Measurement is an area which continues to puzzle and plague marketers constantly. While measuring marketing performance it is absolutely essential to tie the metrics to the goals or objectives, else the exercise is futile. Similarly for email marketing, depending on your goal – whether it is to build awareness, accelerate lead generation (either gaining new leads or reviving cold ones) it is imperative that marketers first look at the objectives for their email marketing campaigns.
Here are the most crucial metrics for marketers to track along with the corresponding objectives:
1.Branding or Increasing Brand Awareness
Open Rate
The open rate is a measure of how many emails out of a campaign were actually opened by mail recipients and is calculated by dividing the total number of emails opened (both mobile and desktop) by the total number sent.
Although some might argue that it is not an important measure, when it comes to branding exercises it is. Messages that are opened by subscribers are bound to have share-of-mind, hence making it a crucial metric to measure over time.
2.Increase Engagement Rate
Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions on an email. Comparing the open rates with the CTR gives a realistic picture of how engaged your list audience is with your messaging. A high open rate combined with a high CTR means you have highly engaged audience which is what you should be aiming at.
3.Accelerate Lead Generation
List Growth Rate or Subscribe Rate
If your objective is to increase the top of your funnel by directing more visitors to your site, gaining more blog subscribers etc., it is important to measure the list growth or the subscribe rate. The subscribe rate is calculated by dividing the total number of new subscribers with the existing ones. A growth in your list size is a positive sign showing that your audience is not only engaged with you but is also helping in increasing your list size.
Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate measures the number of people who opt-out of your email lists. A growth in the unsubscribe rate is an indication of something which is amiss with your communication – either the content, or the timing or the criteria used to divide lists.
Driving Revenues
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is used to measure whether the recipient has taken an action based on the email sent to her. For instance, if your email had a call to action urging customers to try a free-trial of your product, and from then on they ended up signing up for your product for a year means that the conversion rate is high. This metric helps marketers understand what impacts their topline.
Conclusion
It is easy to get caught up in the measurement jungle and get confused about which metrics to choose often leading marketers to spend crucial time and effort in measuring parameters which do not help in either understanding or enhancing their email marketing efforts. Tying metrics to the objectives set out will ensure that they are on the right track to email marketing success.
