Top 17 Email KPIs YOU SHOULD BE PRESENTING TO YOUR BOSS
What is a KPI? KPI stands for key performance indicator. Marketers desperately need, hope, and crave valuable information from KPI assessments. These metrics show your boss, and your entire organization, just how valuable the marketing department is in the success of your overall business. Email campaigns are a great place to start measuring KPIs - you're already sending them multiple times a week to multiple audiences and about multiple subjects! Here are some helpful KPIs on your email campaigns to report, on the following pages, OR if you are ready to jump directly to the worksheet, go to page 10 and get started now! QUICK TIP Print out these pages to see how KPI measurement improves your email engagement. Even post them up around the office as reminders on the importance of KPI tracking!
DATE Be sure to include the year because 12 months will go by before you know it! Also, use the same naming convention, so that you can always sort by date. For example, you may date your emails 01/01/2015 or Jan. 1, 2015. Whatever you chose, stick to it every time! SUBJECT LINES You should always test subject lines. Just make it a rule for every email you send and be sure to make note of exactly what they are. Also, marketing automation provides marketers the opportunity to split A/B test email subject lines on an audience with the same email. This is a great way to keep all the other aspects of an email constant while seeing exactly how well a subject line performed against another. TOTAL SENT Number of emails sent is a measure of audience size. This will be helpful when comparing email to email.
TOTAL DELIVERED Total number of emails delivered. This will always be less than the number of emails sent due to bounces and unsubscribes. GENERAL AUDIENCE Who are you sending this email to? At least mark this with a general label like All Prospects or Prospects - Segment: CFOs. Be mindful of the naming convention here, too. NUMBER OF OPENS This metric provides perspective to your campaigns. If you sent 1,000 emails and 100 were opened on a campaign that is a great success! On the other hand, if you sent 10 emails and got one open the open rate is the same, but keep in mind that the audience is much smaller.
OPEN RATE The open rate of email campaigns can be an indicator of a lot of different aspects of the campaign subject lines, day of the week the email was delivered, time of day the email was delivered, or a number of other variables. You may have sent two seemingly similar emails, but drastically different open rates will indicate that you must dig further to understand why. CTA CTA stands for call to action. Every email you send should have one and you need to keep track of what they are with each email. The call to action should be related to the content offered in the email.
CTR CTR stands for click The click-through rate is the number of times a click is made on a specific call-to-action divided by the total number of emails opened. The CTR is a measure of how well a CTA performed. NUMBER OF CLICKS The number of clicks is needed to calculate the CTR. It s also an important metric to keep your campaigns in check. Many marketers only take note on the CTR of campaigns, but take for example an email that was sent to 1,000 people, only had 10 opens, and eight clicks. The CTR is 80 percent. That seems really good, but considering the open rate, the campaign was not a success.
NUMBER OF UNSUBSCRIBES Again, this metric helps you keep your campaigns in check. You re going to get unsubscribes, but it is important to keep track of both the actual number of unsubscribes as well as the unsubscribe rate. HARD BOUNCES Email campaigns are only as good as their delivery success. If you haven t read up on email deliverability, do it. Do it now. Keep track of how many hard bounces you re getting - marketing automation makes that easy! The definitions of hard and soft bounces vary based on email platform, but a soft bounce generally means that the recipient s email inbox is full, the email is too large, or the recipient's email server is temporarily down. A hard bounce usually means that the email address does not exist, the domain does not exist, or your domain has been blocked from delivery to the recipient s domain (That last part is the worst! It can affect your deliverability to other inboxes). No real action with this information unless you see this number spike.
UNSUBSCRIBE RATE The unsubscribe rate is calculated by dividing the number of unsubscribed by the total delivered and multiplying by 100. CONTENT OFFERED What carrot are you dangling to get someone to click in an email? Be sure to keep track of which content is performing well in email campaigns. You d be surprised that the medium through which you promote drastically affects the success of the content. FORM OF CONTENT OFFERED This is how you label and organize your content. For instance, the piece of content you re reading right now is marked as a worksheet in my campaign tracking.
TIME OF DAY DELIVERED What time of day is most successful for your email campaigns? You can find different articles out there that claim they know the best time to send an email. The truth is that the right time depends heavily on audience, so the only thing to do is find the an optimal time to track each email until a pattern emerges. DAY OF THE WEEK SENT Day of the week is a crucial metric to keep track of. Don t be afraid to send on weekends, too! If you keep track of this for a short period of time, you ll quickly see a pattern emerge for the best day to send.
KPI Worksheet Tracking and managing KPIs shows you your strengths and weaknesses in explicit detail, including stats to back up the point. Here's what you're amazing at! Here's what you will be amazing at with more time and attention! They also work as a great checklist to keep by your side as you create emails you wouldn't want to use a failed subject line format or forget a CTA. Sharing this information with your boss helps improve your department on every level and across every project. From brainstorm sessions to publishing and all the way through to engagement reviews, KPIs will ensure your content thrives. The worksheet on the next page is a place for you to start filling in your own metrics. We ve done one example for you!
Date Subject Line Total Sent Total Delivered General Audience 11/10/2014 Best Email Ever 1,250 1,190 Marketing Managers, Marketing Campaign Managers, Email Marketing Managers, Communications Manager Time of Day Delivered Day of the Week Sent Number of Opens Open Rate (Number of Opens/ Total Delivered X 100) 2:00 pm ET Thursday 103 8.70% Number of Clicks Click Thru Rate (Number of Clicks/Number of Opens X 100) Number of Unsubscribes Unsubscribe Rate (Number of Unscubscribes / Hardbounces Total Delivered X 100) CTA Content Offered Form of Content Offered 7 6.80% 1 0.08% 4 Click Here Email KPI s Worksheet
Date Subject Line Total Sent Total Delivered General Audience Time of Day Delivered Day of the Week Sent Number of Opens Open Rate (Number of Opens/ Total Delivered X 100) Number of Clicks Click Thru Rate (Number of Clicks/Number of Opens X 100) Number of Unsubscribes Unsubscribe Rate (Number of Unscubscribes / Hardbounces Total Delivered X 100) CTA Content Offered Form of Content Offered