Yuka Kato
Many marketers, business owners, or freelancers sending newsletters, cold emails, or other promotional messages hear about the need to track email marketing KPIs or email metrics.
However, it can quickly become confusing to determine which ones are the most important to track to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
In this article, we’ll provide you with the ten most important KPIs you should track and optimize to improve email performance. Plus, we’ll take it a step further with actionable tips to start improving them. Keep reading for all the details.
What is a KPI?
The acronym KPI stands for “key performance indicator.” You’ll often see KPIs used in business to track how your efforts are impacting performance and helping you reach your goals.
In the email marketing world, KPIs, sometimes called email metrics, tell you how your email campaigns affect business performance.
It’s important to continuously track these numbers since email marketing strategies and business needs are always changing.
Even subscribers who were once enthusiastic about all of your messages after signing up for your email list can become less engaged over time. Therefore, when you see numbers trending down, you can identify the problem and implement strategies to re-engage your audience. It’s a continuous process, and there’s always a little room for improvement.
Email Marketing KPIs You Need to Track
Since email marketing KPIs are so important to understand how your audience engages with content and identify any issues you might be having, you’re probably wondering which ones you should track. Here are ten essential email marketing KPIs and metrics that will get your analysis off to a great start.
Open Rate
A good place to begin is with your open rate, which is the percentage of emails opened out of the total number of emails sent.
Your open rate gives you a base level of engagement for your audience. Are they actually opening your messages when they see them in their inbox or just hitting delete?
When you’re getting consistent email opens, you’ll know you’re making some impact that keeps subscribers wanting to see what your next message is about.
Plus, tracking your open rate can help you determine if elements like your subject lines are compelling subscribers to click on your message.
Clickthrough Rate
Your clickthrough rate is a step up from the open rate. It measures the percentage of recipients who click on a link in your email. This helps further indicate the level of engagement you have from your audience and how impactful your message is on them.
Monitoring your clickthrough rate can help you determine the effectiveness of your email’s body copy and call to action (CTA).
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate measures the percentage of recipients who make a purchase. You want to generate revenue from marketing emails, so tracking conversions will help you determine your success.
Conversions can also help you determine whether the landing pages you send subscribers to are effective. When your emails get tons of opens and link clicks, but subscribers don’t convert, your landing page copy, imagery, or checkout process could be throwing them off in some way.
Bounce Rate (Hard and Soft)
The email bounce rate is the percentage of messages sent that aren’t delivered, meaning they don’t reach the recipient’s inbox or even other folders like the spam folder. Instead, the message will bounce back to you, saying it’s undeliverable.
There are two types of email bounces: hard bounce and soft bounce.
A hard email bounce is a permanent error that can’t be resolved. This typically happens when the recipient’s email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. A strict email security filter can also cause some hard bounces.
A soft email bounce is a temporary error typically caused by a technical issue or server error. It is often resolved on its own, and the message is delivered later.
When too many emails bounce, it’s a common sign of spam, which might cause email providers to automatically send messages to spam or block them completely to protect their users.
Unsubscribe Rate and Spam Complaints
This is the percentage of recipients who choose to unsubscribe or who report your message as spam.
When you get a lot of these, it’s a sign you might be adding too many subscribers who don’t fit your target audience, people aren’t aware you’re adding them to your email list, or your content isn’t providing the quality information that subscribers expected when they signed up.
Clicks by Link/URL
Email clicks by link measures the number of unique clicks for each link in an email.
When you have multiple links in an email, such as directing recipients to information about different products or services, this metric can help you track which ones are getting the most clicks. In that scenario, clicks by link could help you determine which products or services are most popular amongst your subscribers.
Tracking the number of clicks by link can also help you optimize link placement. For instance, if links at the top of your emails always get the most clicks, you might want to consider placing links earlier in your messages to generate more click-throughs and conversions.
Subscriber List Growth and Trends
Subscriber list growth shows the number of new email list subscribers you’ve gained over a selected period of time.
You want to see this number trend up since it shows your audience is growing. It also shows that your strategies to grow your subscriber list and conversion forms are working.
Email marketing tools can also help you track trends, such as the times of year when your list grows the most. That way, you could focus on growing your list even more during those times since you know they offer a great opportunity.
Most and Least Engaged Subscribers
This KPI tells you which contacts on your email list engage with your content the most and which contacts engage the least. It can help you determine who is most or least likely to open and engage with future content.
This metric can also help you take action when subscribers stop engaging. For example, you could segment the subscribers who engage the least and send them a re-engagement email campaign to try to regain their interest. Sometimes, switching things up can help you get back on track with subscribers who’ve grown disinterested in your typical content.
Email Forwards
The email forwards metric tracks how many times your email was shared by your subscribers. When subscribers forward your message to people they know, it’s a great sign that they’re enthusiastic about your brand.
Tracking how many times an email was forwarded can also help you identify the types of content your subscribers are most likely to share with others. That way, you can mark it down as content you can try to replicate since it’ll help you generate more valuable word of mouth from your audience.
Overall ROI
When you spend money on email marketing, you want to ensure it’s generating profitable returns. Tracking ROI (return on investment) will help you understand how much revenue you generate from every dollar spent on email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing is one of the highest ROI digital marketing strategies, with a lot of research stating that it’s around $36 for every $1 spent. However, while it naturally has a high ROI, it’s still good to track the metric as you work on improving email campaigns. That way, you can ensure any extra money you spend generates more profit.
