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14 Email Marketing KPIs You Should Track

Tracking the right email marketing KPIs can be the difference between a successful email campaign and a failed one. Here are KPIs you should track yourself.

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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a set of metrics that email marketers track and analyze to measure the success of an email marketing campaign. They provide the company with insight into how well the campaign is performing with customers. They also help email marketing specialists determine which areas of the campaign need to improve.

Whether you’re about to launch your first email marketing campaign or you want to track more metrics, looking into the right KPIs is crucial. Tracking and analyzing KPIs is how you ensure that your campaign is effective and making a positive impact on the relationship between the company and the customer. 

So, let’s take a look at some common email marketing KPIs you can look into.

Open rate

The open rate is the percentage of subscribers who opened the email. If you have a low open rate, it means that customers simply aren’t opening the emails you send, and something needs to be done to incentivize them to open more emails.

Click-through rate (CTR)

The click-through rate (CTR) measures the number of subscribers that click the links in your email.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of emails that were undeliverable. A bounce happens when an email cannot be delivered to the recipient’s inbox for whatever reason, such as a full inbox or an email server failure. A regularly high bounce rate means that there are too many invalid email addresses in your email list and it’s time to clean it up.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate measures the number of subscribers who completed a desired action. For example, when you send a promotional email for a new product, if the subscriber then went to the website and purchased the new product, then the email campaign worked as intended for that customer.

Spam complaint rate

The spam complaint rate is the number of recipients who marked the email as spam. A high spam rate can indicate that your email campaigns are not relevant enough, too numerous, or simply unwanted by your email list.

List growth rate

The list growth rate refers to the rate at which your email list is growing. It is typically measured over a specific period, such as a month, a quarter, or a year. If the list growth rate is poor, it may indicate that customers don’t see any value in signing up to the newsletter. You need to make your newsletter seem more attractive to increase the list growth rate.

Subscriber engagement

Subscriber engagement measures how active the engagement is between subscribers and the emails. Active, positive engagement includes forwarding, replying, or marking the emails as important.

Revenue generated

The revenue generated is the amount of generated revenue as a direct result of the email marketing campaign. It is calculated by multiplying the total number of conversions by the average order value, which is the average amount of money spent by a customer in a single transaction. This is an important KPI to track if you want to understand how successful an email campaign is from a financial standpoint.

Subscriber lifetime value

Subscriber lifetime revenue, also known as customer lifetime revenue, is an estimate of the revenue a subscriber will generate over the course of their subscription. This KPI is important to track, because it makes for a good budgeting forecast. It also helps the company understand the value of their customers.

Reply rate

The reply rate is the percentage of subscribers who reply to the email. A high reply rate indicates a highly invested email list that is willing to communicate with the company.

Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate is the number of subscribers who opt-out of receiving future emails. This KPI may sound similar to the spam complaint rate. However, while a high spam complaint rate may indicate that only certain parts of the email campaigns are unpopular with subscribers, a high unsubscribe rate indicates that subscribers find the entire subscription low value after receiving emails.

List churn rate

You can get better value out of tracking this KPI by analyzing it alongside the unsubscribe rate. The list churn rate measures the rate at which subscribers are opting out of receiving emails. You should also review this KPI in tangent with your list growth rate, because no matter how much your email list grows, if your list churn rate is high, then the list will stay the same size.

Inactive subscriber rate

This KPI measures the percentage of subscribers who have not engaged with the emails in a certain timeframe. Typically, a subscriber is considered to be inactive after six months, but the timeframe can vary by company or marketing team.

Mobile open rate

The mobile open rate is the percentage of subscribers who opened the email on a mobile device. Measuring this KPI can tell you a lot about your email list. If it’s high, it may indicate that you need to optimize your email campaign for mobile devices.

Tracking Email Marketing KPIs the Easy Way

All of the above KPIs have their own formulas, many of which are similar to each other, but they can be automatically tracked and calculated with email marketing software. 

There are many email marketing tools available for free, so if you need an easy way to track and analyze these highly useful KPIs, you have more than one option. Some tools calculate a number of KPIs, while others are specialized for a specific KPI.

Regardless of what you choose, diligently tracking KPIs is the best way to improve your email campaigns and grow the relationship between a company and its customers.

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