A Guide To Measuring KPIs For Email Marketing

So, what are KPIs for email marketing?

As an email marketer, you are always looking for ways to improve your campaigns and understand what is working and what is not. One of the most important tools in your arsenal is KPIs.

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are measurable values that help you track and analyze your marketing campaign’s overall success. They can be used to measure everything from email opens and clicks to conversion rates and ROI (return on investment).

There are many different KPIs that you can use for email marketing, but here are 11 of the most critical you should pay attention to:

Email Open Rate

This measures how many people opened your email out of the total number of people who received it. A good open rate is around 10-28%. Depending upon your industry.

Measuring open rates is simple enough, but understanding why your open rates are high or low can be more difficult.

Factors that can influence your open rates, include the subject line, sender name, time of day/week that you send, personalization used, and whether or not people have subscribed to your emails.

Email Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This measures how many people clicked on a link in your email out of the total number of people who received it. A good email click-through rate in 2022 is around 2-7%.

But how do you measure CTR?

Well, it’s actually pretty simple. Just take the number of people who clicked on a link in your email and divide it by the total number of people who received the email.

For example, if you sent an email to 100 people and 10 of them clicked on a link, your CTR would be 10%.

Email Click-To-Open Rate (CTOR)

The click-to-open rate is even more important, because this tells you how appealing your email offer actually was, as this measures the number of people who opened your email, to how many people then actually clicked on one of your links in the email.

As an example: If 500 people opened your email and read it, and 100 people then clicked on one of your links, the CTOR would be 20%.

If this number starts falling, it means you need to come up with better call to actions in your email copy, or in your offer itself.

Email unsubscribe rate

This measures how many people unsubscribed from your email list after receiving your email. A good unsubscribe rate is around 0.5%.

Your unsubscribe rate can have a big impact on your overall email list health, so it’s important to keep an eye on it.

Several factors can influence your unsubscribe rates, such as sending to much unrelated content, not building a trust factor with your brand, poorly written emails, and providing no value in the emails you send..

Email Conversion Rate

This measures how many people completed the desired action (such as making a purchase) after receiving your email. A good conversion rate per email sent is around 1-5%, once again depending upon your industry.

Email conversion rates are important because they show you how effective your email marketing campaigns are at achieving your goals.

Several factors can influence your conversion rates, such as the offer in your email, the call to action, and the overall design of your email.

Email campaign bounce rate

This measures how many emails bounced back or were not delivered to the recipient’s inbox. A good bounce rate is around 2% or less.

Bounce rates are important because they can impact your deliverability. If your bounce rate is too high, it could mean that your emails are not being delivered to people’s inboxes, which could harm your campaign.

Several factors can influence your bounce rates, such as the quality of your email list, spam complaints, and the sending reputation of your email server.

And some things are beyond your control, like email abandonment – meaning email addresses on your list that become dormant.

There are two types of bounces, hard and soft – soft bounces could be temporary, as the persons email inbox is full. Hard bounces are permanent, as in a non existent email address, as one example.

Spam Rate

This measures how many people marked your email as spam. A good complaint rate is around 0%.

Nobody likes spam, so it’s important to make sure that your emails are not being marked as spam. Several factors can influence your spam rates, such as the content of your email, the sender name, and the sending reputation of your email server.

The important rule of thumb here, is to provide good relevant content to your email subscribers, do not just send straight up promotional emails every time you click the send button.

Email forward rate

This measures how many people forwarded your email to a friend or colleague. A good forward rate is around 2-5%.

An understated metric – forward rates can help you gauge how viral your email is. The more people who forward it, the more likely it is that they found the content valuable.

This can be a good indicator of the quality of your content and whether or not it resonates with your audience!

List Growth Rate

This measures the rate at which your email list is growing. A good growth rate is around 5-10% per month.

Your list growth rate is a good indicator of the health of your email marketing campaign. If your list is growing, it means that people are interested in what you have to say!

Several factors can influence your list growth rates, such as the quality of your content, the trust you build with your audience, and the number of people who unsubscribe from your list.

Lead Conversion Rate

This measures how many leads were generated from your email marketing campaign. A good lead conversion rate is around 20 – 30%.

Lead conversion rates are important because they show you how effective your email marketing campaign is at generating leads.

Several factors can influence your lead conversion rates, such as your lead magnet offer, your call to action, and the overall design of your email capture landing pages.

Email ROI

This measures the return on investment of your email marketing campaign. A good ROI is around $35-$40 for every $1 spent on your campaign advertising.

