How Email Analytics Can Help Improve Your Campaigns

Email marketing continues to be a successful way to reach customers, build loyalty, and boost online sales today.

Yet, you’ll need to modify your approach to meet changing demands.

A solid email marketing strategy can boost you ahead of the competition and turn email list subscribers into customers. It can also create loyalty and repeat business with your existing customers.

That success, however, starts with defining your goals and then analyzing certain metrics to ensure you stay on track to gain those positive results.

For this, you need to know and understand the value of email analytics and how they can alert you to the performance of your campaigns.

Keep reading to learn more!

What is Email Analytics?

Email analytics provide you with a way to track how subscribers are positively or negatively interacting with your emails.

It provides a method for tracking specific metrics, allowing you to gain valuable insights into the performance of your email campaigns and alert you to the need to better optimize going forward.

These metrics relate to delivery, engagement, and conversions. They also tie in with your specific business goals, either short or long-term.

Why Should You Analyze Email Campaigns?

Analyzing your email campaigns is essential so you can gain an understanding of what you are doing right and what needs revisiting and revising.

These analytics can provide you with valuable insights into the performance of your email campaigns and help you determine success rates.

Without such analysis, you’ll be less likely to adequately determine how your email campaign does and where exactly you need to focus more attention to improve the performance of future campaigns.

5 Email Metrics You Should Know

While there are several metrics available to track and analyze, the following five are ones you should know and consider utilizing in your next campaign.

1. Deliverability rate

Deliverability rate informs you of the number of emails that actually reach your subscribers’ inboxes in comparison with the full amount of emails sent out.

Sending an email doesn’t necessarily mean it reaches the intended subscribers, unfortunately, and this rate will show you if this is the case.

Several variables can affect email deliverability, including:

• Incorrect email addresses.
• Subscribers’ inboxes are already full.
• Email content filters.
• Blocking on subscribers’ servers of IP addresses (resulting from complaints or too much source traffic).

A lot of rules surround email delivery, including email infrastructure, individual mailbox provider rules, and IP reputation management. 

Understanding these and how to navigate them will be crucial to the success of your email campaigns.

2. Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) provides you with the percentage of your email recipients who click on at least one link contained in a particular email.

This rate is a valuable engagement measure, allowing you to quickly calculate the performance of every email you send out.

CTR is a crucial metric to track because it provides insight into the number of people engaging with the content and showing interest in exploring your offer or learning about your brand.

To improve CTR, try the following:

• Make email formatting for different devices a priority.
• Add personalization.
• Incorporate better design elements to capture the eye.
• Create segmented contact lists.
• Include enticing and effective call-to-actions (CTAs).
• Utilize A/B testing for optimizing clickable elements.
• Discover best times to send emails so they have a better chance of being opened. Schedule accordingly.
• Make your email interactive.

To further help improve CTR, look to your content marketing strategy, which should already identify your targeted audiences and buyer personas.

With this information, you know better what type of educational, inspirational, informative, or entertaining content will work best, leading to more interaction with your brand.

3. Open rate

The open rate is the percentage of your email recipients who actually open a given email and is another important measure of engagement.

However, emails are only considered “opened” if the email recipient receives all the images embedded in the original content.

Those recipients who have image-blocking enabled may open your email, but they won’t be counted as part of your open rate.

Because of this, use open rate as a comparative metric. That is, you can compare open rates of emails sent to the same list but a week or more apart.

Factors that can positively affect open rates include the following.

• Adding fully-optimized and engaging or catchy subject lines.
• Using spam trigger avoidance tactics (in subject lines and body of the email).
• Utilizing segmented email lists.
• Ensuring you are working from an updated email list.
• Incorporating personalization.
• Optimizing for mobile devices.
• Making sure you send emails at the optimal day and time.

4. Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate provides you with the percentage of recipients who, after opening a given email, unsubscribe from your list.

This rate includes the different ways viewers can unsubscribe, including through the email’s footer link and the inbox’s unsubscribe function.

Results may not provide an accurate picture as many recipients tend to avoid the formal unsubscribing process and just not open or read your emails.

To increase your chances of subscribers voluntarily staying on your list, consider the following tactics.

• Avoid sending too many emails (each industry differs when it comes to this).
• Include list segmentation in your strategy so you can provide more personalization.
• Select to send emails only when you have something valuable, important, or compelling to share.

Closely monitor your unsubscribe rate and when it increases, take the time to review the quality of your content and also how often you are sending out emails.

Most email marketing tool accounts will send you a warning if this rate exceeds 5%.

5. List growth rate

The list growth rate is a metric showing you at what rate your email list is growing.

Naturally, you want to grow your email list so you can extend your brand’s reach and build a bigger audience.

To improve this rate, consider the following:

• Add display ads, such as interactive banners, to entice people to sign-up and become email subscribers.
• Optimize your social media marketing to appeal to more users.
• Use popups for visitors to your blog or website.
• Provide convenient access to subscription forms on your website.
• Validate email addresses at the source.

The five metrics included above can benefit any email campaign and add value to your email marketing strategy.

Other beneficial metrics you may want to consider tracking and analyzing include: 

• Conversion rate
• Bounce rate
• Email sharing/forwarding rate
• Spam rate
• ROI

Essentially, though, the metrics you choose to track and analyze your email campaigns will depend on your particular goals.

Tools Available to Help Track Email Analytics

It’s easier than ever today to track your chosen email analytics. For example, you can utilize improved email marketing software as well as Google Analytics to learn more about your email campaigns and how you can make them better.

Email Marketing Software

The easiest way to track, analyze, and monitor the performance of email marketing campaigns is with the analytical tools provided with email marketing software.

The majority of these email marketing software tools will automatically provide you with the metrics you need.

Examples of such beneficial software include Mailchimp, iContact, Constant Contact, and Mailmodo.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics can serve your marketing needs in a variety of ways, including in the tracking of email campaigns.

Once set up, you can track particular metrics, such as click-through rate, and gain insights into how much of your website traffic opts into your list and where most of them are converting on the site.

You can also easily connect your email software with Google Analytics. For example, if you have Mailchimp, you simply go to its Integrations page and locate the option to authorize Google Analytics.

After adding this authorization, whenever you set up email campaigns, you can check a box, and tracking will be included.

Wrap Up

Your email list is an important part of your marketing strategy. You cultivate it, monitor it, and treat it as a marketing asset to constantly add to and utilize. 

It only makes sense then that you want your email campaigns to be the best they can be, and with email analytics, you can gain valuable insights to ensure you’re meeting your goals.

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