What are key metrics for email marketing?

Email marketing has a high return on investment.  As a marketer, you should be testing and monitoring all of your marketing efforts including email marketing.  You need to watch a few key metrics to make sure your email marketing is performing and to optimize it.  Below are 9 key metrics for email marketing.

  1. # of contacts – The number of contacts is a great metric because you always want to be growing your list.  Just remember though:  quality is more important than quantity.
  2. Breakdown of segments – Within your contact list, you will want to segment your list. Segments will depend on you, your business, your products/services, and your marketing strategy.  The number in each segment is a great way to measure the effectiveness of growing certain areas.
  3. Open rate – Open rate is critical. You can’t get anyone reading and engaged with your content if you first don’t get them to open it.  Check out this article on how to get your email opened.
  4. Click Rate – click rate shows that the content you are providing is interesting to your list. Clicking is a great way to further segment your lists.
  5. Click to open rate – This shows you the # of people that clicked compared to the # that opened. It’s a little different than click rate.  I like this one better because it does a better job of isolating the internal content of the email.
  6. Website clicks – Many people forget to include this metric when evaluating an email campaign. Website clicks are important because it tells you that people are not just clicking on the links to get to the website and then bouncing.  Are they going to certain areas of the website?  Are they converting?  This helps you determine if you are driving the right kind of traffic to your website.
  7. Unsubscribe rate – People will unsubscribe. It’s not always a bad thing.  You will want to pay attention to see if you are causing a higher than normal unsubscribe rate.  It may mean you are sending too often, not sending the right information, or not cleaning your lists on a regular basis.
  8. Conversion rate – We want people to convert. That’s the whole idea of sending the email.  Conversions could mean different things.  You could have a conversion rate based on a sale, on someone completing a form, or someone going to a specific page.  Conversions help you determine if your list is taking the action you want them to.
  9. Reply rate – This one is rarely tracked but is great information. It usually signals interest.  People that reply are usually passionate (and sometimes it’s good passionate and sometimes it’s not).  Often replies come from you asking a question or you piquing the curiosity of the subscriber.  And they are sending a question for clarification.
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