What Are Email Metrics?

One of the greatest benefits of email marketing is that you have measurable metrics at your finger tips. In order to create a successful email marketing campaign, you need to track and monitor statistics such as your “open rate”, “click through rate (CTR")”, “bounce back rate” etc. When you understand these metrics it allows you to constantly improve your campaigns and ensure the best results.

1. Basic Email Metrics you should evaluate in each email campaign:

Open Rate – This will tell you how many emails are actually being opened out of the total emails sent.

Click-Thru Rate (CTR) – This is tracked by monitoring how many of the emails are actually getting clicks from your customers. This shows if they are interacting with the emails you sent.

Bounce Rate – This tells you how many of the emails never got delivered. There are a variety of reasons this can happen. It is almost always something wrong with the mail box you are sending to or the email address that was provided.

There are also ways to measure even more in detail such as:

- Number of Emails Open based on Region/Country – Number of Click-Thru based on Region/Country – Number of Sales based on Region/Country/referring URL – Conversion (Click to Sales) Rate – Total Revenue per campaign – Return on Investment (ROI) per campaign

2. What metrics you should focus on?

This will depend on the objective of the campaign. For instance an good Open Rate is great but it must be compared with the other tracking items to determine if the emails are converting into sales.

Why is that? Because it is the CTR that will tell you how many people actually were interested in something in the email. Tracking conversions is also important, did they buy the item or sign up to the event or newsletter? An Open Rate will only tell you how many people actually opened the email, the CTR will tell you how many interacted with the email. And last but most importantly checking conversions tells you if the campaign was successful or not.

3. How to boost the Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

A good email marketer not only wants to know that their emails are getting opened but they also want to see a high amount of Click Throughs. There are some key factors in getting a high Click Through Rate. Those are:

Subject Line and Greeting: You want an attractive subject line. The subject line is the first thing they will see. This must cry out to them to open the email. However, you do not want to over “optimize” your subject line otherwise it looks like spam email and the client will delete it without ever opening it. You want to keep it short and simple, you can even use their name in it.

Compelling Offer:

From the first paragraph the recipient should know that this offer is relevant to them and they can benefit from it. This first paragraph is the next thing that should grab their attention, so again you do not want it too long and you want it to the point. Include an offer that is attractive to the recipient (discount and free offers usually make users to click).

Call-for-action: Always include “call-for-action” button or link to instruct the user to click for more details.

Spam issue: “Spam” issue can have a major affect your successful open rate. Most of the ISP and hosting companies are implementing “spam filters” that will filter out suspected spam emails. So to avoid this problem try to avoid using the commonly suspected spam words such as “free offer”, “money”, “30 day guarantee”, “free trial”. There are ways to use those phrases but not directly. Be creative

Message Design and Structure: You may want to use colors and images that are identical to your site. But this is not necessary. Many times just a plain simple email will be more effective. You have to test your market to see what converts best. Keep in mind also that people do not like to read an entire email. So using bullet points and breaking it into sections with clear headlines will help them scan the email and take what they want from it.

Most people today have so many emails coming in that they are deciding within seconds whether to delete an email or not. So using attractive subject lines, first paragraphs and headlines will boost your campaigns success greatly. By tracking each email sent you can determine what is working and what is not. It is not always an exact science and sometimes it will take a while to mold the perfect strategy.