Email has proven to be one of the best digital marketing channels, particularly for driving engagement and yielding high sales conversion rates.
However, conversions are the final step in a process traveling through the inboxes of prospective customers. If the only way you’re measuring success is with conversion rates, you only have part of the picture.
What are conversion metrics?
Where performance is measured, performance improves. By tracking the below metrics, you will be able to easily identify areas where you can improve.
In addition to tracking, it’s important to know what the metrics are telling you so that you can respond appropriately. For example, if you have a low open rate, what exactly can you do about it?
Read on for answers.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate tells you what percent of your cold emails “bounced,” meaning they were not successfully delivered.
While there are several reasons why an email might fail to deliver, they are broken into two classifications:
- Soft bounce: When you have the correct email, but the recipient’s inbox is too full to receive your message.
- Hard bounce: When the email address you’re sending to doesn’t exist, so the server has no way of delivering the email.
Essentially, your bounce rate is the best indicator of how good your email list data is.
Open rate
The open rate tells you what percent of successful recipients opened your email. Open rates alone don’t provide very compelling measures of success, but they can help paint a clearer picture of how certain aspects of your cold emails are performing, such as:
- Subject lines: A low open rate could indicate that your subject line isn’t descriptive or compelling enough. Try A/B testing different variations or include the recipient’s name in the subject line.
- Timing: You’re not the only person vying for attention in your prospect’s inbox. If your open rate is low, try sending emails at different times to see if you can make it to the top of the inbox.
A generally accepted measure for email campaign success is an open rate of 15%-25%.
Response/reply rate
Cold emails are typically plain text emails that tend to solicit some sort of response. Your response rate is the number of people who open an email and reply. This can be viewed as a much stronger sign of intent over an open rate.
If you’re looking to improve your response rates, evaluate the following:
- Body content: Make it clear who you are and who you represent. Clarity and transparency are some of your biggest friends here.
- Target the right audience: If you target the wrong people, then you won’t get many replies.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the measure of how many prospects opened an email, clicked through, and signed up for your proposed offering (a demo, a white paper, etc.) or purchased an item.
This metric is the strongest measure of how well your cold emails move people into the sales funnel, Consider the following:
- CTA: A clear call to action helps your prospect know exactly what you’re offering and what they have to do to receive it.
- Landing page: Make sure the landing page copy and design are compelling, with minimal distractions.
How to measure conversion metrics
For the most part, conversion rates can be measured with simple calculations. Your email service provider should also supply these throughout your campaign dashboard so you can easily see and analyze the information in real time.
Conversion rates can be calculated by:
-
- Bounce rate: Number of unsuccessful deliveries / total number of emails sent
- Open rate: Number of unique opens / number of successfully delivered emails
- Response/reply rate: Number of unique responses / number unique email opens
- Conversion rate: Number of unique conversions / number of unique email opens
Does it matter?
When sending cold emails, understanding the conversion metrics is imperative in determining if your campaign was successful or not. Without the metrics, you wouldn’t know how many emails were delivered, opened, replied to, or converted without doing a deep dive into endless sales reports.
Conversion metrics help marketers simplify the measuring process and visualize the return on investment.
What now?
To be successful with cold emails, you’ll need to understand how to successfully track and measure performance metrics with each campaign. Once you have that mastered, you can start creating engaging cold email content to drive results. Every great email begins with an impactful subject line that draws customers in.