Mo Metrics, Mo Problems? Our guide to email marketing metrics
Number crunching isn t for everyone, so it s not surprising to find many marketers often avoid any kind of in-depth analysis on their email campaigns. But analysing campaigns doesn t have to be a chore and the more numbers you look at doesn t mean you ll be more confused! More Metrics, More Problems? 2
Contents Where to start?...3 The email journey...5 Time to talk metrics...6 Top metrics for engagement...8 Top metrics for data and delivery...10 Top metrics for revenue... 13 Longer term analysis... 15 What s next?... 17 More Metrics, More Problems? 3
Where to start? So, do mo metrics mean mo problems? Ok, so no more of the Biggie Smalls puns, we promise! (Don t know who that is? Go Google!) Moving on... email marketing is an art; your concept, design and your perfectly written, engaging copy are each artistically crafted with your target audience in mind. But there s a science to it too; the numbers, the trends, the analysis... this is where it could get confusing. Why measure my email campaigns? The campaigns you send are only as good as the results they achieve, so if you re missing this analytical step then you re losing out on valuable insight into your campaign s success. This insight could help you in improving future campaigns and ultimately your return on investment (ROI). Not only that, but as any marketer knows, getting sign off for an increase in your budget can be a bit of a nightmare! So if you want the powers that be to take your demands seriously, you ve got to prove what your campaigns are worth! Do you need more of a reason than that? More Metrics, More Problems? 4
Is it all about the ROI? (Return - Cost) Cost Definitely not! Don t take that the wrong way; a return on what you invest is what you want to see, but you should always address ROI in the context of your campaign objectives, when your aim wasn t revenue related. For example, say you want to obtain new subscribers, then you would look at other factors like Cost per Acquisition (CPA) to analyse your return that way. But costs aren t always monetary, so try assessing your ROI against; Risk like the risk of losing customer confidence or trust, risk of blacklisting, risk of lowering sender reputation. Consequential costs the cost of losing subscribers or revenue due to the risks you ve identified at the start of your campaign. Opportunity costs - the cost of the missed or lost opportunity by not doing something. What could have been done differently or better? Any other input - the stuff you can t easily assign a financial cost to; resource required, time spent planning and setting up the campaign and time you might have spent creating assets. If your ROI isn t a considerable deal greater than the cost of what you ve put into it then something needs to change. Maybe you need to test sending at a different time or using a different call to action, subject line, mailing list... all to see what gets the best return. So the point we re making? Don t be fooled by deceiving ROI figures, make sure you think outside the box! More Metrics, More Problems? 5
The email journey So how s this all relevant to the email journey? We look at the email marketing journey like a funnel; the email funnel, and your different metrics are relevant to each different stage. Let s take a look... Sending out your email Here you ll want to look at List Size, also considering the results of any tests you ve done such as the best time to send. Your email reaches the inbox Here you ll be looking at your Sent/ Delivery Rate, Bounce Rate, Inbox Placement & Junk/Spam Rate. Your subscriber opens Take a look at your Open Rate, Unique Open Rate, Unsubscribes and Complaints. Your subscriber clicks Recognise your most Active Users by looking at Engagement Groups and Social Shares. They reach a landing page Look at your Click Through Rate and Clicks to Opens to see how many subscribers were engaged enough to click through to your call to action. At this point they convert Look at your Conversions, remembering that this doesn t just refer to a monetary purchase; it could be a form fill-out or a download too. Also review your Conversion Value and Revenue Per Email. Then, in the longer term, your Cost per Acquisition and ROI. More Metrics, More Problems? 6
Time to talk metrics The same as ROI, any metric is useless without establishing what your objectives are first, otherwise how do you know whether that metric is even useful to you? We use metrics as a means of understanding any successes, subscriber activity, trends and progress. It can be difficult to know where to start, so we ve pulled together our guide to some of the top email marketing metrics and why you should be using them... List size Your List Size depicts the number of people you hold in your mailing list(s), therefore the number of people you re sending to. You d be silly to ignore this figure - the first thing you need to do in email marketing is be aware of how many people you re sending to. Your List Size gives you the starting point from which you can then understand any future list growth or depreciation, as well as set realistic objectives for numbers of opens, clicks, conversions etc. Need help growing your list? Learn how with our guide to Increasing Your Subscriber Numbers Open rate Open Rate reports the number of times your email campaign has been opened and is measured as a percentage. Your Open Rate ultimately shows how successful your subject line, from name and brand have been, as these are the key things your recipients see before they open your message. This means you can get a feel for how successful these factors have been in triggering your subscribers to open your email campaign; they re great things to test and easy for you to do in Communicator. However, your Open Rate doesn t demonstrate engagement with your email s content, so be careful to measure it alongside other factors. Alongside your overall Open Rate, Communicator will also show you your opens in the last hour, so you can get a feel around the early reaction to your campaign. More Metrics, More Problems? 7
