Most significant Email Marketing KPIs to ace your Campaigns in 2022

Today’s businesses run in a data-driven environment. The right kind of data enables them to make well-considered business decisions. Email tracking is a way of obtaining data about email campaigns. Using email marketing KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, businesses can learn what strategy elicits a response from their customers.

They can get answers to several questions, like:

• Did customers receive the emails?
• Which are the most qualified and interested leads?
• Why did people unsubscribe?
• Which content resonated with the receivers the most?

KPIs allow you to adjust and optimize strategically, but they vary depending on businesses. For example, some companies want to generate sales, while others’ goals might be centered around developing brand awareness or growing their email list.

So to track your campaign performance effectively, think about what kind of information you are looking for, the actions you want your recipients to take, and how your current campaigns impact the customer experience.

To help you truly optimize your campaigns, here are our top picks for the most critical email marketing KPIs.

#1. Number of emails delivered

Having thousands of subscribers on your list doesn’t mean that your subscribers are receiving your emails. For this reason, email marketers track email deliverability. Below is the formula by which it is calculated.

Delivery Rate = (Number of emails sent – Number of bounces / Number of emails sent)*100%

Expecting 100% deliverability is not realistic due to factors like changing email addresses. A deliverability rate of 95% is considered good.

Email deliverability can also dip through no fault of your own. The sender may suddenly be blocked by an ISP, especially if they use a shared IP.

Now the question is how to achieve a high deliverability rate of above 95%? It doesn’t take a lot to boost your deliverability; all you need is to keep your list healthy and send your emails to an engaged audience.

Another critical factor to consider here is that email being “delivered” and making it into the inbox are two different things. A delivered email may go straight to the recipients’ spam folder. That is why many email marketers use Inbox Placement Rate (IPR)* as a KPI to track how many emails reach the inbox.

*IPR is defined as the percentage of sent emails that reach the intended subscriber’s inbox.

#2. Open Rate

This metric tells you about the number of emails that recipients opened from your campaign. We calculate the open Rate by the below formula.

Open rate= Emails Opened / Emails sent – bounces

After calculating the open Rate for your campaigns, you must compare your Rate to the average in your industry. If it is much lower, you need to focus on improving this email marketing metric.

You can improve a low open rate by using these simple strategies:

• By adding recipients’ names to the subject line of your emails.
• By segmenting your list into separate groups.
• Focus on your subscribers’ interests.
• A/B test your emails.

#3. Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is one of the most important email metrics to track because it tells you whether your emails are being delivered or not. It’s essential to keep your bounce rate as low as possible because a high bounce rate affects your campaign performance and your sender’s reputation.

Below is the formula to calculate it.

Email Bounce Rate = (# of bounces* / # of delivered emails)*100

*No. of emails that were not successfully delivered

Ideally, your bounce rate should be 2% or less, but it depends on your industry. The type of email bounce also plays a massive role in determining the Rate.

Soft bounces are temporary and caused by issues, such as – server overload, which is absolutely fine and normal.

On the other hand, a hard bounce should get your immediate attention because it indicates that you’re falling behind on your list cleansing. Your email list gets outdated as people change jobs or get different emails for different purposes. Hard bounces are also caused when emails are entered incorrectly. Email list cleansing and verification take care of such issues.

A/B testing of emails is also a good way of keeping email bounces at bay.

#4. Email Click-Through Rate

Call-To-Actions are buttons carrying links that link your email to another site. For example, if your goal is to boost your online retail business with a campaign, your CTA would direct readers to your online store.

CTR shows the ratio of customers who clicked on the links sent by you via email. The formula is:

Email CTR = (Number of People Who Clicked A Link / Numbers of Emails Delivered)*100

As per Global email benchmark data, the average email CTR is 2.65%.

You can track this metric to understand if your campaign has generated engagement. It can also be used to modulate your strategies to maximize your conversion rate. Here are a few tips to improve CTR.

• A preview text is a great way to entice the subscriber into clicking your mail open.
• Always categorize and personalize your emails.
• Make your content extraordinarily engaging and worth the reader’s time.

#5. Conversion Rates

This metric tells you about the effectiveness of your emails. For instance, if the call to action urges recipients to buy your products or services, the conversion rate will tell how many people did that.

Calculating the conversion rate is done by looking at the number of potential customers that have become loyal buyers after reading your emails. The formula used is:

Conversion rate = # of Conversions* / # of Delivered Emails)*100

*Numbers of people who completed the desired actions

To know the best conversion rate for your industry, you need to study industry standards.

Here are a few ways of helping you achieve your dream conversion rate.

• Segment your list and target the right people.
• Create an enticing subject line.
• Design an excellent preview text and CTA.
• Keep your content direct and concise.

#6. Share Rate Metrics

Share rate is an important metric because it helps you generate new contacts. When your readers pass along your email to their contacts, you may get new subscribers on your list. Here is how it is calculated:

Sharing Rate = (Number of Clicks on SFB / # of Delivered Emails)*100

SFB = Sharing and/or Forward Button

Boosting your share rate is often as simple as making the share button prominent in the email. But of course, content is significant. Also, you could implement a referral program in which followers are rewarded for sharing your content.

#7. Unsubscribe Rate

When an email contact chooses to opt out of mailing lists, it is called an unsubscribe.

It is the percentage of email subscribers out of all email recipients that unsubscribe from your email marketing list.

The average email unsubscribe Rate by industry has been summarized below.

People unsubscribe from emails for various reasons, like – too many messages or the quality of emails. Sometimes readers may also sign up inadvertently and become disinterested later. It’s better not to have unengaged contacts on your subscriber list as it brings down your email performance.

Here are some tips to reduce your unsubscribe rate:

• Maintain a healthy list from the start
• Ask your readers why they stopped reading
• Build long-term brand engagement with the help of automation.
• Segment your audience to increase the relevancy of your emails
• Re-engage your audience.

Wrap Up

When tracking your email performance, it’s crucial to determine what it is that you’re looking to achieve with your campaigns. Do your research, be selective about metrics you track, and make sure you can effectively measure the health of your email list, your email performance, and your progress toward your overarching goals. By keeping these things in perspective, you will be on the right track for more effective email marketing.