Is Your Email Marketing Actually “Working”?
Seems like a no brainer but the best way to understand if your email marketing is effective is by investing time into reporting. So which metrics matter the most?
While email marketing platforms provide a myriad of stats, these are just meaningless numbers unless you're looking at them holistically - let us explain…
The best way to gain insights and actions from your data is by creating your own report in a program like Excel, Google Data Studio or similar depending on your level of skill. Now, before you start mentally shutting down at the thought of spreadsheeting, it doesn’t need to be anything complicated at all. The most important thing here is that you systematically and consistently track and record your email marketing results to allow comparison over time, ie. weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually.
To help get you started, here are our top tips on which metrics that matter;
Conversion Rate % (orders / unique clicks):
This is THE most important metric, after all, conversion should be the objective of all emails. Any form of direct marketing (email is no exception), is designed to incite a response i.e. a conversion.
A conversion can be anything from requesting a quote or filling in contact form to following a social media account. Remember the definition of ‘conversion’ will be subjective to the type of campaign you’re running. For example, a 20% off promotion would be measured primarily by conversion rate and revenue result.
Unique Click Rate % (unique clicks / emails delivered):
Click rate is the number of unique subscribers who clicked divided by emails delivered. This metric essentially measures how engaged your readers are with the content in your email.
The unique click rate in any given email campaign is the strongest indicator your content has resonated with the reader giving them a reason to act. Should this number start to dwindle, we suggest testing email creative and playing around with call to actions, template wireframe, less or more copy to name a few.
Unique Open Rate % (unique opens / emails delivered):
While this metric isn’t as important anymore, it deserves a special mention because prior to the iOS15 privacy update, open rates were a good indicator of subject line effectiveness.
Our tip? Split out your Apple Mail users from other users. Without doing so your open rates will be artificially inflated and somewhat meaningless so it's best to focus on the metrics outlined below instead.
Unsubscribe Rate % (unsubscribes / emails delivered):
This one is pretty self-explanatory, but unsubscribes are important to monitor to understand what is a ‘normal’ level for your business. If you see a spike in unsubscribes, you will need to investigate what caused this and learn from the takeaways to avoid in future.
Bounce Rate % (bounces / emails delivered):
Your bounce rate is the number of emails that don’t reach an inbox. This could be due to invalid, inactive or unauthenticated email addresses. Keeping a close eye on this can give great insight into the level of inaccurate or out of date email addresses in your database.
Campaign Tracking:
While email platforms have inbuilt reporting that tracks the email campaign revenue, we strongly advise prioritising Google Analytics email revenue figures over the revenue reported in your chosen email platform. This is because email platforms track campaign revenue based on an attribution setting opposed to a ‘last click’ metric which is a much more accurate representation of your customers behaviour.
Account Optimisation:
If you’ve invested in an email marketing platform such as Klaviyo, you want to prevent subscribers slipping through the cracks by optimising your integration with Shopify or similar. It’s always worth taking the time to check your footer subscribe, pop-up, checkout and any other forms are syncing correctly and pulling the correct data into your email platform and also the correct lists - don’t leave money on the table!
So you’ve built your report, collected all the data… now what? It’s time to form insights, a process that requires you to consider both internal and external factors, i.e:
Did the campaign meet your objective/s?
How did your offer compare to your competitors? Was it on par or better than other activity in the market?
Was the email content relevant to the target audience?
Was the email designed with the best user experience in mind?
Comparing weekly, monthly and annual results allows you to understand major changes in your marketing activity and customer behaviour over time. It also highlights any external anomalies that can impact results.
Automation Optimisation:
Once you’ve had time to look at the data, it’s time to optimise your big revenue drivers. Email automations such as a welcome flow series can be the biggest direct revenue intake for a business. Are your automations up to scratch? If you feel they aren’t achieving their objective, try adjusting one variable at a time and track (yes, with the fancy report you’ve built) over a 3-6 month period to understand if this improves or hinders results.
You’ve made it this far, now it’s time to level up and increase engagement! -
Segment your list and target customers only who are interested in a specific campaign. If you think every email you send will solve the problem of everyone on your database think again! Don’t be discouraged by smaller segmentations. A smaller send volume doesn’t always mean smaller revenue results.
Call to action buttons are non-negotiable. This also goes for text links on all products and call outs. You need to tell the customer exactly what you want them to do and how to do it. A product featured in your email without a CTA is basically just wallpaper. It’s nice to look at, but you want more than that; you want to get customers to your website. The only way you’re going to make that happen is by telling your customer what to do next. The easiest way to do this is to include an image with a CTA, for an image without has been proven time and time again to underperform - feel free to test this on your end, then come back and tell us we’re right.
Design with user experience in mind. You can have the most incredible email design in the world, but if that email is confusing, has broken links, loud creative or it’s missing alt text there’s a risk you’ll lose the readers interest (refer to important metric #1). You need your readers to easily navigate through your campaign without getting sidetracked, confused or disinterested because an interactive element didn’t work for them.
If you are looking for more information on emails that convert, we’ve done the heavy lifting and created a guide, take a look right here.
We understand this can be a lot to take in. We’re here if you need us, even if you’re at the very beginning of your email journey, we’ve got you.
📧 contact@justsenditmarketing.com.au | 📱 0432 926 782