Essential metrics to analyze Email Marketing

Email Marketing,nowadays, is one of the most important acquisition and conversion channels, and is becoming increasingly relevant in the digital strategy of companies that sell online. What is not measured can not be improved. Therefore, in this article, we will expose some of the fundamental metrics to measure and evaluate the results of email campaigns.

1.   Email Marketing is not spam

The fundamental rule that must be taken into account in this regard is that  Email Marketing  will only work if some basic recommendations are taken into account:

• Opt-In: All users to whom we send emails must have previously authorized us to send them communications by email.
• Opt-Out:   The process of unsoing the list should be simple and intuitive for the email. There are still those who put a tiny link, or that does not work to minimize casualties … which can have fatal consequences for the reputation of the site.
• Sender and subject fields: these are the most important fields in the email, since many filters use it to classify the message as spam. It is necessary to moderate excessively promotional messages, because they will most likely reach the spam folder, rather than the recipients.
• Segmentation: A generic email for all users can be harmful if within the lists there are typologies of recipients very different from each other. Coffee for everyone doesn’t work in online marketing

2.   What data should be analyzed in Email Marketing?

When measuring the results of online campaigns, it is necessary to integrate the data that we are going to use:

• Email marketing platform data   (e.g. MailChimp). This platform collects metrics such as number of users on lists, emails sent, open rate…
• Web Analytics Platform Data   (Google Analytics, Piwik, Omniture…). With these tools, the origin of the campaigns will be measured, as well as their performance on the web, with metrics such as bounce,average time on site, fulfillment of objectives…

It will therefore be essential to gather and integrate all the data with a common platform, which can be an excel or a database, on which we will work to obtain a more global vision of the campaigns.

3.   Fundamental metrics in Email Marketing

Below we break down the metrics that will help us create a solid measurement system on   which analyses will be carried out and relevant conclusions will be obtained about the performance of email campaigns:

1. Shipping rate (number of emails sent – number of rejected emails) / number of emails sent
2. Open rate number of open emails / number of emails sent Regarding this metric, it is important to note that today many email platforms prevent obtaining the open rate, so we will deduce that opening data will always be higher than those shown by this metric.
3. Subscriber retention rate (nº of subscribers – nº bounced emails – nº of unsubscribes of subscribers) / nº of subscribers
4. Email clicks number of clicks on the email / number of emails sent
5. Bounce rate visits from campaigns with only one page view / number of visits from campaigns
6. Produndity of the visit % of visitors who view more than x pages This is a fundamental metric on pages where the main objective is content consumption.
7. Conversion of objectives Visits that meet objectives / Visits from campaigns
8. Net sales by email sent Total sales / number of emails sent
9. Average economic value Total economic value / number of emails sent
10. Campaign Benefit (Total sales – campaign costs – costs of products sold) / number of emails sent

4.   Conclusion

This is our proposal of metrics, although depending on your type of business you could choose others. In any case, the fundamental thing is to have at least a dozen indicators that allow us to evaluate how we are doing the campaigns, with what results and what we can do to optimize the following … because what is not measured cannot be improved.