's a matter of two to three weeks.
#2: СTR (Click throuhg rate)
Shows how many people not only opened the letter, but also made it into action - clicked on the link, went to the site. The indicator is more important than the Open Rate. In our blog, we have already talked about what CTR is, what it depends on and, so now we just recall.
In fact, CTR is an indicator of reader engagement. The higher the clickability in the letter, the better the content is selected and the needs are studied target audience.
In a business environment, the goal of email marketing is to generate additional revenue and build customer loyalty. In this context, maintaining a high click-through rate means that the business is trusted, provides useful content, and is an expert in the industry.
In the updated Estismail statistics interface, for visual control of CTR and Open Rate, there is a “red line”, which is set at 15%. This is the criterion for the “correctness” of email marketing. If the indicators fell below the red line, then we recommend that you revise the mailing content plan.
#3: conversion rate (CR orECR - email conversion rate, conversion rate, clicks from opens)
CR is an important metric for email marketers and businesses. It displays how many subscribers clicked on the links and made the target action: bought, registered, filled out the questionnaire. Conversion Rate is one of the few metrics in email marketing that gives a clear indication of future profits.
ECR depends on the reliability of the email service and the quality of the content. These three components translate into high email deliverability, low spam, and bounce. How better reputation sender, the higher the level of conversions from his mailings:
CR=((number of recipients who took action)/(number of delivered emails))*100%
There is no generally accepted “normal” conversion rate. Its rate can vary from 2% to 12%, depending on the industry. For example, emails with promotions and discounts in e-commerce give a CR of 7-12%. While the newsletter from startups and bloggers is barely gaining 2%.
Regardless of the industry, conversion rates are increased by:
- Content that solves the needs of the client;
- Message design: the letter should contain call-to-action, thematic buttons and links;
- High reputation of the sender;
- Constant interaction with the reader through emails, push notifications, social networks, website, etc.
CR mail services do not display. In order to accurately measure it, you need to integrate the site with either Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics, and set a list of actions for tracking (registration, order, purchase).
However, Estismail's new stats show the history of each client's activity, from the number of opens to link clicks. This allows you to track the interests of the reader and create an individual trigger message for him.
#4:Unsubscribe rate (UR,level unsubscribe)
Shows how many readers have unsubscribed from your newsletters. UR is calculated automatically by the mail service. For example, in Estismail it can be found in the "Statistics" section:
If you delve into the essence, then the Unsubscribe Rate is calculated by the formula:
UR=((number of people who unsubscribed)/(number of emails delivered))*100%
It is believed that the unsubscribe rate is below 2% - within the normal range. An exception is the first sending or mailing after a long break. In this case, UR can reach 10%.
People will always unsubscribe - regardless of the content, design and reputation of the sender. A person's needs may simply change. Therefore, do not be upset because of each unsubscribed.
But we also do not recommend stopping tracking the Unsubscribe Rate. The unsubscribe rate is sensitive to the state of email marketing in general. If UR grows from campaign to campaign, reconsider strategy and content. Perhaps you are no longer relevant to your readers.
#5: Bounce Rate (Undelivered Emails)
Bounce Rate shows the percentage of emails that were not delivered to recipients.
There may be several reasons for this:
- The recipient's email no longer exists or is misspelled;
- The message is overloaded with text, pictures, links;
- The recipient's mail server recognized the sender;
- The sender's IP is blocked and blacklisted;
- The recipient's mailbox is full;
- The recipient's mail server this moment not available.
In the last 2 cases, Estismail will try to deliver the letter for another three days. If the message cannot be delivered within this period, it will be deleted.
A healthy Bounce Rate ranges from 3-3.5%. If the number of undelivered emails began to grow sharply, we recommend that you check if your IP is in the blacklist.
The second way to lower the Bounce Rate is to clean up the base. The more inactive emails and erroneous addresses in it, the more letters will not find their recipient. In order to keep the list of recipients in shape, it must be thinned out at least once every six months.
#6: Complain Rate (SCR)
The indicator indicates that the recipient marked the message as spam. This does not always mean low quality content. Often, a person presses the "SPAM" button emotionally: he may be in a bad mood or he forgot that he signed up for the mailing list.
For the sender, such a spontaneous act brings sad results. As soon as the Complain Rate exceeds the quota of 0.03-0.09%, the level of trust of mail services in the sender's IP drops. This means that outgoing emails will be subjected to a more detailed check, and will not always reach the "Inbox".
High SCR is hard to fix, it's easier to prevent:
- Enter a subscription with confirmation;
- Sending to bases collected by fair means;
- Keep track of the volume of sendings from one IP: no more than 3000 per day.
#7: Return of Investments (ROI, return on investment)
This indicator is not found in the mail service. But it will definitely be in the accounting report. ROI is the only email marketing metric that can be measured in dollars. But marketers prefer percentages:
ROI=((Incremental sales revenue - Amount invested in the email campaign)/(Amount invested in the email campaign))*100%
For example:
An email campaign selling a promotional product brought in an additional $1,150. It took $100 to pay for the email service, template development, content preparation and other work of the email marketer.
