Email marketing analytics is an integral part of any successful email marketing strategy.
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7 metrics to analyze in your email marketing strategies
It is only logical that so many marketers use email marketing data to improve their sales. Here is how email marketing analytics can help you grow your style.
7 metrics to analyze in your email marketing strategies
1. Open Rate
The open rate of your emails refers to how many emails are opened compared to how many are not opened. It’s important to remember that there will always be some percentage of your emails that won’t get opened. However, the smaller that percentage the better for you and your email marketing campaign.
Most of the time, your email open rate will depend on how much you work on your subject lines. The subject lines of your emails are the hook needed to get your subscribers interested and encourage them to click on your emails - opening them. Consequently, if your subject lines are bad, you have fewer chances of improving your email open rate.
To improve your subject lines, try to get rid of all unnecessary words making the subject lines simple and efficient. You can use a question related to the content of your email or a promise of something particular (e.g. “Get 50% off your next order!”) Also, consider using keywords related to your email content.
Another thing to work on is the name of the sender. When your subscribers get your emails, you want it to have your brand name as the name of the sender. Alternatively, you can use the name of an employee and your brand name to make the emails more personal (e.g. “Kate Taylor from ABC Company”).
2. Click Rate
The click rate refers to how many times the links in your emails are being clicked. Most of the time you will want your subscribers to interact with your emails. The click rate can really show you how often they do that. Here are some things to keep in mind about your click rate:
The click rate refers only to how many times your email links are clicked. It doesn’t refer to how many times your emails are opened, how many times a video in your email is played, or how many times a file in your email is downloaded.
It is not much you can do to improve your click rate. You need to remember that it’s quite difficult to improve your email click rate because it depends on so many different factors – especially, how good the content of your email is.
The best thing you can do to improve your click rate is to work on your anchor text. The anchor text is the word or phrase that you get hyperlinked to. Detailed anchor text with an interesting and relevant word or phrase will definitely encourage your subscribers to click on the link.
3. List Growth Rate
Your mailing list is probably one of the most important things about your email marketing analytics. This is why the speed with which it grows, also known as the list growth rate, is so important for the overall success of your email marketing campaign.
Growing your own mailing list and ensuring that it continues to grow steadily over time is fairly simple once you know all the effective tactics used for this. Here are some things you can do to grow your mailing list:
- Improve your content strategy. There is nothing better to attract new subscribers than to show them that you can make good content. You can hire a professional writer from a writing services review site like Best Writers Online if you don’t know how to write the content yourself.
- Create dedicated landing pages. By creating dedicated landing pages for email subscriptions and directing your audience to these pages, you will be able to get more newsletter subscribers.
- Host contests and giveaways. And when you host them, make one of the mandatory requirements for participation in the subscription to your mailing list. This way, you will have more people subscribing.
4. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is a bit trickier than all the other important email marketing analytics. It can be divided into two main types: hard bounces and soft bounces. Hard bounces happen when you send an email to an address that doesn’t exist anymore. Soft bounces happen when the recipient’s inbox is full. Here are some things to remember about both bounce rate types:
Hard Bounces: Hard bounces are more important than soft bounces. However, they are not always easily noticeable. When you see that your bounce rate keeps growing steadily, that means that you need to analyze your mailing list. Clear out all the email addresses that were deleted by their owners. Otherwise, your email delivery rate could worsen more and more.
Soft Bounces: Soft bounces, on the other hand, are not as terrible. Most of the time, your subscribers will receive the emails once they clear out their full inboxes. Soft bounces usually won’t influence your bounce rate too much, but it’s important to know that they exist.
5. Sharing Rate
The sharing rate refers to several metrics. First of all, your emails could be forwarded to other people when your subscribers consider them interesting and want to show them to others. Second of all, your subscribers could visit your website by clicking on the links in your email and then share the content from your website.
In the first case, you will not always be able to monitor how many times your emails were forwarded. In the second case, you will need to track who visits your website through the links in your emails. Then check how many of these email-to-website visitors share your website content on other platforms including social media, blogs, and so on.
The best way to work on your sharing rate is to improve the quality of your content. The more informative, engaging, and entertaining it is, the more chances there are that your subscribers will want to share it. To do this, you can hire a writer from a writing services review site like Online Writers Rating after comparing different specialists and choosing the one who fits your requirements the best.
You should also make sure that sharing buttons are easily available to your audience. Place them on your website where your visitors can see them instantly, but don’t try to make them too big because they could be obscuring important content on your website.
6. Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is probably the metric that business owners and marketers are most concerned with. This rate shows you how many of your subscribers choose to stop receiving emails from you. Their decision to do so can be a result of various factors. Here are some things you can do to prevent it:
- Irrelevant Content: It often happens that once someone subscribes to your mailing list and they start receiving emails from you, they realize that it’s not exactly what they expected. Likewise, you could suddenly start sending content that is different from what you used to send out which can lead to some of your subscribers leaving. This is why you need to make sure that the expectations of your new subscribers meet the reality as well as that you have consistency with your emails.
- Low-Quality Content: Another issue that could cause your unsubscribe rate to increase is the fact that your content’s quality has become worse. As mentioned earlier, multiple times, you should always make sure that your content quality is as good as it can be while also constantly working to improve it.
- Too Many Emails: Yet another reason for your subscribers to leave your mailing list is that they get too many emails. You need to make sure that you are not being too clingy or asking too much from them. You should also regulate the number of emails you are sending out regularly to each of your subscribers.
7. Spam Complaints
Last but not least among the email marketing analytics. The number of spam complaints you get can really tell you about whether or not you are doing everything correctly with your email marketing strategy. If you see that you are getting too many spam complaints, then there is something seriously wrong with what you are doing.
A good idea would be to conduct a survey among your subscribers. Ask them whether they are satisfied with the content they are getting and how often they are receiving it. However, you should still keep in mind that your own analysis of your email marketing strategy is necessary to make the right conclusion about it.
About the author
Aaron Swain is a writing specialist. He is passionate about marketing and SEO. He expands and improves his skills throughout the writing process to help and inspire people.
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