Unique Open Rate Unique Open Rate measures one open per recipient. That way, if a recipient has opened your email multiple times (by using a few devices or going back into it to re-read) then that s only counted as one open, to keep your metrics as true as possible. Your Unique Open Rate gives a true measure of your opens, by showing you exactly how many individual subscribers have opened. It s a good one to keep an eye on so you can be aware of exactly how many subscribers are reacting to your campaigns. Sent or Delivery Rate Myth Buster It s not all about the Open Rates! Everyone loves the good old Open Rate, but tracking how many opens your campaigns get is by no means the be all and end all of analysing your email marketing. In fact, if this is all you re looking at it could be having a detrimental effect. Open Rates don t predict revenues or measure success and they can be misleading. So, don t use them alone consider your Open Rates alongside other factors to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns against your objective. (No. of emails sent - All bounces) No. of emails sent Your Delivery Rate refers to the number of emails delivered within your campaign. This doesn t necessarily mean delivered to the inbox, that s Inbox Placement, but it means the number of emails which we delivered, after taking off any that bounced. It s really important to keep checking your Delivery Rates alongside your Inbox Placement rates, so you re aware of the quality of your data and how up to date it is. This lets you easily recognise bounces and suppressions, also identifying where there may be any issues with poor quality data. More Metrics, More Problems? 8
Top metrics for engagement With low engagement, your emails are more likely to be sent to the junk folder, as there s a higher chance they ll appear as irrelevant or spam-like to the ISPs. Number of Active Users Perhaps not necessarily a performance metric, but your Active Users figure gives you a clear idea of how many of your recipients are actively engaging with your campaigns. You can find this under the Engagement Groups section of Communicator, where you ll also be able to see the numbers of New, Inactive & Dormant subscribers. Recognising your most active subscribers provides key insight into who your best recipients are - the ones who engage with your emails the most, by opening more, clicking more and converting more than any other group. This then allows you to target this group with specific emails & offers to reward their loyalty and keep them coming back! Click-Through rate (CTR) When a subscriber clicks on a link, button, or image within your email, a click is recorded. We record total clicks as the number of recipients who click at least one link in the email. In other words, like the Open Rate, no matter how many times a recipient clicks on the link(s), only one click is recorded. Counting in this way provides a better measure of how many of your subscribers are truly engaged, also ensuring that the click rate can t go over 100%. Keep an eye on this figure to get a feel for how your links are working - if your Click-Through Rate is low this could indicate that your calls to action (CTA) need reworking, as the email hasn t engaged your recipients enough to click through. More Metrics, More Problems? 9
Clicks to opens (CTO) No. of clicks per recipient No. of emails sent Clicks to Opens takes the total number of clicks per recipients and divides that figure by the total Open Rate. That means it looks at those people who opened and, of those people, how many were engaged enough to click through. This figure focuses on how engaging the content of your message was in convincing your audience to click through. It looks solely at your message content; on a higher level, how successful your message was in driving traffic or conversions and, on a tactical level, looking at design & copy alongside aspects of your CTAs. Social Shares Everyone loves social sharing! This is the total number of social interactions you ve received from your subscribers, covering things like Twitter shares and Facebook likes (clicked directly from your email). Share and share alike! Download our Social Integration guide Keep an eye on this stat to see how many of your recipients are sharing your email s content to their own social channels, therefore increasing the reach of your message. It s done via the social links you include in your campaign, so if this is particularly low and you want it to improve, think about how prominent your share to social links are within your email. More Metrics, More Problems? 10
Top metrics for data and delivery No matter how perfect your campaigns are, they re useless if they aren t backed up with great data & strong delivery rates. After all, if your subscribers don t actually receive your emails or if you re sending them out to people who aren t interested then your efforts have gone to waste! Bounce Rate Bounce Rate covers those messages which have bounced back from the receiving server. There are two types of bounces; hard & soft. Take a look at our guide to Data, Delivery & the Inbox Hard Bounces are messages that have been totally rejected because of an invalid email address or ones which have been permanently blocked from the recipient server. Soft Bounces are temporary bounces, maybe because the recipient s server is down or because your message is too large for their mailbox. Tracking your Bounce Rates is vital to maintaining healthy delivery and sender reputation. If you have a large number of Hard Bounces this could indicate that your data is weak, so it leads you to analysing your data capture points and where you re collecting your data from, as well looking at how old or out of date it is. More Metrics, More Problems? 11
Inbox placement rate No. emails sent - No. in spam folder Your Inbox Placement rate is a percentage referring to the number of emails you ve sent which have landed successfully in your recipient s inbox (i.e. not in the junk/spam folder). This % is really important! If your message lands in your recipient s junk folder they re much less likely to read it than if it goes into their inbox. So, the higher your Inbox Placement rate the better! It also indicates a more positive sender reputation for the more emails successfully hitting the inbox. Junk/Spam rate This is the opposite to the Inbox Placement rate as it refers to the number of emails which have been delivered but not to the inbox - to the recipient s junk or spam folder. Along with your Inbox Placement rate this figure is really important - if you re consistently hitting a high number of your recipient s junk folders this could mean your emails are being seen as spam, which is detrimental to your sender reputation... or, worse, you could be on your way to ISP blacklisting! There s plenty you can do to stop this though; our Compliance team can help you out. More Metrics, More Problems? 12