ROI=((1150-100)/100)*100%=1050%
ROI is the main indicator of the effectiveness of mailings. It makes it clear whether email marketing makes sense for your business, or whether it might be worth investing in another sales channel.
We hope this information, as well as the updated interface from Estismail, will help you in your email marketing performance audit and save you time and effort. The service calculates most of these metrics on its own and displays the finished result in the form of graphs and percentage scales.
What features are in the new statistics from Estismail - see the full review:
Good luck with your newsletters and high ROI!
The network has enough summary statistics with key email metrics. But all this is the average temperature in the hospital, if you do not delve into the context. So, for example, statistics on large companies is not a guideline for small stores.
Today we’ll talk about how to evaluate the effectiveness of email campaigns, who to focus on, and how to improve performance using email personalization.
How to read statistics
The main metrics of email campaigns in e-commerce
There are not so many main metrics for mailing lists:
Deliverability - percentage of emails delivered. A high score indicates that:
- There are few "broken" e-mails in your database.
- The base consists only of your clients (if the base is purchased on the side, then some of your letters will go to spam automatically, not reaching the recipient).
- Mailing lists are not filtered by the mail server.
Percentage of opening (Open Rate) - percent open letters(by the way, useful hack). So many sent everything, so many of them opened. That is literally clicked on the title. What high Open Rate indicators indicate:
- The title of the letter and the first paragraph were chosen well - the letter is often clicked on because you have intrigued the recipients.
- The time and frequency of sending are optimal - there are no miracle recipes here, like “you need to send from 14 to 15 on Tuesday”, everything is calculated by experimenting in your particular conditions.
An important point: the percentage of opening is not the most reliable indicator. The openings are measured by displaying the hidden pixel. But, firstly, some mail clients automatically download all the pictures before opening the letter and the user is marked as opened, although this is not the case. Secondly, some email clients block pictures and the user has to manually click on the "show pictures" button to see them - only then the pixel fires. Often users simply do not include pictures, although the letter is opened.
Percentage of clicks (Click-through Rate) - percentage of clicks on links within the email. It says that the mailing has completed its task.
Click-to-Open Percentage - one of the key performance indicators of mailing. Shows what percentage of email opens resulted in targeted clicks (transitions to the store).
If you look, the main target indicator is the percentage of purchases from mailings.
(Buy-to-Open). But in fact, it already depends on other factors, not only the newsletter itself: the convenience of the site, the fact that the necessary SKUs are available, the availability of different payment methods, and so on.
Details about key indicators newsletters and how to analyze them and why segment customers, we . Here is an explanatory diagram from it:
How to evaluate the effectiveness of mailings, what indicators are considered good, how to improve metrics - more on that later.
Consider industry context
Similarly, with the percentage of clicks: in the hobby segment this indicator is again a record one, 5.41%, in computer games it is average, 3.36%, and in online retail it is below average - 2.48%.
Such a spread is normal, if you understand the context. For example, a hobby is a passion, so it makes sense that recipients will open emails related to their main interests more often. At the same time, for example, coupon services have a low open rate (13.87%), due to their aggressive marketing and mass mailings (everyone gets it, not everyone is interested).
Never be guided by the average overall performance without dividing into segments. Find your sector and compare only with it.
Don't confuse big and small businesses
If MailChimp data is typical for small and medium businesses, then large companies using more advanced software have completely different indicators. Here is an excerpt from a Silverpop report (part of IBM):
Thus, the average value of open letters for large e-commerce is higher than for small-medium - 18.3% versus 16.82%.
The top figures also differ significantly: large companies in the travel segment have the highest average open rate - 29.69%, while small companies from the same segment have 20.65%. The difference is almost 1.5 times.
This situation is explained not only by the fact that big colleagues have CRM, automation, personal product recommendations inside emails. In principle, all this can be afforded by small businesses. The main difference is that large companies make automation and recommendation algorithms "for themselves", taking into account all the subtleties of the industry and business.
For example, Quelle uses industry-specific recommendation algorithms - therefore, in the mailing list, each buyer sees only those products that suit him and are of interest to him:
Small stores are almost always forced to use universal solutions for personalization and mailing automation. Therefore, in their case, the same mailing in the block "these products may interest you" will display simply popular goods, without taking into account the gender and brand preferences of the buyer.
The use of personalization with industry-specific algorithms is one of the key reasons for higher mailing rates for large companies.
There are industry specifics in any segment: cosmetics, building materials, pet supplies, Appliances, FMCG, baby products and so on. So, our service currently has algorithms.
Do not confuse trigger (transactional) and regular mailings
When comparing percentages, it is easy to confuse the metrics for regular and trigger mailings. Meanwhile, they always differ in favor of the latter. According to the Pechkin-mail mailing service, triggered emails are opened 42% more often.
Let's talk about the differences between the types of mailings and the reasons for such different metrics.
The first type is digest (scheduled) mailings. Such a newsletter may simply contain information on promotions, store news, or include a selection of recommended products. In such mailings, only the content itself is of value (products, discount coupons, etc.). And the recipient is not always interested in this.
