Measuring your email marketing campaigns
How to measure the results of your email marketing campaigns accurately including key metrics such as delivery rate, bounce rate and open rate.
Sending an email to a list of opt-in contacts or to a bought-in list may be a quick way to market your product or service, but it may not be the most effective. As with all direct marketing, it is important that you:
- have clearly defined objectives
- make sure you get the message right
- target the correct people
- get the required response
The best way to conduct any email marketing campaign is to use email campaign software with web analytics software that will help you measure the effectiveness of your campaign.
Email marketing key metrics
Some of the key metrics to be tracked for email campaigns include:
Delivery rate
The number of emails delivered as a percentage of those sent
Bounce rate
The number of emails that cannot be delivered as a percentage of those sent
Open rate
The number of times an email is opened as a percentage of those delivered - can include multiple openings
Unique open rate
The number of times an email is opened as a percentage of those emails delivered, excluding multiple openings
Total click rate
The number of times the links in the email were clicked as a percentage of emails delivered - can include multiple openings
Unique click rate
The number of times the links in an email were clicked as a percentage of emails delivered, but excluding multiple openings
Responder rate
The number of recipients who clicked on one or more links in an email, as a percentage of emails delivered
Click to open rate
The number of unique clicks as a percentage of emails opened
Unsubscribe rate
The number of respondents who unsubscribe, as a percentage of emails delivered
Members get member rate
The number of new opt-in registrations as a result of recommendations by existing recipients
These metrics will help you decide whether your email marketing campaigns are effective, and if any issues might affect on response rates. They will help you identify any problems with the quality of your mailing list, the effectiveness of your targeting or the design of your email.
As with all metrics, it is helpful to benchmark results to provide a key performance indicator for future email marketing.