ROI is important for any business, whatever niche you are in! Therefore, monitoring your email ROI is crucial to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are profitable.

A few factors can influence your email ROI, such as the offer in your email, the call to action, the overall design of your email, and the list quality.

Monitoring your KPIs will help you understand what’s working well and what needs improvement in your email marketing campaigns. By improving your KPIs for email marketing, you can improve your overall results!

Read also: Email Nurture Campaign Best Practices to get the most conversions out of your email marketing campaigns.

Identify Email Marketing Goals

To set a KPIs for email marketing, you first need to identify your goals.

What do you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign?

Once you know your goals, you can choose the appropriate KPIs to measure your success.

For example, if your goal is to increase sales, then you would want to track KPIs such as email conversion rate and email ROI.

On the other hand, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, then you would want to track KPIs such as email open rate and email forward rate.

Let’s take a look at aligning your goals and setting your KPIs for email marketing.

For Growing Your Email List

If your goal is to grow your email list, you should track the following KPIs:

• List growth rate
• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate

For Increasing Sales

If your goal is to increase sales, you should track the following KPIs:

• Click-To-Open Rate
• Email conversion rate
• Revenue

Subscribers That Unsubscribe

To keep an eye on people who unsubscribe from your list, you can track KPIs such as :

• Unsubscribe rate
• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate

For Improving Engagement

If your goal is to improve engagement, you should track the following KPIs:

• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate
• Email forward rate

For Improving Email ROI

If your goal is to improve email ROI, you should track the following KPIs:

• Email conversion rate
• Revenue
• Cost per acquisition

Growing Your Leads

If your goal is to grow your leads, you should track the following KPIs:

• Lead conversion rate
• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate

As you can see, there is a variety of KPIs that you can track depending on your goals.

Whatever goals you set for your campaign, remember to set key performance indicators because this will help you track and measure your progress.

KPIs for email marketing are important because they give you insights into what is working well and what needs to be improved.

And if everything is still seeming confusing, your best bet is to take an email marketing online course, this will help you master this craft in so many ways.

How to Set a KPI

Now that you know what KPIs are and why they are important, it’s time to set one or more up for your email marketing campaign.

To do this, simply choose a metric that you want to track and set a target value for it.

For example, if you want to track your email open rate, you could set a target of 10-25%.

Once you have set your KPIs for email marketing, make sure to track it regularly so that you can see whether or not you are meeting your goals.

How To Track KPIs

Now you have learned a bit about KPIs – and thinking about your email marketing goals, it’s important to know how you can track KPIs!

Here are a few of our suggestions:

A/B Testing

You can track KPIs using A/B testing. This is a method of testing two different versions of an email to see which one performs better.

To do this, simply send out two versions of your email to a small group of people. Then, compare the results of the two emails to see which one had a better open rate, click-through rate, etc.

Google Analytics

Another way to track KPIs is to use Google Analytics. This is a free tool that you can use to track the performance of your website or blog.

Simply create a goal in Google Analytics and then start tracking your KPIs for email marketing. You can track things such as page views, unique visitors, and time on site, and much more.

Email Marketing Software

If you are using an email marketing software such as ActiveCampaign or HubSpot, then you can track your KPIs directly within the software.

Both of these platforms have built-in reporting tools that allow you to see how your emails are performing.

For example, you can see things such as open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, etc.

How To Measure A Successful Email Marketing Campaign

You’re doing great!

Not only have you discovered the importance of KPIs for email marketing, but you now know how important it is to set them, align them with your goals – and track each KPI using a tool!

But how do you measure success?

Well, there are a few things that you can do:

Check your open rate – if people are opening your emails, then that’s a good sign!

Look at your click-through rate – if people are clicking on the links in your emails, then that means they’re interested in what you have to say.

Look at your unsubscribe rate – if this is low, then that means people are happy with your emails.

Finally, look at your conversion rate – this is the most important metric of all, because it shows whether or not people are taking action after reading your email.

If you’re not sure how to measure these things, don’t worry – there are plenty of resources, such as the EmoneyPeeps community, that can help you!

Conclusion

KPIs are essential for understanding the success of your email marketing campaign. By tracking KPIs, you can make changes to improve your results.

Choose KPIs that align with your goals and set a target value for each. Then, track the KPIs for email marketing regularly to ensure that you are meeting your goals.

If you ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to post them in the comments section below or just say hello.

Sincerely,

Your Friends And Partners

Richard And John Weberg

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