A Guide to Email Marketing Metrics and KPIs

For many business owners, email marketing is a seemingly impossible and expensive feat. To simplify the email marketing process and make it easy for businesses– both small and large– to measure return on investment, Front Porch Solutions has created a guide to analyzing five must-track email marketing metrics and KPIs.

5 Email Marketing Metrics & Why You Should Track Them

Continue reading to learn about the five most important email marketing metrics and why and how you should track them.

1. Open Rate

A campaign’s open rate is the percentage of recipients that viewed the email. Open rate is an essential KPI to monitor because it tells you whether or not your subject lines resonated with or intrigued the audience.

To improve your open rates, consider:

• Creating “catchier” subject lines;
• Experimenting with subject lines using an A/B test;
• Evaluating your subscriber lists and how they are segmented; and
• Analyzing the frequency of your campaigns.

How to measure open rate:

Email Open Rate = [Emails Opened ÷ (Number of Emails Sent – Bounced Emails)] * 100

2. Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is the percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered to a user’s email address. Email bounce rates should be monitored because they indicate the quality of your subscriber lists.

To reduce email bounce rates for your brand:

• Ask users for permission prior to adding them to your subscriber list;
• Develop a double opt-in feature;
• Do not purchase subscriber lists.

For additional guidance on reducing bounce rates, read our blog titled, “Understanding Email Bounce Rates.”

How to measure bounce rate:

Bounce Rate = (Bounced Emails ÷ Number of Emails Sent) * 100

3. Clickthrough Rate

Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of users that clicked on a link, call-to-action (CTA), or image in your email. High clickthrough rates indicate that the content within an email was relevant and useful to the recipients.

Although the clickthrough rate of an email is heavily dependent on the number of links within the email, there are several ways marketers can generally improve CTR such as:

• Embedding more links;
• A/B testing content;
• Segmenting email subscriber lists; and
• Writing descriptive link text.

How to measure clickthrough rate:

Clickthrough Rate = (Total clicks ÷ Emails Delivered) * 100

4. Conversion Rate

Email conversion rate is the percentage of recipients who completed a desired action such as making a purchase, downloading a resource, or completing a lead generation form. Conversion rates should be measured for every campaign because they measure the effectiveness and success of a campaign.

To improve your email campaigns’ conversion rates, try:

• Creating clearer calls to action;
• Developing mobile-optimized campaigns;
• Segmenting your subscriber lists; and
• Improving the quality of the email content.

How to measure conversion rate:

Conversion Rate = (Users that completed desired action ÷ Emails Delivered) * 100

5. List Growth Rate

Email list growth rate is the rate at which your subscriber list is growing. It is critical that your email list continually see positive growth rates to prevent your lists from “going bad.”

There are countless ways to grow your list, but a few to consider include:

• Encouraging existing subscribers to forward your emails to friends;
• Running an online contest;
• Implementing lead generation offers on your website;
• Adding a call to action on your site;
• Collecting addresses at offline conferences and shows; and
• Hosting a webinar.

How to measure list growth rate:

List growth rate =[(New Subscribers – (Unsubscribes + Spam Complaints)] ÷ Email Addresses on List]) * 100

If your email marketing campaign results have plateaued or if you’re struggling to manage and monitor your campaigns, contact the digital marketing professionals at Front Porch Solutions. Our email marketers create custom email templates that are mobile optimized, professionally designed, and set clients up for success.