The Most Important Key Performance Indicators for Email Marketing

There are several different benchmarks that marketing experts pay close attention to while running email marketing campaigns. These key performance indicators provide business owners with an idea of how successful their email marketing strategies are. By analyzing metrics such as the open rate or click-through rate, you can determine which areas of your email marketing strategy need improvement.

Open Rate

Open rate is the percentage of the total number of subscribers who opened an email that is a part of your campaign. Although it is one of the most basic key performance indicators, this metric can be used to track how many consumers your email campaign has reached and gauge a general number of impressions.

The average open rate for email marketing campaigns is around 18%, however, this number can vary depending on the subject line and relevancy of subject matter for subscribers. If you are looking to improve your email open rate, work on:

• Improving subject lines
• Testing subject line length, tone, and content
• Ensuring relevant content through the use of personalization and segmentation
• Testing sender name and email address (i.e. company name vs CEO's name)
• Testing send day, time, and cadence (i.e. daily vs weekly)
• Optimizing content for previews with preheader text

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is an important metric when it comes to estimating the return on investment. This key performance indicator is the percentage of subscribers who have completed a goal action. Usually, this goal action is related to making a purchase or starting down the sales funnel. Some tips to help boost your conversation rate include:

• Create mobile-optimized email campaigns
• Methodically segment your email lists
• Customize the subject line and sender name
• Use double opt-in

Opt-Out Rate

The opt-out or unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who have taken action to unsubscribe from your future emails. This metric is important because higher unsubscribe rates could indicate that certain topics and content are not interesting enough to hold your target audience's attention. If you want to improve your opt-out rate try:

• Using automation to build long-term brand engagement
• Segment your audience to send more relevant emails
• Re-engage your audience to maintain list hygiene
• Add questionnaires when users opt-out to find out why they unsubscribed
  

Click-Through Rate

The email click-through rate is the total number of subscribers who click on either a link or image in your email. This metric is calculated out of all the total emails you have sent, regardless of whether or not the subscriber opened the campaign.

This key performance indicator offers marketers insight into how many of their total subscribers are visiting your website and ultimately converting from email. Comparing this statistic to your open rate can reveal what areas of your email marketing campaign need improvement. If you want to improve your click-through rate, try the following:

• Craft stronger segments so you always send the most relevant content
• Maintain brand voice and personality through all messaging
• Improve calls-to-action using clear copy and better designs
• Offer special incentives to catch your subscriber's attention
• Ensure that your subject line accurately reflects the content of your emails

Delivery rate

The delivery rate is the percentage of emails that are received by the gateway servers of your subscriber's internet service providers (ISPs) and not returned as either a hard or soft bounce. If an email is returned as a soft bounce, this means that your subscriber has a full mailbox or downed server. Hard bounces, on the other hand, occur when your IP is blocked, a domain does not exist, or an email address is not valid. A few ways to increase your delivery rate include:

• Check your sender reputation
• Stick to a consistent send schedule
• Filter contest entry email signups
• Check blacklists