How to Measure the Effectiveness of Email Marketing: The Most Important Metrics

Email marketing is the distribution of letters that allows you to attract customers and increase the loyalty of existing ones. But there are a number of indicators in this technology that certainly need to be monitored. It is timely monitoring that will help your mailings not to end up in spam and be favorably received by customers. Also, control will allow you to save money, because you will be able to track which email marketing “options” are the most profitable in your case.

Of course, all these “testing” recommendations are only relevant when the basic rules for sending emails are already followed. And among them - permission to follow links, sending emails in HTML, etc.

6 basic indicators that require monitoring

Share of spam (spam score). Providers evaluate the number of links inside the letter, as well as the presence of typical phrases specific to spam. Especially such words are undesirable in the "Subject" field - otherwise, there is a 90% chance that the letter will not reach the addressee, but will disappear without a trace in spam filters.

view rate. This is perhaps the most important indicator showing how many times your email has been opened. Evaluating it, you can find the most interesting patterns:

• what headlines are more attractive to your target audience;
• how many emails are opened from sent ones (in %);
• what times/days of the week do your emails open best.

Clickability. This is the number of customers who both opened your letter and clicked on the link offered in it. Well-combined mailing lists and consistent email activity should lead to a gradual increase in your company's revenue. But if there are no transitions to the site, then you should analyze the status of the mailing list, find “weak points” and increase the effectiveness of Email marketing.

activity in a certain period of time. It is worth studying at what time of the day users most often open links. This will allow you to schedule the sending of letters so that the client can immediately view the information of interest to him.

The number of failures. If you find a low level of views of your mailing list, then it is worth checking if there were any failures in the mail service. If the number of failures is the same and does not change over time, you should check the database - perhaps it contains too many incorrect addresses. If the number of bounces is constantly changing, then it is worth using more attractive information in emails to get more loyal customers.

Share of complaints. This is the case when the user received an email but marked it as spam. This user behavior may not be specific to your company. It could very well be that the person is just having a bad day and is angry that they have to check their email frequently. Or the client forgot that he himself decided to subscribe to the newsletter and advantageous offers.

You can minimize the level of complaints if you use a confirmation subscription from the very beginning. The customer base should be formed with their voluntary consent. Also, when a user clicks on a link, there is a higher chance that they will remember your resource.

And one more thing - numerous mailings are contrary to the "rules of etiquette." You can immediately check with the client how often it would be convenient for him to receive letters and notifications. But you can also use the classic scheme by sending new offers every 3-7 days.

Unsubscribe. It is important to evaluate not only the view rate and click-through rate, but also the bounce rate. This is especially important if you received a flurry of “unsubscribes” in response to one of your letters.

It is also worth analyzing exactly how many users have unsubscribed from your newsletters in order to save money. After all, mail providers charge based on the number of items on your list - and among them, even those who have already unsubscribed from the mailing list. Therefore, it is worth regularly “cleaning” this list and paying less.

And one more thing - statistical indicators need to be compared, tracking their changes in real time. Then you will understand exactly where your company is heading.