Unsubscribes This is the total number of recipients who ve unsubscribed to your mailings. This figure also includes complaints (read more about them below). Contrary to popular opinion, unsubscribing isn t always a bad thing, so don t panic when you see a few here and there. However, if your unsubscribe rate is consistently above your industry s average for a period of more than a few months, you should re-asses how well you re targeting your campaigns. Keep up to date with industry average with the Communicator Benchmark Reports! Complaints Your Complaint rate shows you how many subscribers have complained as a result of a specific campaign or mailing. A complaint is registered by a recipient who indicates that the message is unwanted - this could be an unsolicited email or simply a case of the recipient no longer wanting to receive your emails and choosing to complain rather than unsubscribing. Your goal should always be to increase the size of your list, not reduce it- and this is what complaints do. It s important to keep an eye on the number of complaints you re gettting as, if you re receiving a lot, this indicates that you need to look at the quality of your message. More Metrics, More Problems? 13
Top metrics for revenue If the amount of revenue generated is important to your campaign s objectives, there are a number of metrics you should consider... Conversions A really important one, but often overlooked, this is the total number of conversions made off the back of your email campaign. Take note! A conversion doesn t always refer to a purchase - yes, transactions are the most common type of conversion we measure, but, like ROI, it all depends on what your objectives are. Your conversion rate should relate to your CTA and could track purchases made, downloads, data capture forms completed or a trial sign up, the list goes on! Tracking Conversions directly measures how successful your ultimate call to action has been and helps to inform you on areas you could change the next time you send a campaign, like CTA placement & wording. Conversion Value The total value of the Conversions. This would refer to when a conversion is defined as a purchase, and it s shown as a monetary value. If you re targeted highly against the revenue generated from your email marketing then this is the metric for you! It s a great figure to keep a track of so that you can compare campaigns against each other, also giving you an easy figure to call upon when you re reporting on your activity. More Metrics, More Problems? 14
Revenue Per Email Total revenue No. of emails sent Revenue Per Email demonstrates the revenue brought in by each email, on average. This is a great way of looking at how much revenue your campaign generated, broken down by the number of emails. It s a handy metric to use alongside Conversions, so you can understand the value of sending to each recipient on a mailing list. You can also use this in the longer term to support your email strategy by demonstrating value. More Metrics, More Problems? 15
Longer term analysis To really see the true value in the email channel you need to make sure you can analyse a multitude of factors over a longer time period, and not just campaign to campaign. For a good place to start here s our top three metrics to inform your longer term strategy... Subscriber Retention Subscriber retention refers to how long you re keeping your subscribers for, in the context of the average subscriber lifecycle with your brand. This figure will give you a really clear idea of the longevity of your email marketing, also helping to inform relevant reengagement and rewards campaigns in areas where subscriber retention may drop off. Number and % of new subscribers This directly correlates to your list growth, detailing how many new sign-ups you ve received in a set time period. List growth is an objective which should be primary to your email marketing strategy - you should always be aiming to increase the number of subscribers you re sending to in order to maximise the reach of your campaigns and maintain healthy growth. Also consider hard bounces and email unsubscribes addresses alongside this figure, as these show how the list size is changing, otherwise looking at new subscribers alone could make your figures deceiving. More Metrics, More Problems? 16
Cost per acquisition (CPA) CPA measures how much it s cost you to acquire new subscribers. Usually calculated as a monetary figure, it takes into account the monetary cost of your campaigns (resource required, time spent on the campaign, design costs for your assets and any copywriting fees you ve incurred) and applies this cost to each new subscriber you ve acquired. CPA is a valuable metric for looking at whether you re actually getting anything back for the money you re spending on your campaigns when your objective is to acquire new subscribers. The same equation can be applied to work out your cost per conversions, though, to see how much it s costing you for the return you re getting. More Metrics, More Problems? 17
What s next? Hopefully now it s clear to you the different areas of your campaign you could be measuring and which metrics to use in doing so. As we ve identified, what you measure all depends on what your objectives are, so always ensure you keep these at the forefront of your analysis. We ve only just scratched the surface in the metrics that you could be using the list is possibly endless but we ll leave that analysis to those who love to number crunch. For any of the guides mentioned throughout, visit communicatorcorp.com/ resources. And remember! Don t get stuck in a rut of always looking at the same metrics! If numbers aren t your thing and you need a hand, why not talk to us? @CommCorp +44(0) 844 870 8971 info@communicatorcorp.com More Metrics, More Problems? 18
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