How To Measure Email Marketing Campaigns

In our technologically advanced world, the amount of data at our disposal is a blessing but simultaneously, a curse. Consequently, the best method to measure your results effectively is to pinpoint which metrics are the best indicator of your goal progress. If you are unsure where to start, we recommend analyzing these three metrics: Unique Clicks, Open Rate and Bounce Rate.

Unique Clicks

Unique Clicks are the number of times an individual has clicked a link within your email campaign (repeated clicks are not counted). For example, if a single user clicks 3 times, your campaign results will record 3 clicks but 1 unique click.

Why is it important?  This metric is the ONLY way to measure true engagement as it provides a definite percentage of recipients who are interacting with your campaigns. Arguably, this is the most insightful metric as it reveals the exact number of people who are receptive to conversion and interested in hearing from you in future campaigns.

Top optimization tips: If your click rate is low, analyze your list of recipients to ensure you are sending relevant and tailor-made content to individuals. For future campaigns, segment your most engaged contacts from your least and create separate campaigns to cater to each audience’s needs - it may result in sending more campaigns per month, but you will reap better results! Another aspect to consider is the design and layout of your email, if you would like to find out more about this, check out this guide to creating the perfect email campaign. Once you have optimized the design it would be useful to conduct A/B testing to find out what works and implement this to encourage a higher click rate.

Open Rate

The Open Rate is the number of times your email campaign is opened divided by the total of delivered emails.

Why is it important? Although it may not directly link to tangible results, the Open Rate will indicate how many people are opening your email - if this rate is low, you have a problem! This should be used as a comparative metric against previous campaigns (with the same list) so that over time, you have a company Open Rate benchmark to measure against. 

Top optimization tips: Unfortunately, there are only a few controlled variables for optimization and the most impactful one is your subject line. The subject line will need to immediately catch the reader’s attention and should describe what the recipient can expect from opening the email. From our experience, including personalization such as First Name or Company Name is a great way to increase your Open Rate as it makes each recipient feel special and unique. Alternatively, you could experiment with a simple question, to intrigue the recipient into opening the email to find out the answer. Step into your recipients’ shoes and work out what questions you anticipate them asking and address any pain points they may have.

Bounce Rate

The Bounce Rate is the percentage of email addresses that your campaign was not delivered to. It is calculated by dividing the number of email bounces by the total number of emails sent. There are two types of bounces: hard and soft. Soft is a temporary failure to deliver and a hard bounce indicates invalid, closed, or non-existent contacts within your list.

Why is it important? Likewise, to the Open Rate, although it may not directly link to your goals, a high bounce rate may indicate a deeper issue.  For example, if you ignore your Bounce Rate, a high level of bounces may cause ESP (internet service providers) to flag your email address as a spammer affecting future campaigns and can be difficult to repair. It is in your interest to montior this metric as maintaining a “healthier audience” will always lead to a more “profitable audience.” 

Top optimization tips: An efficient method to improve your Bounce Rate is to introduce a double-opt-in method whenever someone initially subscribes to your list. This will prevent any incorrect email address from being added to your database which in turn will affect your results. If you notice some subscribers have not been engaging for a while and you have made multiple unsuccessful attempts to re-engage them, you should remove them from your list.

In conclusion...

You may notice that we have provided industry benchmarks for each - these are useful to see where you stand in the industry. By continually comparing your data against an industry average (as well as your own company benchmark), you can effectively measure individual email performance, how you are progressing towards your goals, and the overall health of your email list. However, most importantly, your ability to draw actionable insights from this analysis and apply them in invaluable ways is the key to receiving better results from your campaign.