Ask any email marketer about the one thing they never ignore, and most will answer email analytics. Not content, subject lines, or calls-to-action (CTAs), but numbers and results. But what are these analytics?
Email marketing analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing data to measure the performance of your email marketing campaigns. These numbers show you how well your emails are performing. Using this data, you can judge what areas need change and what you need to continue for the best results.
However, people find it difficult when they don’t know what to track. If you belong to this group, this article will be your guide.
So, without further ado, let’s explore the most relevant metrics to measure the success of your email campaigns!
Why Should Businesses Track Email Analytics?
Knowing how their email campaigns perform is reason enough for businesses to track their email analytics. But if you’re not too keen on numbers, you might want to know how this will help your business grow.
For that, we’ve compiled five reasons why tracking is so important in email marketing for small businesses:
- Gives actionable insights: Tracking your email marketing campaigns shows what your customers like and dislike. You get a holistic view of how people interact with your campaigns, including their preferences and behaviors. This helps you learn about your customers and send them highly relevant emails they can’t help but read.
- Saves time: This might seem unrelated, but tracking analytics helps you save time. When you know what works for your customers, you don’t have to make any guesses. You can base your campaigns on accurate data that leaves no room for doubt. Without tracking, you’ll always be wasting time wondering what’s wrong without knowing how to correct it.
- Helps your follow-ups: Tracking open rates shows who’s genuinely interested and will likely take action on a follow-up email. If someone doesn’t open your first email, they’re less likely to pay attention to your follow-up. Plus, you’ll have actionable data about customers who open your emails. So, you can personalize the follow-up to make it even more relevant.
- Improves your timing: Email marketing analytics lets you learn when customers usually open your emails. That’s the time when they’re most active. You’re more likely to get the desired results if you send your emails during these times.
- Rectifies mistakes: Email marketing isn’t about sending the perfect emails every time. Even the most experienced email marketer can make mistakes. Tracking shows you what these email marketing mistakes are so you can rectify them.
6 Key Email Marketing Analytics To Track for Actionable Insights
Now that you know what tracking can do for your business, you must be curious about what to track. But before we start exploring that, let’s get one thing straight. The specific metrics you track will depend on your email marketing goals.
For example, to improve email deliverability, you must track things like bounce rate and unsubscribe rate. But if you want to make more sales, track your conversion rate. With that said, let’s discuss the six key email metrics to track for actionable insights.
1. Click-Through Rates (CTRs)
It’s common for businesses to use their email campaigns to increase website visits. If that’s your goal, you must pay attention to your CTR. It is the percentage of recipients who click on a link within your email.
It tells you how many people on your email list interact with your emails. Using this information, you can differentiate between interested and uninterested people in your email list.
Over time, CTRs can help you decide which contacts to remove from your lists. After all, if they aren’t interacting with your emails, what’s the use of wasting money on them? You can also learn which email clients pay more attention to. But how do you calculate CTRs? Simply divide total clicks by the number of delivered emails and multiply the result by 100.
2. Open Rates
As the name suggests, this is the percentage of people who open your emails. This is an important metric because if people don’t even open your emails, they won’t act on them either. The first step is to get them to open the emails.
Tracking it helps you optimize your subject lines and preview text to improve this number. This metric won’t depend on your goals because every goal starts with opens. So, use this formula to find your open rates:
Number of opened emails ÷ number of delivered emails * 100
However, you need to understand that this metric can sometimes be misleading. Subscribers that don’t receive embedded images won’t make it to the number of opened emails. This can be a problem for you since many people use image-blocking features to enhance their security.
So, it’s better to use open rates as a comparative metric, measuring how they improve or decline over time.
3. Bounce Rates
Bounce rates are the percentage of emails the system cannot deliver to the recipient’s inbox. Instead, the system returns these emails to the sender.
These aren’t usually related to your email’s content. Instead, they tell you which email addresses are inactive so you can remove them from your list. If you don’t remove these emails, you risk your email domain’s reputation.
Too many hard bounces make you look like a spammer. When that happens, the ISP might hesitate to deliver your emails.
However, there are two types of bounces: hard and soft bounces. Soft bounces aren’t that problematic since these are temporary. They occur when a recipient’s inbox is full. The system holds the emails and delivers them when the load is less.
But when it comes to hard bounces, you need to consider the cleanliness and authenticity of your email lists. These occur when the email addresses are invalid, closed, or non-existent. What’s the use of sending emails to addresses nobody uses? So, use your bounce rates to maintain your list’s hygiene and improve email deliverability.
