Email Metrics: Why They're Important

You’ve invested time and money into producing an email. Finally it’s sent. Your job is done, right?

Not even close. Yes, even after it’s sent, an email is never really gone. The reporting begins and in order to build a successful email campaign, email metrics and reporting are essential. It shows the progress your campaign is making, how you can make it better and what is already successful.

Make Sure You Are Getting Metrics

If an email campaign is one of your chosen marketing tactics, make sure you are receiving reports about the metrics. Almost every email program has a way of tracking the email after it has been sent. Basic email metrics include the number delivered, open rates, click rates, effective rates and the number unsubscribed. At Priority, we also offer comparison graphs, heat maps, and Share to Social tracking (if applicable) on email reporting.

What’s Important

So what should you really be concerned with? Which metrics are the most important when looking at improving or growing your email campaign?

Depending on your business goals, certain metrics will be particularly relevant. Keep in mind; Metrics are typically measured on the original delivered number. Open rates are often an extremely important statistic. An open rate shows if anyone is even opening your email at all. If you can’t get someone to open your email, they won’t even see it - so what’s the point? And open rates are only counted if images are turned on, so make sure regardless, you have alt names to each image. Check out our email marketing manager, Grant Evans’ post on email images for more information.

Click rates are just as important, sometimes more. The first hurdle is over at this point – they’ve opened it. Now can you compel your audience even further by having them click on a link? Often, you can find the audience’s interests by what they click on. Heat maps offer the best insight on this – they show which links were popular and how many people clicked on each one. It helps define what type of topics you might want to address in your future emails. I've included the heatmap for one segmented issue of our e-newsletter PRIORITIES so you can get an idea of what a heatmap looks like. If you're interested, more than 7,000 people currently subscribe to PRIORITIES and you can, too.

Not All Lists Are the Same

Your list is another important factor. Comparing your metrics to others is best when you’re not looking at a different market or a list that’s triple in size. Would you compare the open or click rate of an email in the health industry to that of an email in the financial services industry? Obviously they wouldn’t compare. The key to analyzing and ultimately improving your list is to compare your send metrics against your own previous sends. You can get a rough idea of how you’re doing by comparing yourself to others, but solely relying on this comparison would be unreliable and inconsistent.

Finally, and most importantly, it is crucial to keep track of the email measurements over time. By making sure you are receiving email metrics, looking at what’s important for your campaign specifically, and then making changes where needed, you can adapt and grow with this crazy email world.

This blog post was originally published on the Priority Blog at priorityresults.com/blog. Priority Integrated Marketing is now BlueSpire Strategic Marketing.