Email marketing today is a fast, effective communication tool and offers extraordinary potential for companies.
To achieve the high investment returns that email allows us as a tool, planned actions must be created, using specific strategies. But after carrying out the email marketing campaigns, the last and fundamental step is to measure the results obtained according to the desired objectives and, according to the expected effect, determine new action plans.
Why measure results?
It is very important to learn from the mistakes of learning from past campaigns so that you do not repeat them and take action against them. The only way to record whether or not our shipment worked is to measure and analyze the results.
Through the metrics we will be able to observe the behavior of our subscribers: how many emails have been sent, read, unread, unsubscribed, as well as, how many clicked, which sections of the newsletter were most striking, or which products or articles are most interesting, how many generated conversion, which designs work best, among others.
Keeping track of email marketing is the fundamental step of any strategy. Every time a shipment is made, its statistics must be observed and controlled. In this way, it will be possible to know how many people open and read your campaigns in a certain period of time, to improve the effectiveness of the message, the frequency of sending, the subjects, the designs, the links, etc.
Email Marketing Metrics
In email marketing we have four fundamental metrics that must be taken into account when analyzing and comparing the results with the desired objectives.
Deliverability or Delivery Rate
This metric indicates how many people the email has actually reached.
Deliverability = (Delivered * 100) / Sent
The Sent are those emails to which they tried to send the campaign, that is, all the recipients of the groups that we selected at the time of sending.
On the other hand, the "Not Delivered" are those emails that were not delivered correctly to the destination, also called "Bounced". There are two types of bounces:
- Permanent Bounced: Incorrect domains or permanent network errors. Invalid addresses due to non-existent boxes, misspelled addresses. These emails should be disabled in our database. Temporary Bounces: they are temporary problems on the destination server, box filled. The platform generally retries several times before marking the contact as bounced.
Reading Rate or Open Rate
Within this metric the read emails are located: people who have selected the email in their mailbox and have opened it. The reading rate is the number of emails that were opened over the number of emails delivered multiplied by one hundred.
Reading Rate = (Read / Delivered) * 100
The quality of the Database and the Issue are the main factors that come into play when measuring and analyzing this metric.
The reading rate will depend on the quality of the database, the item, the particular campaign, but as a reference we can consider whether a campaign was successful or not based on the following percentages:
More than 30% of reading, we can consider that the impact of our campaign was excellent
Between 20% and 30%, the impact of our campaign was Very Good
Between 10% and 20%, Good impact
Less than 10%, from Fair to Poor
It is essential to be attentive to the results obtained from this metric and act on time to obtain better and better results. There are many strategies that can be carried out, one of them is to send a second message to the contacts who did not read the newsletter, with a different, more striking subject or with another connotation, and at a different time or day.
Click Rate or CTR
This is one of the fundamental metrics to analyze the success or failure of an email marketing campaign, since it is closely related to the conversion rate.
There are two fundamental metrics that have to do with clicks:
Click-Through Rate or CTR (Click-Through Rate): This is the number of Clicks in a campaign in relation to the emails sent.
CTR = (Clicks / Sent) * 100
Index of Clicks on openings or CTOR (Click-To-Open Rate): It shows the interest of the people who read the mail about the content of our message.
CTOR = (Clicks / Reads) * 100
The audience, the format of the design, the number of links in the message, call to action buttons, outstanding phrases, are some of the factors that can influence the result of these metrics and that must be analyzed in detail to maximize the conversion and impact of our campaign.
Virality Rate or VTR
Complementing our email marketing campaigns with social networks is a viral marketing strategy that allows us to achieve excellent results. The VTR (Viral-Through Rate) metric This metric allows us to measure the degree of virality that our campaign had:
VTR = ((Shared with Social Networks + Forwarded to a Friend) / Sent) * 100
Or if we consider the readings, we could calculate the VTOR (Viral-To-Open Rate):
VTOR = ((Shared with Social Networks + Forwarded to a Friend) / Read) * 100
Tips to improve your Email Marketing metrics
These are some tips that we can offer you to improve the performance of your Email Marketing campaigns.
- The matter: it is one of the keys to the success of your campaigns. Say in simple and short words what will be found in the email. Never false expectations. Do not place subjects in capital letters, or more than 50 characters.The Database: keep the database clean and segmented, this is a capital of your company, since they are clients that you know yourself and it has taken you time to collect them. Segment according to the interests of your customers and make strategies to know their preferences. Plan your strategy: plan an email marketing strategy based on objectives and what is expected of the campaign. They can be quantitative or qualitative. Content and Design: people have already opened your Newsletter and hope to find what you expressed to them in the matter,therefore, the connection you make of it with the content is essential. Send relevant content, eye-catching design and well-featured buttons, action-takers to guide the audience where you want to. Conduct viral email marketing: integrating email with social media is a must for any communication strategy. Desired results / goals: measure the final result against the expected objectives of email marketing campaigns allows to analyze the success or not of them, and according to what has been achieved, make new action plans.Integrating email with social networks is a must for any communication strategy.Wished results / objectives: measuring the final result against the expected objectives of email marketing campaigns allows to analyze again the success or not of them, and according to what has been achieved to make new action plans.Integrating email with social networks is a must for any communication strategy.Wished results / objectives: measuring the final result against the expected objectives of email marketing campaigns allows to analyze again the success or not of them, and according to what has been achieved to make new action plans.
