04/18/2019
Q: Hey Marti, what email metrics should I be watching?
A: “There’s a lot of information on how to do email marketing well – how to craft a subject line or header, email width, send day/time, etc. Once you’ve got these things mastered you need to determine which email metrics to track and what you should be analyzing.”
Check out three key email metrics that every marketer should keep an eye on:
1. Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
What is it: This the percentage of recipients who actively clicked through the deployment.
How to Calculate it: Total clicks / Number of delivered emails
The clickthrough rate is normally one of the most sought out metrics in email marketing. It helps the marketer understand if their content was engaging enough. Deciding factors of the email’s effectiveness are headlines, titles, content descriptions, and the graphics used in the email.
2. Open Rate
What is it: The percentage of recipients who opened the email.
How to Calculate it: Total opens / Number of delivered emails
Most email marketers use the open rate as insight into the effectiveness of the subject line. While this is a great practice, an email’s open rate is important when used as a comparative metric.
3. Conversion Rate
What is it: The percentage of recipients who completed the desired action.
How to Calculate it: Leads generated / Number of delivered emails
Now that you’ve captured the attention of your audience, you must now persuade them into completing your desired action. That action is typically a registration form.
Now that you know which three metrics are most important, you need to understand how to utilize them for your marketing efforts.
1. What if you had a high open rate and a low CTR?
This is most likely due to a lack of optimization in your email content. Some ways you can fix this are by leaving your product out of the title and/or description or creating an educational tone in your copy, etc.
2. But what if it was the opposite – a low open rate and a CTR?
To entice more individuals to open, you may want to try shorter subject lines (below 8 words), placing your key words in the beginning, and using a bit of text from your asset as preview text.
3. What if your conversion rate is very low?
This can be a function of several different functions –CTA has little visibility, the email copy is not effective, too many registration fields on a form, etc.
Thanks for your insight and tips, Marti!