Why It’s Important to Analyze Email Marketing KPIs and Email Metrics
Now that we’ve covered the ten most essential email marketing KPIs, let’s discuss in more detail why tracking these metrics is important.
Understand What Your Audience Wants
Tracking email KPIs will help you better understand what types of content your audience engages with the most, allowing you to tailor your campaigns to their needs.
For instance, you might send a “how-to” piece of content telling subscribers how to get the most out of one of your products. If that message gets more opens, clickthroughs, and forwards than a general newsletter, it might be a sign you should try sending how-to content more often for other products you offer.
Improve Deliverability and Reduce Unsubscribes
When you track email metrics and make efforts to boost engagement, you naturally improve deliverability, which is how often your emails land in the recipient’s inbox rather than getting blocked or sent to spam.
Your efforts to use more natural wording or provide more value in the content will also lead to your subscribers hitting unsubscribe less often since they’ll want to keep seeing what you have to say.
Assess Campaign Performance to Improve Future Campaigns
Tracking KPIs throughout an email campaign will help you determine what you did successfully and what areas you could improve upon.
For instance, you might notice a couple of messages in your sales funnel that led to significant dips in engagement after you sent them. You could then analyze what might have gone wrong and restructure your message to improve performance the next time.
Build and Maintain a Good Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is a score that email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail and Outlook use to determine whether the content is spam or not. Low engagement rates, high bounce rates, or high levels of spam complaints will all decrease your sender reputation and make it more likely that ESPs will automatically send your content to spam or block it.
As you improve your KPIs by optimizing subject lines to improve open rates, making your content more valuable to increase email forwards, and removing invalid email addresses that cause messages to bounce, it’ll all work to naturally increase your sender reputation.
Therefore, these efforts and tracking metrics are essential to keep your email campaigns performing well for the long term.
Grow Your Subscriber List and Improve Email Marketing ROI
You can use data to improve email marketing ROI. As you improve numbers in other email KPIs, your ROI will generally go up as well since your messages will make a bigger impact on subscribers, causing them to be ready to make a purchase.
Plus, the increased value of your messages will lead to fewer unsubscribes, helping your list continue growing and subscriber numbers trending up. More subscribers staying on your email list means more potential to generate revenue.
How to Improve Email Marketing KPIs
Now that you understand the importance of tracking and improving email KPIs, here are some steps you can take to start improving your numbers.
Craft Effective Subject Lines and Email Messages
One of the first steps to improving KPIs is crafting effective subject lines. The subject line is the first thing subscribers see when they get your email, greatly impacting open rates and setting your message up for success.
While it can feel tempting to write something clickbaity here, such as “Click now to get FREE products!” Subject lines like these are a big spam signal and often turn people away. ESPs might even analyze them and detect them as spam before the message even gets to your subscribers.
Instead, aim for something more natural and relevant to your audience, showcasing the value inside your message. Then, ensure your message is well-written and follows through on that value to provide a great experience when subscribers open it. When you consistently offer useful insights, it’s much easier to maintain high engagement rates.
Don’t Spam Your Contacts or Use Spammy Language
While the ideal frequency to send email marketing messages can vary, it’s generally best practice to avoid sending multiple emails daily. Spamming your audience with tons of daily content will lead to quick burnout and disinterest since they can’t keep up with it. Plus, quickly producing tons of content will reduce overall quality.
Additionally, while you want to sell products or services and use CTAs, avoid using too much spammy or salesy language that turns people away. Common spam trigger words or phrases are things like “Act now!” or “We’re practically giving this product away!”
Instead, aim for a CTA that’s more natural and explains what your readers should do next, such as “Click here to sign up for a consultation.”
Personalize Your Emails to Build Deeper Connections
Personalizing or tailoring your emails to specific subscriber needs makes them a lot more engaging. For example, research from the American Marketing Association states that emails with personalized subject lines, such as ones including the recipient’s first name, are 26% more likely to be opened.
You can include things like customer names using an email marketing tool with a mail merge feature. Plus, other strategies like segmenting your email list or creating content related to common customer questions can all help you personalize further based on your audience’s needs.
Use a Trustworthy Email Marketing Platform with Accurate Tracking
When you search for email marketing tools to track KPIs, you’ll find many options. However, not all tools provide the best quality or accurate tracking. Make sure you read reviews to ensure the tool you select consistently provides quality results for people who use it. Accurate metrics will ensure you make necessary and effective changes to your strategy.
Actively Analyze Email Marketing Data
After installing and analyzing the data from an email marketing tool a few times, it’s common for professionals with busy schedules to stop making time for it.
However, the email marketing space and consumer behavior are always changing, especially as subscribers have been on your email list for a while.
It’s important to continue dedicating time to analyzing your KPIs and ensuring your numbers are still trending up. Many marketing teams find that a monthly or weekly analysis works well.
There’s always room for improvement in email marketing, and you can adjust as needed to keep improving results.
Track the Most Important Email Marketing KPIs with Mailsuite
Mailsuite is an email marketing and productivity tool that can help you track the most important email marketing KPIs and email metrics. Some of the metrics Mailsuite tracks include:
- Email opens
- Link clicks
- Email bounces
- Attached document opens
- How long attached documents were viewed
- Response times
- Time of day when emails are opened
- And more
You can get started with Mailsuite today to begin tracking email KPIs and improve the performance of your campaigns.
