It's just email, right? Who bothers with tracking email campaigns? It's enough just to send it, isn't it? Sure, if you don't intend to sell anything or move the needle on your brand. But if those things are important to you--and we think they are--you'll want to keep a close eye on your email campaigns to monitor activity and generate revenue and success. So, how do you measure email success? There are a few key metrics to use as benchmarks:
Email Link Clicks/Click Rate/Click Through Rate (CTR)
When a recipient clicks on a link in your email, it is recorded as a click. Often this click will move them from the email to a landing page, registration page, or other device that enables them to complete the ultimate action you want them to. This makes it a critical step in the process. As a ratio, it could be compared to the number sent, delivered or opened.
Email Opens/Open Rate
Opens are simply the number of emails delivered and then opened by the recipient. This is a critical step in moving towards your ultimate goal – the conversion. However, it can be somewhat misleading. Emails with images are often only recorded as opened when the images are downloaded. If the recipient has images turned off (very common), they won’t be counted even if they open the email.
Conversions from Emails
Your goal isn’t to simply send emails. You need to get the recipients to accept your offer, or convert; this important step is referred to as the conversion. A classic marketing example is the whitepaper: only when the email recipient has actually downloaded the whitepaper are they recorded as a conversion.
Delivered and Bounced Emails
For a variety of reasons, not every email you send will reach recipients’ inboxes, which means they can’t be read. Those that do not are said to “bounce” and are defined as either a “hard bounce” or a “soft bounce.” Hard bounces are those that are permanently undeliverable, such as misspelled email addresses or ones that no longer exist. Soft bounces could be due to the recipient’s mailbox being temporarily full. They should be tracked to monitor list health.
Overall ROI from Email Marketing Campaigns
Consider email just as valuable a tool as any other marketing channel in your strategy so that you can measure ROI. Make sure to set up a Service Level Agreement with your vendors to help you determine which types of leads are the most valuable because they translated to actual or potential revenue and how you can attain more of them as your campaign extends.
Working with these metrics in mind will help you showcase the success of your email campaigns and why it is an important tactic to employ in your inbound marketing strategy. If you have questions on how to create a more effective email campaign, or don’t know where to get started, give us a call at 419.629.0080 today.
