Now you ve set up an email campaign, spent money on a designer, copywriter, marketer, and built a contact base. Emails are sent out, some conversions are coming, but where and how good the email channel is for your business is not clear.
In order not to waste your budget, you need to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns. This can be done using basic metrics. They will show how interested your customers are in receiving emails, what content they receive, and allow you to calculate the profitability of this promotion channel.
Below we will tell you what indicators to look at and where to do it.
1. Where can I see email analytics?
To launch and prepare mailings, special services are used (Unisender, SendPulse, eSputnik, MailChimp). There you can also see reports on mailings for a certain range and see a map of clicks, unsubscriptions, etc.
Fig. 1 – SendPulse statistics
Fig. 2 – Statistics of eSputnik emails
Fig. 3 – Statistics of all emails for the period SendPulse
Mail services such as Google and Mail.ru have postmasters who collect statistics on open rates, clicks and other indicators if recipients use mailboxes of these companies. But it is unlikely that your mailing base consists of only gmail.com or mail.ru.
PS… The postmaster of Yandex is not here, because he has ceased to exist altogether.
2. What metrics of mailing efficiency should you look at?
Basic metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of your mailing list include:
- deliverability;
- openability;
- views (transitions) on the site;
- percentage of unsubscribes and spam;
- email conversion and mailing conversion.
Let s consider each indicator in more detail.
2.1 Email deliverability
This is the percentage of the total number of letters that reached the recipient s mailbox (regardless of the folder in which they got). Emails can come not only to the Inbox, but also to the Spam folder.
Deliverability is affected by:
- cleanliness of the database (no non-working addresses, sending only to those who agreed to receive letters, etc.). How to build a base, see here.
- domain reputation;
- content of the letter;
- technical and user settings.
Those who are sending the newsletter for the first time may find that some mailing services do not give them good IP addresses. This is partly about caring about your own reputation, because the new client has not been verified yet. The deliverability in such cases may be less than 90%.
Good mailing services provide over 99% deliverability.
2.2 Email openability
This indicator gives the ratio of the number of users who opened the letter to the total number of mailing addresses.
One of the important ingredients for improving openness is the theme. You can read about this in more detail in this material.
Openrate can be unique and repeatable.
Unique – shows the number of users who viewed the letter, and repeated – the total number of openings of the letter. As a percentage, the total open rate can be more than 100%, because one addressee can open the letter several times. You need to evaluate the mailing by a unique openrate.
2.3 Transitions from the mailing list
Users who open the letter can follow the links in the text. With the help of a heatmap, you can find out what content has hooked a customer the most. Based on this analysis, it is possible to significantly improve the newsletter and content, and this will increase customer loyalty through a personalized approach.
Clicks are affected by the percentage of email openings. That is, the more openings, the more clicks. To neutralize this influence, use the metric Clicks to discoveries… It is considered as follows:
If you see that the user is not clicking on the links, you can send him a reactivation email.
2.4 Unsubscribing and reporting spam
The quality and relevance of emails is also measured by the number of unsubscribers and those who marked emails as spam. If the spam rate exceeds 0.1%, then the next mailing may be blocked completely, and users will not know about it.
One of the common reasons for spam complaints is that users cannot find the Unsubscribe button and simply mark emails as spam. Even so, the newsletter can be annoying or overwhelmed. If you want your base not to shrink, try to make your newsletter useful and attractive in appearance.
2.5 Email conversion and email conversion
If you want to understand how users behave on the site, which pages they visit, and what is the bounce rate, you will have to install Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica. It is they who will give an understanding of where the email channel is in terms of efficiency among all marketing channels and will help track the number of targeted actions for a period and for a specific letter. There you can also see what works better – triggers or promotions.
Email conversion – the ratio of the number of purchases to users who opened the letter.
Email conversion – the ratio of the number of purchases to sent emails.
Fig. 4 – Email may not always be the first or last source of conversion
In analytics services, it is worth paying attention to the user s path to conversion. It will allow you to track all sources on the way to the target action, and based on the data obtained, assess the importance of the email channel in the chain.
Output
Together, these metrics provide an initial insight into how effective a launched email campaign is. There are no reference values to be measured against. Even for companies in the same industry, the average email open rate varies. The final assessment of the effectiveness of the mailing should be based on a large number of factors, including such metrics as LTV and Churn Rate.
If you see that the performance is deteriorating and the mailing is not profitable, then change the approach. Write engaging copy, use creativity and minimalism, introduce new formats and segment your customer base. Eliminate non-working and test new, choose the best and work with it. Then the number of open letters and conversions will increase, and the number of unsubscriptions will be reduced to a minimum.