Email Analytics: The Vital KPIs in Measuring the Success of Email Marketing Campaigns
According to the Content Marketing Institute, about 93% of B2B marketers use email marketing as a medium to dispense their content which in turn helps in generating & converting leads. Irrespective of what the marketing objectives of a particular company might be, there are some perennial metrics that will always give useful insights about any email marketing campaign.
A report published in the Daily Monday stated that Email Marketing can generate up to 3800% Return on Investment (which is equivalent to $38 for every $1 spent). Evidently, Email Marketing is the most powerful tool to generate leads for B2B customers & therefore, measuring the success of Email Marketing campaigns should be given utmost priority. Every B2B company has its internal benchmarks for measuring the success of its Email Marketing campaigns. So, it’s important to frequently measure the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) aligned with Email Marketing Campaigns as it gives B2B companies an insight if at all they are accomplishing their goals & also helps in adopting new marketing strategies, wherever necessary.
The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring the effectiveness of Email Marketing campaigns
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): It is the ratio of people who opened your links to the total number of people, who opened the emails sent, expressed in the form of a percentage. This metric gives you an idea of how relevant & engaging your content is for your target audience.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) = (Total Number of Individuals who opened link/s in the Email) / Total Number of Emails opened) * 100
- Conversion Rate: Conversion rates are the ratio of the number of people who follow the link given in the Email & take the desired action afterward to the total number of Emails opened by the recipients, expressed in the form of a percentage.
Conversion Rate = (Total Number of Individuals who took the desired action) / Total Number of Emails opened) * 100
The desired action might vary for separate Email Marketing campaigns. It can be an action, such as signing up for a newsletter or for a webinar.
For example, if 1000 emails were opened in an email marketing campaign aimed at triggering the recipients to sign up for a newsletter & 300 people signed up, then the conversion rate would be 30% (300/1000*100).
- Bounce Rate: Bounces happen every time an email cannot be sent & are either soft or hard depending on the situation.
- Hard bounces lead to permanent email delivery failure & happen due to incorrect or inactive email addresses.
- Soft bounces happen when a recipient’s email address is full or his email server is down & it is non-permanent in nature.
Bounce Rate= 1 – [(Total number of emails delivered) / (Total number of emails sent)]
- List Growth Rate: Refreshing an email marketing database is necessary as it degrades every year & it is a valuable asset for any B2B company. People quitting jobs, switching their email addresses & unsubscribing from marketing related documents lead to the deterioration of the databases by about 22.5% per year (Source: Hubspot).
List Growth Rate= [(Total number of new subscribers) -(Total number of unsubscribes + number of spam emails) /Total number of email addresses on the list)] * 100
- Email Sharing or Forwarding Rate: It is the percentage of the recipients who have clicked on a “share this” or the “forward to a friend button” either to share the mail. Sharing the mail with peers & friends implies that the content in the mail is beneficial to a wider group of audiences & is relevant to the people with whom it is being shared.
Email Sharing or Forwarding Rate= (Total Number of recipients who click share or forward links) / (Total Number Emails Opened)
- Return on Investment (ROI): It is the ratio of total revenue generated to the total money spent on a particular email marketing campaign, expressed in percentage. It can be used to substantiate how effective an email marketing strategy is.
Return on Investment (ROI) = [(Revenue generated from a campaign) – (Total investment made in a campaign) / (Total investment made in a campaign)] * 100
Conclusion
Measuring important metrics related to the email marketing campaign can help in bolstering the Return on Investment (ROI) considerably, even over a small period of time. 83% of the B2B companies use email marketing as an essential part of their email marketing program. A trend analysis of the Key Performance Indicators may help in shaping marketing strategies to better resonate with the requirements of the audience. Seasonal & recurrent trends may be figured out by measuring vital KPIs related to email marketing & accordingly email campaigns may be designed.