email marketing - email marketing analytics

Email Marketing Analytics: The Metrics, Goals and KPIs You Should Be Tracking

For years, the jury has been out on the efficacy and the future of email marketing. But still, your email is, probably, the first thing you check when you wake up in the morning. There’s a lot to say and learn about email marketing, but one of the  most important aspects of  email marketing is analytics

You can optimize your email campaigns in the best possible way, but at the end of the day what matters most is how well your emails perform. And the only way to determine success is to  track the right email marketing analytics.

Popular Email Marketing Analytics That Every Marketer Should Track

When it comes to your email marketing efforts, there are some metrics that every marketer should take into consideration, regardless of their marketing goals. 

1. Clickthrough Rates

Clickthrough rate or CTR is the percentage of email recipients who click on one or more links on the email. 

CTR = (Total clicks OR unique clicks ÷ Number of delivered emails) * 100

This is the most common metric that email marketers use to analyze  campaign performance. It is important to track because this KPI shows how many people are actually engaging with your brand.

2. Conversion Rate

 Conversion rate is the percentage of people who clicked on your email and completed  your desired action, like purchasing a product or populating a  lead form. 

Conversion Rate = (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100

Remember that  conversion depends on the call-to-action included in your email message. So if the call-to-action was to fill in a lead, then don’t confuse a sale with  a conversion.

3. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate shows the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox.

Bounce rate = (Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100

While bounce rate doesn’t align with  email marketing goals like clickthrough rates and conversion rates, it does depict the quality of your emails. A higher bounce rate might make your brand look like a spammer, thus impacting your other KPIs.

4. Open Rate

 Open rate is the percentage of email recipients who open the email. Many email marketers are heavily focused on improving their open rates and  regularly A/B test different subject lines. But, open rate metrics typically do not offer much value since they can be highly skewed.  

However, if you use open rates as a comparative metric then it can be useful to an extent. For example, if you track week-to-week open rates.

5. Unsubscribe Rate

Just like open rates, unsubscribe rates aren’t reliable email marketing metrics .  Unsubscribe rates don’t  accurately indicate the health of your brand because there are many other ways for recipients to stop engaging with your brand. For example, they might just stop opening your emails instead of going through the unsubscribe process.

Learn Everything About Email Marketing Analytics Now!

If email marketing is an appealing career option, then it’s time to get skilled in aligning your marketing goals with the right  email marketing analytics. 

Check out our Digital Marketing Nanodegree program now. The program comes with a dedicated module on email marketing where  you’ll learn  to develop  an email marketing strategy, create and execute email campaigns and measure the results.

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Ritika Pradhan
Ritika Pradhan
Ritika is the Content Manager at Udacity and is passionate about bringing inspirational student stories to light. When not talking to the amazing Udacity students, she can be found reading an article or watching a video on the internet.