There is a second type - trigger mailings. In fact, these are generated letters that come to your buyer when a special event occurs. For example, when he placed an order or abandoned the cart, or registered on the site. You can just as well add recommended products to such mailing lists. But their main value will be in system notifications (notification of successful payment for goods, password from personal account). This is what the user is waiting for, what he is vitally interested in. Therefore, they have more opens and clicks.
All statistical indicators "float" with a large error
The point is probably again in the context, but it is not always obvious.
A case from our practice: the online store Kotofoto (household appliances and electronics) achieved an increase in sales through letters with the help of personal mailings (the CTR of letters increased by more than 1.5 times).
Only 6.2% of stores use automatic triggered mailings in order to sell through cross-selling. This is a very modest figure and at the same time a good scope for action.
Conclusion
You should not focus on the average values of metrics - there is even fresh data for your segment. Almost always, the data is mixed - the average of the results of triggered (service) mailings and planned (digest) mailings. It's a bit overpriced when compared to your handcrafted Mailchimp newsletter, and underpriced when compared to automated triggered emails with personalization and product recommendations.
We recommend using both types of mailing lists in conjunction to achieve the maximum return. As for specific numbers, personalization of digests gives an increase in targeted clicks from the mailing list by an average of 7%, although here the result completely depends on the work with the content.
Trigger emails work better because, in addition to your sales blocks, they contain important information for the client - for example, information about the order, that is, the client almost always opens such emails. If, for example, the email marketing of a news portal is limited only to digests, then the cornerstone of email marketing in e-commerce is trigger emails.
If you don't want to stop at high open rates and click through rates, we recommend that you check out our guide to tricky tricks for
Today, no one doubts the effectiveness of e-mail distribution (as a tool for the rapid promotion of any business). But a lot of questions still remain. How to use e-mail distribution correctly? How to increase the return on each letter? Where to find your first subscribers?We will try to answer these and other questions in this article..
How much will sales increase?
It is clear that one of the most important tasks that are put before an e-mail newsletter will be to increase sales. What result can be expected from a series of letters?
It is extremely difficult to talk about any exact figures. After all, the result depends on the volume of the subscriber base, the quality of the selling text, its design, and much more.
But, as a rule, the first month of launching a competent e-mail newsletter gives an increase in sales of 10% or more.
The maximum effect of e-mail distribution is achieved by a combination of two factors: the relevance of a particular offer and the "expectation" of letters from readers. For example, in our practice, the most impressive result was obtained by an online store that sold fifth-generation iPhones. For one existing and two partner databases, an offer to preview phones was launched. As a result of a series of letters, the number of orders increased by 800%.
How to calculate conversion?
Conversion (the ratio of open emails to sent emails) will help you more accurately predict the result of a launched campaign.
What conversion is considered normal? Again, it all depends on the specifics of the business. But on average, the percentage of open letters from our clients (B2C segment) looks like this:
- mailing up to 100 people - 38%;
- up to 1000 people - 23%;
- up to 5,000 people - 18%;
- up to 10,000 people - 14.5%;
- from 100,000 people - 9%.
It must be remembered that the result also depends on the goals. With the help of a mailing list, you can present new products, increase customer loyalty, remind yourself of yourself, or stimulate sales.
What should be the content of the letters?
Now we need to ensure that the recipient not only sees the letter in the inbox, but also wants to open it. Therefore, your mailing lists should:
a) travel regularly
It is clear that from the very beginning it is extremely difficult to decide in which direction to move. We recommend that you first of all analyze the mailing lists of competitors and social networks. It is also advisable to contact your clients directly to clarify a preliminary list of topics of interest to them.
How often to send letters?
Specific days for sending letters will depend on the audience. For example, company executives, accountants and managers to remind themselves better in the morning(on Tuesday or Thursday) or closer to the end of the working day (16-17 hours). Housewives or “long-thinking” audiences respond better to mailings on weekends or weekday evenings.
But the easiest way is to choose the optimal time and frequency of mailing by testing.
What are the stages of the development and implementation of e-mail marketing?
1) Strategy development
At the first stage, goals and objectives are set, the format and frequency of distribution are determined, and technical part and responsible persons are assigned.
First you need to do everything to ensure that each mailing letter does not end up in spam, but in the inbox. To do this, you just need to exclude a few points.
Letters determined servers how spam at availability in them :
- large investments;
- short texts simultaneously with large images;
- broken links;
- voluminous texts and capital letters in the subject line;
- spam words in the subject or content of the email (“free”, “now”, “money”);
- scripts or questionnaires;
- a large number of email addresses in a copy of the letter.
2. Creative and technical implementation of the strategy
It is very important to format each mailing letter correctly (that is, to work on its design).
1) The letter should visually stand out among dozens of other letters that arrive daily in the mail of your potential buyer. At the same time, you should not overload the letter with effects and graphics.
3) Take care of adapting emails for different browsers and devices. Many users now view correspondence not on laptop monitors, but on smartphone screens. For this task, it is better to hire a professional programmer.