4. Conversion Rates
Every business owner wants to increase sales and build customer loyalty. After all, that’s the primary reason you’re doing business.
When you want to do this using retail email marketing, conversion rates will be your closest acquaintances. These numbers tell you the percentage of subscribers who take the desired action after opening your emails.
However, conversions can also mean downloads, registrations, etc. So, don’t limit conversion rates to sales only.
This is one of the most critical metrics in marketing emails and for a good reason. These numbers tell you how good your CTAs are. A good strategy ties every email CTA to a business’s email marketing goal.
This means you’ll get actionable insights into your CTAs and overall email marketing strategy.
So, calculate this number through the following formula:
Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ number of delivered emails * 100
5. Unsubscribe Rates
While high conversion rates, CTRs, and open rates make you happy with your email marketing strategy, high unsubscribe rates won’t. That and negligence are some reasons why people hesitate to calculate this number.
That’s not the right path if your goal is to follow email compliance guidelines and maintain your list’s hygiene. After all, removing uninterested contacts from your email list requires you to know your unsubscribe rates.
However, you shouldn’t rely solely on unsubscribe rates for this. That’s because many people who are no longer interested might simply stop opening or reading your emails. They might not follow the process to unsubscribe, even if it’s a single step.
6. Email List Growth Rate
Since we’ve been discussing maintaining lists, it makes sense to discuss the growth rate of the email list. This metric measures the speed at which your business email list expands over time. It tells you how quickly you’re acquiring new subscribers compared to the size of your existing list.
Having a larger email list means you have a higher chance of making more conversions. Therefore, it’s essential to calculate email list growth. You won’t be able to fulfill your goals with a tiny list. So, calculate it using the following formula:
(New subscribers - unsubscribed users) ÷ total email addresses on your list * 100
Knowing what metrics to track is an important step. But how do you calculate these percentages without numbers?
For example, you must know how many people unsubscribed to get your unsubscribe rates and so on. To do so, you must use email analytics tools.
Here are five popular ones to use in 2024:
- Omnisend: With a free plan available, Omnisend is the perfect tool for e-commerce business emails. It is a marketing automation platform that helps you create and automate email campaigns before tracking their results. Even its paid plans aren’t expensive, so it’s worth a try.
- ActiveCampaign: This is another automation platform that focuses on improving customer interactions. In addition to providing comprehensive analytics, it combines email marketing with customer relationship management. As a result, you can create personalized campaigns that yield better results.
- Mailchimp: If you’ve ever been active in the email marketing scene, you’ve probably heard of Mailchimp. It is the industry leader when it comes to email marketing tools. Its best features are its intuitive interface and customizable templates, but its email analytics aren’t far behind either.
- Braze: Braze is the number one choice for businesses that want to improve customer engagement. Its personalization features, audience segmentation, real-time insights, and automation allow it to top the list as an email marketing platform. It also integrates with several popular platforms, including Google Analytics and Salesforce.
- Litmus: If you’re into email A/B testing, ignoring Litmus would be a bad idea. Its strengths lie in creating, testing, and analyzing email campaigns, helping you in each step of your email marketing strategy. It even gives you geolocation analytics to help you pinpoint your audience and create highly relevant campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions About Email Analytics
When it comes to monitoring email results, some questions are more frequent than others. Let’s explore the most common questions.
What is the KPI in email marketing?
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators. These are specific metrics that track the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Some important KPIs include conversion rates, CTRs, open rates, email list growth rates, and unsubscribe rates.
Can you get analytics from Gmail?
No, Gmail does not provide analytics. However, you can use third-party apps. This article’s options, including Braze, Litmus, and ActiveCampaigns, are good choices. These are not free applications, though. Nonetheless, they offer more comprehensive email marketing features.
What is an email analyst?
An email analyst is a marketing professional who specializes in analyzing and improving email campaigns. They usually collect data and identify areas for improvement, making suggestions on what to change or continue.
If you want to become an email analyst, the most important skills are data analysis, statistics, and behavioral science.
Use the Results From Tracking To Improve Your Email Campaigns
Now you know the importance email analytics hold for your marketing strategy. This is especially true if you rely on email for sales and promotions.
While some metrics are more useful than others, the specific ones you track will depend on your goals. So, use the information from this article to decide what you need to pay attention to.
If you’re looking for guidance with your email analytics, try Beambox. As experts in marketing and small business improvement, we can help you with email marketing success. Beambox uses a multi-avenue approach to attract and keep customers.
Start your trial today!
