Over 80% of businesses around the world use email marketing as a primary tool for customer acquisition. However, in order to make the best use of this valuable channel, you need to do more than send out emails to your audience. You’ll also have to keep track of key metrics.
In this article, we’ll look at the five most important email marketing statistics. We’ll also consider why these metrics matter, and how you can leverage them to your business’ benefit. Let’s get started!
Why Do Email Marketing Statistics Matter?
Despite the prevalence of newer channels, email remains a very powerful marketing medium. Many studies show that email marketing is more effective than promoting your business through social media. Plus, the number of email users is still continuing to grow.
However, the success of any given email marketing campaign largely depends on how carefully it’s implemented. One very efficient way to make sure your email marketing campaign is as strategic as possible is by keeping track of your email statistics.
By doing this, you can easily:
- Assess the performance of your email campaigns
- Pinpoint marketing strengths and weaknesses
- Improve and personalize the content of your emails based on reliable data
- Avoid overspending on non-profitable campaigns
Luckily, these email metrics aren’t that difficult to track. With the aid of email marketing tools or simple formulas, you can easily stay on top of your campaigns.
5 Email Marketing Statistics You Should Be Tracking Immediately
At this point, let’s take a closer look at five of the most important email marketing metrics. No matter what your email marketing goals are, these statistics are worth tracking on a regular basis.
1. Delivery Rate
Email delivery rate refers to the percentage of your emails that are successfully delivered to their recipients. If an email is not delivered, it is often regarded as a ‘bounce.’ There are a number of reasons this may occur, such as invalid email addresses, temporarily unavailable email servers, full mailboxes, etc.
It’s useful to track your email delivery rate, since you want the highest possible percentage of your emails to reach the intended recipients. Otherwise, your campaigns are likely to underperform, and you may end up paying too much for your email marketing platform.
Calculating your delivery rate can be done using this simple formula:
Delivery Rate = ((Total number of emails sent – Bounces) / Total number of emails sent) * 100%
Another way to calculate your delivery rate is to subtract your bounce rate from 100%. Most email marketing tools like SendPulse and Mailchimp automatically generate campaign reports that include bounce and/or delivery rates:
As a rule of thumb, it’s best to aim for a delivery rate of 95% or higher. If your rate is low you can reconsider the methods you’re using to build your list, monitor the size of your emails (to make sure they’re not too large), and scan them for content that internet service providers block automatically.
2. Open Rate
As the name implies, your email open rate refers to the percentage of subscribers on your list who opened a given email. Open rates often vary based on the industry you’re in and the type of content you’re sending. The higher your open rate is, the more you can encourage subscribers to interact with your content.
Email open rates are nearly always much lower than delivery rates. This isn’t necessarily a problem. In general, an open rate in the range of 15 to 25% can be considered healthy.
To calculate your email open rate, you can use this formula:
Open Rate = (Unique opens / Number of delivered emails) * 100%
The majority of email automation services also calculate your campaigns’ open rates automatically. Some of the most common tricks for improving this rate include using a personal sender name, optimizing the length of your subject line, and adding the recipient’s name to the email’s subject.
3. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
One of the best indicators of an email campaign’s success is its Click-Through Rate (CTR). This is the percentage of subscribers who clicked on at least one link within your email. A CTR of 5% reflects that for every 100 subscribers you sent an email to, five of them actually followed a link it contained.
This metric is more indicative of your audience’s interest in your email’s content than the open rate. Fewer audience members are likely to take this step and directly engage with your campaign. Therefore, you can expect to see lower CTRs than open rates. Campaign Monitor’s annual benchmarks suggest an average email CTR rate of 2.6%.
Your CTR can be calculated with the following formula:
Click-Through Rate = (Emails clicked / Number of delivered emails) * 100%
More often than not, this metric can also be found in your email marketing platform’s campaign reports:
Improving your CTR may require optimizing your content for different devices, personalizing your messages for specific audience groups, and writing clearer Calls to Action (CTA).
4. Conversion Rate
Every marketing campaign urges audience members to complete one or more specific actions (such as making a purchase). Your conversion rate measures how many email subscribers complete a desired action, such as clicking on a product page link and then actually buying that item.
Conversion rates are another crucial indicator of your campaigns’ success. Determining what is an optimal conversion rate can be a bit more complicated than with other metrics, however. These rates are highly dependent on the cost of a conversion, for example, and vary widely even in the same industry. You can expect them to be quite a bit lower than your CTRs.
Here’s a simple formula for calculating email conversion rate:
Conversion Rate = (Number of conversions / Number of delivered emails) * 100%
Apart from improving your open and click-through rates, there are other ways to encourage more email-based conversions. Some strong techniques include showcasing your product or service in action, answering common consumer questions and fears, and getting the timing of your messages just right.
5. Overall Return on Investment (ROI)
Finally, Return on Investment (ROI) is the most conclusive indicator of how profitable an email marketing campaign is. ROI directly compares the amount of profit made from an email marketing campaign with the amount spent on it. This metric can either be expressed as a ratio or a percentage.
Generating a high ROI is the ultimate goal for every marketer. Fortunately, email marketing ROIs can be particularly high. Estimates vary, but average ROIs for this marketing channel settle at around 122%.
You can use this formula to calculate your email marketing ROI:
ROI = (Revenue – Expenditure) / Expenditure
This means you’ll have to monitor both the costs of your email marketing campaigns and the revenue generated directly from them. The best way to do this is to use a platform like Mailchimp that tracks these numbers automatically:
A campaign’s ROI is often a reflection of its other key metrics. To achieve a better ROI, therefore, you’ll want to focus on improving the statistics discussed above, as well as bringing down the costs of your campaigns (if possible).
Conclusion
While email marketing can be immensely profitable, conducting a profitable email campaign isn’t a cakewalk. The good news is that you can significantly improve your odds of doing well by tracking the key statistics we’ve introduced, and using them to determine what aspects of your campaigns need to be tweaked.
Do you have any questions or tips about running a strong email marketing campaign? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
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