3. Analysis of results
Web analytics is one of the cheapest and most accurate tools for analyzing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Such an analysis will answer the following questions:
- How many clicks were made to the site?
- What products and services interest your customers more than others?
- Who is a potential client?
Analysis of e-mail newsletters helps to clearly identify your target audience and optimize the content on the site and in the mailing letters for it as accurately as possible.
After analyzing the effectiveness of the mailing, work with your base. For example, from time to time it is useful to carry out the so-called "reactivation" - sending letters to inactive subscribers with the subject "You haven't visited the site for a long time!" and a request to add your address to the address book.
The Golden Rules of Email Marketing
1. Never buy a ready-made mailing list. The effectiveness of such an e-mail campaign will be extremely low, and IP addresses may well be blacklisted.
3. Use chains of letters that are desirable to run two or three times a year (for example, for seasonal sales). The concentration of "selling" content in such a subscription should increase with each subsequent letter.
How to improve mailing efficiency?
Subscriber segmentation
The better your base is segmented, the more efficient your mailing list will be. The existing database is quite easy to divide into segments according to the following criteria: gender, occupation, geographic location, age, activity, purchase history.
If there is no such information about subscribers, ask readers to fill out a questionnaire or add a couple of fields to the order form on the site. However, avoid long lists of 30 questions - as users really do not like to waste their time on "unnecessary" (from their point of view) questions.
Dynamic content
Examples
practical application of e-mail
marketing
1. Money Back Center Project(refund of illegal credit commissions)
To begin with, the project had to attract potential clients(before the launch of the project). We decided to look for our target audience (borrowers with a formed credit history) on brokers' websites and legal forums.
(medical consulting)
The company needed to be brought online, create the first online products and increase the subscription base. To the target audience of "Business-Cardinal" we include chief physicians and directors of medical clinics.
Finding their contacts online was quite difficult and time consuming. Therefore, to begin with, we turned to the call center with the task of identifying the interest of clinics in the company's services.
By phone, potential customers were asked the question: “Are you interested in receiving a thematic newsletter on such and such a topic?” In response, most of the interviewed respondents agreed to provide their email addresses.
Interestingly, in its first letters, the client company focused not on sales, but on training its subscribers. Each letter of the first mailing covered one or another issue of increasing the turnover of the clinic. The mailing list quickly became popular among senior medical staff. It allowed us to attract several major partners in the regions, receive the first large orders and launch a series of trial online products.
AT as soon as possible managed to achieve brand recognition in the medical services market and a high level of expertise.
Instead of output
Statistics on the main metrics can be viewed directly in the email service. Their indicators make it possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the mailing and identify errors.
In this article, we will talk about the main metrics that will help you monitor the results of email campaigns and plan goals for the future.
Deliverability (Delivery rate)
Not all letters reach the recipients. The deliverability percentage will help determine the actual number of emails your subscribers receive. It can be calculated using the following formula:
Your goal for deliverability is 95% and above.
However, errors sometimes occur during the sending process. For this reason, the mailing does not reach the recipient. The following metric is responsible for delivery errors.
Bounce rate
This metric shows the percentage of undelivered emails. There are two types of failures.
Soft returns (soft bounces)
This means that messages are not delivered due to the recipient's mailbox being full, technical failures on the recipient's mail server, or a large message volume. Delivery may also be rejected. mail server if the mailing content looks like spam.
Hard bounces
Hard bounces occur due to non-existent addresses or domains where subscribers' email addresses are located.
How to reduce the number of bounces:
- Check the email for spam words.
- Make sure the unsubscribe button works.
- Track the presence of an IP address in blacklists.
- Make sure email authentication is set up correctly.
- Set up subscription confirmation with .
- Connect a postmaster in which you can find out the reasons for failures. We have already explained how to connect and work with such a tool.
The optimal bounce rate is 2-5%.
Open rate
This metric provides data on how many emails were opened. The calculation formula is as follows:
To know the number of open emails, email services use a special tracking technology using a web beacon. It works in the following way. A single-pixel image with a unique identifier is placed in the letter. And when the subscriber opens such an email, the image is loaded. This helps to fix the date and time when each subscriber opened the newsletter.
It would seem that everything is thought out, but opening a letter does not mean reading it. In addition, some users block the download of images in the mailbox. That is why it should be taken into account that the open rate is calculated with an error.
Let's move on to specific numbers. To get an idea of how good your open rate is, compare it to the average open rate across industries.
Source: Statista How to improve openability:
- Think carefully about the topic, because it is it that prompts the person to open the letter. An article about how to help you create creative themes. Also, do not be afraid to use them, they attract attention and thereby increase the open rate.
- Keep your address book clean. To do this, do it, select inactive subscribers in a separate segment and spend. If they continue to be idle, move the addresses to another address book and send less frequent mailings to it, if not stop altogether.
- Delete non-existent addresses from the database. And to prevent invalid email addresses from getting into the database in the future, use double confirmation when subscribing.
- Create relevant newsletters with .
