As email marketing remains one of the most effective mediums for delivering content to customers, knowing how effective a campaign is depends on the KPIs you’re tracking. The metrics you collect allow you to tweak your strategy in accordance with your customers’ latest expectations.
The most effective marketing strategies are constantly adjusted as they receive feedback. Keeping track of the right group of KPIs in your email campaigns is almost as good as running a never-ending focus group.
You can track what works, what doesn’t, and pinpoint where you’re going wrong.
What are KPIs?
KPIs—or key performance indicators—are measures of the performances of different aspects of an email campaign. There are many different types of insights you can gain from tracking email KPIs. Mostly, you’ll want to know who opens your marketing emails or who forwards them to other contacts. However, these types of metrics alone won’t really show how effective your overall strategy is.
To determine the success of a campaign, you’ll want to establish trends within your subscribers and modify the approach to stay ahead of the curve. Metrics like unsubscribe rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates will quickly highlight if a campaign isn’t having the intended effect.
How to measure KPIs in email marketing
Primary measurements should include open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates.
Open rates as an initial KPI
Open rates are a good indicator of how successful a marketing email or campaign is. The more people interested in the content, the more likely they are to open your emails. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re running an effective strategy, though. Open rates typically only indicate how well your subject lines are performing.
Click-through rates indicate your engagement levels.
To establish an accurate metric of success, you’ll also want to track the amount of engagement you’re receiving. This will come in the form of click-through rates. As your call to action initiates a click from a subscriber, the click-through rate will provide an indication of how well you are phrasing the details surrounding your products or services.
A healthy click-through rate should be about 15%
Unsubscribe rates provide you with early warnings.
Additionally, unsubscribe rates will show you where you’re slipping up. If people are receiving content too frequently or the content isn’t up to their standards, they won’t stick around for much longer. If you notice that your unsubscribe percentages are increasing, you’ll need to reassess your overall strategy.
Does it really matter?
If you’re not keeping track of the rates customers are consuming your content, you won’t be able to improve your strategy. While most marketers will analyze their campaigns from a holistic view, keeping track of each aspect will ensure you notice small changes in consumer trends.
Email marketing has a big ROI for companies, with some estimates showing as much as $38 return for every $1 spent on a campaign. If you want to take advantage of this kind of return, you’ll need to keep up to date with the latest trends and behaviors of your customers.
Using surveys and other types of feedback mechanisms about your products and services is one way to track clients’ opinions. However, this won’t necessarily show how customers are receiving your communications. Analytics and KPIs provide insights that regular feedback can’t (like your customer retention rates).
What now?
If you have a low delivery rate for campaign emails, you’ll want to clean up your subscriber lists. Or, if you have a poor conversion rate, you will need to work to improve your CTA and content strategy. Similarly, if your unsubscribe rates are steadily rising, your entire approach may require drastic intervention.
Ideally, each type of insight will prompt a small change in your marketing approach, either for a specific campaign or as a whole. By tracking the most successful campaigns you’ve run in the past, you can ensure future campaigns utilize all of the lessons you’ve already learned.
If you would like to know more about how to interpret your KPIs in email marketing, you may want to watch this webinar.