Importance of metrics: what can be measured can be improved
One of the advantages of online marketing over offline marketing is the ability to measure and evaluate the results of our campaigns in real time.
This allows us to continuously optimise: we can measure results, launch the campaign again, measure it again and so on. Thus, we will gain valuable knowledge of our database that will help us to optimise results.
In most ecommerce, email is one of the main sources of traffic and sales. Therefore, the metrics we use will be of paramount importance in the optimisation of our campaign.
Are you lost with all this terminology? Here we explain in a simple way the keys to analyse your campaign and get the best results.
What metrics do we use in email marketing?
Email marketing metrics can be grouped into three areas:
- email platform behaviour.These are the more technical data: how many emails are sent in relation to my contact base, IP behaviour, sending speed.
- Quality of my database and the number of emails that actually reach my subscribers.
- Behavior of emails (or behavioral email).Is my campaign generating sales or traffic? Appeal of my emails and impact on the business.
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Delivery rate
The delivery rate reflects the number of emails you have sent to your contacts.
To obtain it, we must also know the number of bounced mails (those that have not reached their destination)
This indicator is useful in order to know if we have a lot of inactive or incorrect addresses in the list. However, it should be noted that it does not inform us about IP addresses that have been classified as spam.
The formula with which we can find out our delivery rate is:
Open rate
It's the percentage number of people who open your email. We can calculate the opening rate by dividing the number of emails opened by the number of emails sent and multiplying this result by 100.
So, for example, if we send 1000 emails and 500 are opened, we will have an opening rate of 50%.
How we measure an opening
When we send a campaign, a tracking code in the form of an undetectable image is added to the body of the email. When we open the email, our email provider (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail...) downloads the image and records this download. This implies that we can only detect an opening if our user's browser is able to display html images or if the user has had some kind of activity (e.g. clicking on a link).
It is important, therefore, to include images in your email to force the download.
Due to these factors, the opening rate is not an exact indicator and should be taken as a trend indicator within a campaign. It is estimated that for commercial mailings the opening rate is around 30%.
The opening percentage we get will depend on many factors. Here are some tips to help you increase it:
- Specify a good subject that captures your customer's attention.The average time it takes to capture attention is between three and four seconds.
- Play with the schedules.Send campaigns on different days and times and compare the results.
- The most important content should be in the subject line of your email.The first thing the user does is to look at the email before deciding whether to open it or not.
- Work on your contacts.Periodically update your lists with contacts really related to your product.
- Employ segmentationto impact those users who are likely to respond favourably to the campaign.
Reference table for interpreting opening rates
| +30% | Excellent |
| 25%-30% | Very good |
| 25% -20% | Good |
| 20%- 15% | Medium |
| -15% | Improvement needed |
With Easymailing, you can see your opening rate (plus the average) from the campaign "Overview".
CTR or click-through rate
By Clicks Rate we mean the percentage number of users who click on a link in your email. Either to find out more about your product, to buy it or to read the news of your newsletter.
Together with the opening rate, it is the main indicator that will allow you to find out how interested subscribers are in your brand.
To find out your CTR, do the following:
Reference table for interpreting click-through rates
| +3% | Excellent |
| 3% - 1,5% | Very good |
| 1,5% - 1% | Good |
| 1% - 0,5% | Medium |
| -0,5% | Improvement needed |
In Easymailing you can see your click-through rate (plus average) from the campaign "Overview".
"Call to action". It is a button or link located in the body of our email, which aims to get leads (potential customers who have given us their data) to later convert them into final customers. It is important that CTAs are clear, attractive and well positioned if we want to achieve a good CTR.
Single clicks
They represent the times a subscriber clicked on a link, taking into account the first time they clicked. That is, it represents exactly how many subscribers have clicked on our link.
Total clicks
They represent the total number of clicks on each link. That is, it counts all the times that the same subscriber clicks on a link.
Bounce Rate
We call a bounce an e-email that could not be delivered to its recipient for some reason. It is possible that the address is temporarily out of service, that the user has problems with the inbox or that there are problems with the server.
There are two types of bounces:
- Soft bounce:the email could not be delivered to the user due to a specific problem. Maybe your server was unavailable at the time of sending or your email inbox was full.
- Hard Bounce:the email will never reach its destination. The email address does not exist, is misspelled or the server has disappeared. The best thing to do is to remove these addresses from your database.
To reduce your bounce rate, we recommend that you always keep your subscriber lists up to date. This means removing incorrect or inactive addresses.
| 0,5% | Acceptable |
| 5% | Alarming |
| 8% + | Not acceptable. Check the list |
An acceptable bounce rate for a qualified list is set at 0.5%. We should start to worry when the rate exceeds 5%. If your bounce rate exceeds this number, you'll need to review your list. Rates of 8% may indicate a possible illegal (non-consensual) origin of our contact list (link to "the importance of consent in email marketing").
Keep in mind that the higher our bounce rate, the more our reputation will be damaged.
You can find the bounce rate yourself using the following formula:
So if we send 2,000 emails and only 1925 are delivered, we will have a bounce rate of 3.75%.
In Easymailing you can see the bounce rate, expressed as a whole number and as a percentage, from the campaign "Overview".
Unsubscribe rate
It is an essential metric to know if the marketing campaign has been designed correctly. A large number of unsubscribes indicates that our campaign has not been well targeted. Something has gone wrong with email design or segmentation. This metric also shows us how the number of subscribers has evolved.
You can find the unsubscribe rate using the following formula:
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