- Optimize, because subscribers can live in different time zones.
Click through rate
The click-through rate is usually lower than the open rate, the average click through rate for most campaigns is . Unlike open rates, click-through rates are accurate.
How to increase click-through rate:
- Send relevant newsletter content based on segmentation and subscribers' previous actions in the email.
- Optimize your email for mobile viewing.
- Make images in your email clickable.
- Increase the size of the button to 44 pixels so that it is convenient for subscribers to click on the smartphone screen.
- Add active verbs to the CTA button: go, look, pick up, find out.
Confectionery company Godiva uses a clickable image, a large CTA button with a call to "buy". It turned out appetizing and, most likely, the subscriber will follow the link!
Conversion rate
Priority metric for evaluating performance email newsletters- conversion rate. It displays how many subscribers completed the target action, namely: downloaded materials from the link, registered via email, went to view the webinar, paid for a service or product.
The conversion is calculated using this formula:
- Send chains of trigger emails to warm up and return subscribers:,.
- Personalize. There are many personalization options: by name, interests, birthday, and so on. And also create offers based on pages viewed on the site and purchases made. Research confirms that personalized emails have a six times higher transaction rate.
- Let the user choose how often and what content they want to receive. This can be done by including a link to the email settings in the email.
- Correctly place accents in the letter. Highlight links, important information highlight in headings. So the subscriber is more likely to perform targeted actions.
- Motivate with discounts free shipping, bonuses, gifts.
See how they do it in the online food delivery service: when placing a weekly order, the client receives seven more days of mouth-watering dishes as a gift.
Bonus offer from online food delivery service Unsubscribe rate
You need to sound the alarm when the indicator rises above 1%. An acceptable figure is 0.5%.
How to reduce the unsubscribe rate:
- Do not abuse sales emails, dilute them with content. For example, send a news digest, email with a link to a webinar, or download an e-book.
- Invite people to choose the frequency of mailings. You can add this field to the subscription form.
For example, on the TED conference website, users are offered to subscribe to news that will come once a week or once a month.
- You can try another well-known trick with cats.
Spam complaint rate
How many people considered your newsletter as spam will show the spam complaint rate. The acceptable percentage of spam complaints is 0.6-0.9%. Be aware that postal services strictly monitor this indicator and form. If the reputation is negative, mailings will not reach the Inbox folder at all and will land in Spam.
How to reduce spam:
- Remind the subscriber that he himself signed up for the newsletter.
- Add an unsubscribe link to your email and make it prominent.
- Stick to the email frequency you promised when you signed up.
- Avoid similarities to spam content such as capitalization and exclamation points, one font, and fewer emoticons.
Don't do like the example below. This letter has six exclamation points and six font colors.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI shows how much email marketing paid off. The return on investment ratio is calculated from following formula: Campaign performance metrics in SendPulse
Email open map in SendPulse 
SendPulse also has a report on open rates from different devices, platforms and browsers.
To track the conversion, you can enable integration with Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics. All reports can be downloaded in PDF and XLS formats.
Try evaluating your email campaign today. To do this, send the newsletter to and go to the "Reports" tab. We wish you more engaged users and fewer unsubscribes!
Reading time 15 minutes
Email marketing- a tool that helps to increase profits and build long-term relationships with your customers. Its effectiveness must be measured in order to timely adjust the strategy of interaction with subscribers. In this article, we will look at:
- main mailing metrics for analysis;
- metrics that are often underestimated;
- how to improve performance;
- life hacks that will help further stimulate sales.
Why is it important to measure performance indicators?
Some marketers, when conducting an email newsletter, neglect its analysis. Others only look at email open rates (OR) and return on investment (ROI). Still others conduct a deep analysis of their indicators and get larger results.
Measuring performance indicators and their subsequent analysis allows you to adjust your email strategy in time, more accurately interact with users, give them what they respond to more actively. The email marketing channel is one of the most profitable, so the right interaction with the reader will allow you to recoup your investment several times over.
What are the indicators?
Indicators are external and internal. Internal indicators reflect everything that happens with the letter from the moment it is sent to the transition to the website, social network or application. External ones show the impact of the email newsletter on the business: how many customers came to the business from the newsletter, how much they ordered.
Metrics are expressed in relative and absolute terms. Absolute indicators are accurate: how many people opened the mailing list, how many clicks were made, what links were clicked. Relative indicators help to track the dynamics of absolute indicators: they tell how many times or by how many percent the indicator has changed. Pay attention to absolute indicators, not just relative ones.
A simple example: you have 50 addresses in your database, you conducted a mailing list, calculated that 90% of your subscribers opened your letter. On the one hand, it's great: after all, almost everything has been opened. And on the other hand, it's only 45 people, there is something to work on.
What are the ways to measure indicators?
- Statistics of your mailing service. Most services provide detailed data for each submission, their analytics, and the performance of the entire campaign. You just have to interpret them correctly.
- Connected metrics of third-party services. The most famous are Yandex.Metrika and Google.Analytics. Thanks to them, you can trace the subscriber's path through your site, the time he spent on it, and the targeted actions he took.
