Every success story has a background: strong ROMIs and impressive conversions in marketing are the result of good email statistics. Without a thorough study of internal email metrics, it is impossible to build correct campaign analytics or any predictions, and without this data, it will not be possible to calculate the progress of a campaign.
It’s funny that among such metrics, there are even “outsiders”. We are talking about statistical indicators of email campaigns, which are usually not at the forefront, but at some point the fate of the entire campaign can depend on them. We’ll take a closer look at these metrics here, but first …
What email marketing metrics are and why they matter at a glance
Internal metrics in email marketing are statistics collected as a result of the interaction of subscribers with the received correspondence. They include such indicators as:
- the deliverability of emails (Email Deliverability);
- open rate (Open Rate);
- bounce rate;
- click rate;
- the number of clicks in relation to openings (Click-to-Open Rate);
- the number of unsubscribed (Unsubscribe Rate);
- spam statistics (Spam Rate);
- number of responses.
Depending on the nature of the campaign, some of the metrics are heavily emphasized while others are obscured. For example, in sales, the indicator Click Rate is considered to be more important than number of responses, and if recipients decide to unsubscribe from the mailing, this is viewed exclusively from a negative perspective. But not everything is so simple, so let’s figure it out.
Unobvious metrics for email campaigns
The most important indicator of the driving force behind conversion and sales growth is the systematic increase in your contact base. This increase is restrained by the constant outflow of the audience: some of the addresses from the contact database become inactive due to obsolescence, server blocking, deletion by owners, etc.
Therefore, you need to make sure that the real number of subscribers is constantly increasing, but at the same time old customers stay in touch even if they change their addresses.
Obviously, just aiming for a boost open rates or growth number of clicks you won’t be able to keep your followers for long. It is rather a temporary solution for the campaign.
How to stop using plugs? There are two tested scenarios:
- Mandatory verification of the email address of each subscriber will make the new follow-up more effective and help keep your contact base in order.
- Paying special attention to some metrics and correcting mailings based on new indicators will allow you to retain subscribers.
Verification of addresses is a separate and rather voluminous topic, so here we will focus on metrics.
1. Soft bounce
We have already found out that Bounce rate Is the bounce rate for mail delivery. There are soft and hard rejections. The first ones are due to:
- mail server failures;
- overflowing recipient’s mailbox;
- large size of your letter.
I.e, soft bounce can be called a temporary refusal, in contrast to hard bouncethat occurs due to sending to fake or inactive addresses. With a lot of hard bounces, your sender reputation drops, and over time, your address will end up on a spam list, which is very difficult to get out of.
It is only natural that to watch out for hard bounce priority, but let’s imagine the following situation: you start automatic mailing and receive from one of the addresses soft rejection… The recipient’s mailbox is full, but he is in no hurry to clean it. The letter is sent again, then again and again.
What’s next? After several attempts (a specific number is set by providers and software) soft bounce turns into hard bounce… Even if you lower your bounce rate, the rate may not be met, and it will grow with each new cycle.
How can you avoid this? Only by working with accurate statistics and using professional software. For example, there are email marketing services that automatically stop campaigns with bounce rates above 30-50%. But this does not mean that you do not need to validate prospectuses before working with this solution …
2. Unsubscribe rate
Good news – clicking on the “unsubscribe” button in the letter will increase your Click-to-Open Rate… This means that your subscriber was able not only to open an email, but also to take advantage of your offer.
But seriously, unsubscribing from your mailing list is definitely not a reason for joy. But is the very fact of a civilized unsubscription so negative? Let’s think about it. If the recipient unsubscribes:
- he does not send your correspondence to spam, which means your reputation does not fall;
- its address is automatically removed from the prospectus, and you will not send triggered mailings to it in the future, as it could happen if you were banned;
- you get a great opportunity to work on the content of your emails.
Yes, unsubscribing almost always indicates that it is worth working on the content of the messages, their personalization and targeting. But what you should definitely NOT do is delete the unsubscribe button. By the way, it can be organically integrated into the letter design using HTML constructors from eSputnik or UniSender.
3.What devices are used to click on links in emails
Does it matter? Of course. Keep in mind that email marketing is built on the little details of working with fairly large audiences. For example, if specifically your target audience is used to opening mail from a smartphone, it is quite reasonable to move links for targeted actions higher and reduce the content itself (no one likes to scroll).
Device statistics are not included in most newsletter services, but you can get it by connecting to the Google Analytics site and adding UTM tags to the links themselves, allowing you to track recipient actions. By the way, this data can be pulled into CRM and integrated with the main automation tools.
4. Subscribers replies
All marketing metrics are non-fungible and important, but only this one reflects the real interest of subscribers in the content. The presence of responses is not an indicator of the success of the campaign, but it indicates the engagement of the recipients, which is worth a lot.
How long will this interest last? It all depends on your response. What to do in such situations?
- Read the answer and react to it as quickly as possible.
- Offer a product, service, or help.
- Ask to add your address to the whitelist.
Direct communication with the audience, as a rule, does not take much time, and if you undertake to calculate the cost of the letter that led to the sale, partnership or hiring, you will be completely confident in the correctly spent resource.
Recommendations for working with statistics
I think I’ve been able to highlight the value of dealing with unfairly ignored metrics. But this does not mean that you should pay less attention to the number of unique openings or clicks on links. Quite the opposite: email marketing is based on multi-vector promotion. Do you want to achieve good results? Then:
- Create detailed campaign plans and incorporate internal email metrics
- promptly respond to statistics and make changes to your mailings;
- constantly expand your contact base and regularly check their activity.
Also, special attention should now be paid to deep personalization. Especially in B2B, because in this segment you are more likely to communicate with customers than call them to a single action. Use reliable software that allows you to create personal letters, and this will not only allow you to avoid spam databases, but also significantly increase your business performance.