Email marketing is a great strategy for running outreach to existing customers, and for building a transactional relationship with your new contacts. Here
are five key metrics to look at when running a campaign to measure your success.
Open rate
Open rate is the percentage of emails you send which are opened by their recipient. This is normally measured by your email client including an invisible
image in the email that it can detect has been downloaded by the end recipient.
Depending on the industry you're involved in a good rate is 20% and up.
PROTIP: If your open rate is falling try sending less regular emails, or playing with your subject line style.
Click-Through and Unsubscribe
I've bundled these two together since they're the two initial actions that an email can lead to. Both can be measured by all major email marketing software.
Click-throughs are normally tracked through special redirect URLs put into the email by the email sender, unsubscribes tend to go directly through the
email sender so these are always tracked that way.
Your emails may not necessarily lend themselves to a click-through but this is a great way to track the level of engagement so it might be time to change
things around - try showing snippets of your blogs in your emails rather than the whole article and encouraging a click-through to Read more.
When it comes to special offers you can always tease the offer in your email and then say Click here to see our latest offer and drive
the traffic through to your site. As well as giving you a click-through to track this will also help you to bring your customers closer to an on-site
conversion.
When it comes to unsubscribes a certain amount is natural. People's interests and needs change over time so you may just find you lose a few recipients
with each email - this is why it's important to always keep growing your database.
You should keep an eye on your unsubscribe rate as a sign that your content may be becoming too regular or irrelevant.
PROTIP: Increasing click-throughs vs unsubscribes can often be a case of finding the right frequency and calls to action to include in
your emails. Don't be afraid to experiment or actively ask for feedback from your existing subscribers.
Conversions
Your business may lend itself to driving sales directly from email. In this case, most advanced email marketing software has ways to cookie users when
they click through an email and make it to your cart to sign up or submit a contact form with a reliable conversion value. This way you can tell which
of your emails are returning the best monetary value.
PROTIP: Test different special offers to see the effect on your conversions.
For more information on how you can improve your conversions and sales with email marketing, discover our latest blog here.
New mailing list subscribers
Your success in ROI on email marketing is the result of your conversion rate √ó your subscriber count. So as well as working on your conversion tactics
and offers you should actively be looking to grow your mailing list size. This is especially helpful when you consider the ownership that email gives
you over your contact list compared to your reach on social networks which can be manipulated at any time without your control.
Good opportunities to move contacts into your mailing list include
- Offering special offers to social media contacts in exchange for a signup
- Setting up a tablet in physical locations to convert real-world interest
- Offering a special offer on the first eCommerce visit
If you want to take your email marketing to the next level and see real returns
get in touch with Website Success to set up all
the tracking and email design assets you need. If you have any questions
feel free to drop us a line.