- Excel spreadsheet with customized formulas. Another way is to enter data into an Excel spreadsheet. This is a laborious process, but if you have a good command of Excel, you have time to fill in the data, then you will get reliable indicators.
Key performance metrics for email campaigns
The division into main and additional indicators is conditional. It is based on the popularity of specific features and how often they are used by marketers.
Deliverability (deliverability / delivery rate)
Reflects the percentage of letters that reached the recipients. Even the highest quality mailing will be useless if readers do not receive it.
Deliverability is the number of emails that reach the inbox, from total number sent. This characteristic does not take into account server errors, letters rejected by postal services, as well as letters that went to the Spam folder.
Deliverability of 98% and above is considered ideal, while deliverability below 96% indicates the need to clean the database and check spam lists.
It is also important to note that many indicators should be calculated from the number of delivered rather than sent letters, so that there are no data errors.
Returns (bounce rate, BR)
Directly related to the previous one. Bounces are undelivered letters, and the indicator reflects their number from all that were sent. The more letters that have not reached the addressees, the worse it is for the mailing list reputation and statistics.
There are two types of returns: soft" (soft bounce) and " tough» (hard bounce).
With a soft bounce, emails are sent to a valid email address but cannot be delivered due to temporary difficulties: for example, the recipient's server is down or the inbox is full. With a soft return, the server makes attempts to deliver the letter to the addressee within 3 days.
With a hard bounce, the letters do not reach, because they were sent to non-existent email addresses. Feel free to delete from the subscription base addresses to which messages have not reached: release the base, do not harm the reputation of your domain.
The lower this figure, the better for your newsletter. Ideally, when undelivered letters are 0-4% of the total base.
How to improve deliverability and reduce returns?
- timely clean the database from incorrect addresses
- check the presence of the IP address and domain in the stop lists, black lists and spam lists.
Spam complain rate (SCR)
Shows the number of subscriber complaints out of the total number of emails delivered. Considered as a percentage. Mailings without complaints are rare, so there are norms allowed by different postal services.
Mail.ru gives indicators of complaints that should not be exceeded:
Subscribers forget why they signed up for your mailing list in the first place, so they may think you're spamming. A large number of complaints will negatively affect the reputation of the domain and lead to blocking.
The main reasons why users complain about spam:
- They don’t see the unsubscribe button or it takes a long time to unsubscribe (extra pages when clicking the button or obsessive attempts to keep the subscriber)
- You haven't provided a reason why you're writing to them (for example, you don't have a sentence like "You received this email because you watched my webinar on learning English")
How to improve?
To reduce spam complaints, make unsubscribing quick, the unsubscribe button prominent, and always include the reason why you are writing to your readers.
Unsubscribed users (unsubscribe rate, UR)
Shows the number of unsubscribed users out of the total number of users. People unsubscribe for various reasons: they lose interest, the newsletter is no longer relevant for them, they don’t remember why they signed up. There can be many reasons.
Do not forget that the number of subscribers is dynamic: new ones are added, uninterested unsubscribe. Therefore, look at how many users you take as a basis. Decide first what you take as a basis: days of the week or letters (unsubscribes after a specific message).
A small percentage of unsubscribes is acceptable. A high percentage of unsubscribes negatively affects the reputation of the domain. The norm is 1.5-2% of the total number of subscribers.
How to improve?
- adjust your email marketing strategy,
- conduct tests that will help determine what your audience likes best.
Open rate (OR)
Shows the number of open emails out of the total number of delivered emails. One of the main parameters in email marketing. The open rate is closely related to the trust readers have in you and the wording of the topic. To calculate this indicator, only unique clicks are taken into account, that is, the first clicks of each visitor.
Openness is called one of the main metrics by which one can judge the effectiveness of a strategy. On average, 20% open rate is considered normal. However, this indicator is just average, and the open rate depends on your niche. For a niche with low competition (for example, Banking services, retail) 20% will not be enough, but for a niche with high competition (for example, e-commerce) - great.
How to improve?
- conduct tests that will allow you to understand what content your readers are more interested in;
- offer readers different topics. The more open, the more interesting topic for the subscriber;
- experiment with headings, use preheaders. Avoid Caps Lock, Fence, repeating characters and signs, and spam words. Add one or two emojis to the title;
- personalize mailings. Mentioning the name of the reader or the city in which he lives will prompt him to open the letter;
- Do not overdo it with intrigue in the subject line. In some mailing lists, simplicity and benefit to the reader work best;
- analyze on what days, at what time of the day users read your letters. If you have subscribers from different time zones, segment your base and send emails at different times.
Click through rate (CTR)
Shows how many readers performed an action: they opened the letter, clicked on the links in it, went to the site. It shows the percentage of clicks from the number of delivered emails. This is an indicator of reader engagement and their desire to interact with the brand. It is directly related to openness.
Clickability is important. She talks about achieving 3 main email marketing goals:
- increase in profit (obtaining additional);
- increasing reader confidence;
- the importance of the brand in the market and its expertise.
CTR depends on the niche of the business. Its norms are approximate, so be guided by your own data in the analysis.
The ratio of opens and clicks (click-to-open rate, CTOR)
More accurate characterization compared to the previous one. It reflects the percentage of unique clicks from the number of opens.
This indicator more accurately reflects the quality of the content sent. Compare:
| Delivered | Open | clicks | OR | CTR | CTOR | |
| letter 1 | 12000 | 2600 | 1000 | 21,6% | 8,3% | 38,5% |
| letter 2 | 12000 | 5000 | 1000 | 41,6% | 8,3% | 20% |
The table shows data for comparing two hypothetical letters. Their CTR is the same - 8.3%. If you look at it, you can decide that the content in both cases worked about the same. But the CTOR parameter does not agree: the content of the first email performed almost twice as well as the content of the second email.
It is important to look at both of these parameters. CTOR also talks about content quality and customer trust.
How to improve?
- make sure that the content matches the title - seeing a loud statement without confirmation, the user will not follow the link;
- work on the quality of content and mailing plan, test new topics;
- check for call-to-action - call to action. Add a specific call (“follow the link”, “download the link”, etc.), if there is one, try changing it to a similar one, formulate it differently.
The last two improvements can be done in split testing mode or a/b testing, in which traffic is directed to two different versions of the page with a change in one element.
Conversion (Email Converse Rate, ECR or Converse Rate, CR)
A conversion is sometimes understood as a sale. This is mistake. Conversion shows the number of targeted actions from the number of delivered emails. Target actions- this is not necessarily a sale, it can be registering for a webinar, making a purchase, downloading a lead magnet, subscribing to a channel, and others.
Pay attention to content. If the heading and text of the letter contain abstracts that the subscriber will not find on the site, there will be a large percentage of bounces - site visits lasting less than 10 seconds. Analytics services provide such information.
The number of purchases made after switching from the mailing list can be considered a separate parameter - purchases from mailing lists (buy-to-open rate, BTOR). It shows how many of your followers have made a purchase.
How to improve conversion and percentage of purchases?
- work on content, offer the reader such letters that fill his needs and correspond to the offer on the company's website;
- work with the design of the letter, the location of objects inside it, calls to action and their content;
- interact with subscribers not only in the email newsletter; attract them to social networks, display push notifications, etc.;
- maintain a high reputation as a sender, upgrade your personal brand.
Return of Investments (ROI)
This indicator attracts a lot of attention. It shows whether email marketing pays off or not. As a rule, a mailing list pays for itself several times over; with proper development, it can exceed the costs by 40 times.
This metric helps you determine if the email marketing channel is worth it or not worth the investment. It can be calculated in monetary units (currency), as well as in percentage.
How to improve?
- work on the content that you send out, its relevance, compliance with user expectations;
- encourage the user to buy from you;
- talk about seasonal promotions and current offers.
Additional performance indicators
The metrics below are often underestimated, but they can be used to increase email click-through rate, engagement of your subscribers, and reduce the number of unsubscribed users.
Device type
Now about 80% of traffic comes from mobile devices, people check their mail on the go, and every second person would prefer to resolve the issue using mail rather than a call. Therefore, it makes sense to work on adaptive layout so that letters are displayed correctly on smartphones.
Below are the data for 2015. Even then, almost 2 billion people viewed mail from smartphones. Now there are more such people, as manufacturers upgrade their smartphones, making them more convenient.
Check the layout of your letter and display on mobile devices so as not to lose potential customers. Incorrect layout can lead to the fact that the user will not see all the text, it will not be displayed completely, or it will be impossible to make a click. A subscriber can complain about your newsletter, even if it is useful for him. He just won't see her.
Subscriber base growth
Shows how much your subscription base has increased or decreased. Allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the subscription page and advertising channels through which subscribers come to you.
In order for the subscriber base to grow, it is necessary to work in two directions: attracting new subscribers and retaining old ones. This is content: email headers, email content, audience segmentation and trigger mailings, creative. Don't be afraid to experiment, but experiment carefully so you don't hurt your database with a spike in unsubscribes and spam complaints.
Social activity
Add links to your social networks and instant messengers in your emails if you are not already doing so. Some users will find it easier to stay in touch with your brand if they, for example, subscribe to your Telegram or Youtube channel. Social networks can be added with small icons with logos. Don't forget to include a call to action to encourage subscribers.
Encourage also to share your content in in social networks. A brand that a subscriber learned about from a friend or saw from a friend on social networks will automatically inspire more trust due to the effect of social proof. Friend enjoys = good brand.
Subscriber interaction with the mailing list (engagement over time, EOT)
This parameter in combination allows you to determine at what time subscribers most actively interact with the mailing list. Below we have presented graphs that were compiled according to the research of the Omnisend portal in 2017. 791 million emails were analyzed 9500 big brands. You can start from this data at the beginning of work with your database, but over time, track the trends of your audience.
On Wednesday, subscribers open emails more often, and on Sunday they click on links.
Please note that the data is averaged, which means that your subscribers can read you better from 12:00 to 14:00 on any other days of the month. Experiment, follow the trends of your audience, test different times for sending, then your newsletters will work more accurately.
Inactive Subscribers
This segment of the audience appears anyway. These are users who do not open letters, do not click on links, do not buy anything from you. You can remove them from the base, or you can reanimate them.
When resuscitation, it is important to consider the following main points on resuscitation:
- feel free to delete inactive addresses that the postal service “swears” at and which returned thanks to a hard return;
- set clear deadlines for resuscitation in days or the number of letters that reach the recipient;
- carefully address an inactive audience, try to stir it up with trigger letters;
- work on the engagement of readers who have "woken up" so they don't "fall asleep" again.
2 Unusual Ways to Boost Sales with Email Marketing
Enter promo codes
Make limited-time promo codes that will only be valid for mailing list subscribers. This will additional incentive subscribers to read your newsletter more carefully, open letters more often, and with the help of unique promotional codes you will be able to track subscribers who made a purchase thanks to the newsletter.
Do not make promotional codes often, come up with other ways to encourage a subscriber: a bonus system, for example. The main goal of such a system is to encourage the reader to open subsequent letters with interest and follow the newsletter from you.
Important: be sure to specify how to use the promotional code or accumulate points. If there are multiple ways, list them all.
Compare with sales data
Check the data of your customers, which will be provided to you by sales managers, with the data of your subscribers in the database. So you will analyze the buyers who came to you from the newsletter. You will be able to follow the trend of how the mailing affects your sales.
And for those buyers who are not in the mailing list, you can send a specially designed message with an offer to subscribe. Be sure to tell them where you got their data from, and also attach a link by clicking on which the subscriber will be added to your database.
Do not add subscribers to your database if they have not given their consent. think over welcome letter so that the subscriber understands all the benefits of receiving your newsletter: tell us what you send out, how often you will do it, the benefits that the subscriber will receive (promotional codes, discounts, useful articles, checklists).
What metrics to measure?
- her goal.
For example, if you are running a newsletter, the main goal of which is visitors to the site, then you will be primarily interested in the clickability of letters and their conversion with the main parameter - transitions to the site; if you have a selling newsletter, then you will pay attention to the conversion, but you will already be interested in purchases.
When to look at indicators?
You have decided on what specific metrics you want to track. Now the question arises: when and how often to analyze. There is no single answer, there are only guidelines that you can adapt to suit you.
Indicators for specific letters are looked at no earlier than 48 hours after sending. On average, users check email much less often than social networks, so the letter can be opened a few hours after receipt or the next day. In addition, the mail service tries to deliver letters that received a "soft return", so the number of delivered letters may fluctuate slightly, affecting the performance.
It is better to look at the growth of the subscriber base in terms of the month, because it will be easier to track the trend. On some days, the base may decrease, while on others it may grow much more, for example, due to successful advertising companies. Therefore, the best period for assessing the growth of the subscription base is a month.
What should not be done?
When you start analyzing your campaign, you can make mistakes that distort your calculations and lead to incorrect conclusions.
Mistake 1: Comparing performance in different niches
The main indicators that we talked about differ in different niches. This is primarily due to competition within the niche. For example, in the field of online education, there is high competition for the attention of a subscriber, so it is more difficult to achieve high results than in banking. Compare yourself as much as possible with your direct competitors in the niche, and ideally, look at your performance.
Mistake 2: Comparing Big and Small Businesses
Large companies they have more advanced software, use their own features in their mailing lists, and teams of professionals work on their email marketing. The scale of their campaigns is impressive, as are the budgets for implementation. Large companies often do large-scale personalization, which allows them to more accurately guess the preferences of customers, own large-scale data about each of their subscribers, and build complex algorithms for interacting with them. This is one of the main reasons why big business outperforms the small one. Therefore, it is necessary to share.
Mistake 3: Comparing the metrics of new and built mailings
Before a clear distribution scheme was built, the one who built it must have made many mistakes. A rare marketer can build the perfect newsletter the first time. It's not so much about the technical part, which can work clearly, but about the target audience. Even if it seems that everything is ideally thought up and implemented, various nuances may appear: the topics will not “visit” subscribers, they will not be ready for the material being sent out, the type of content will not hook them.
Test new options, carefully check what your target audience likes best, compare your new metrics with your yesterday's to see whether your email quality goes up or down.
Mistake 4: comparing triggered and regular mailings
Trigger mailing works pointwise and individually, so its indicators will hit the target more accurately, which means that its emails will be opened more often and links will be clicked more often. Such automatic ones are generated when specific events occur (for example, a purchase is made), so the percentage of openings will be large. In addition, subscribers are waiting for trigger and transactional mailings, because it directly concerns them, or it is impossible to complete the action without such a letter. For example, letters for order payment.
Conclusion
Analyzing email campaigns and their metrics is important if you want your email marketing as a customer acquisition channel to grow and recoup your investment. Study your metrics and their relationship, focus on the averages in your niche, but remember that the best benchmark is your own yesterday's data.