One of the great advantages of a professional email marketing platform is access to all the important statistics you need to get maximum benefit from your marketing.
Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Marketing Handbook for an explanation of the key metrics to monitor and how you can test and measure your campaigns.
Open rate
Perhaps your most important metric is your open rate. An open rate of about 20% to 30% is considered average. Track your open rate over time. Your first email might get a great open rate (like 50% to 70% or more), but over time may level off.
Some things to test and measure to improve your open rates:
- Your subject line. Vary its length. Merge the recipient’s first name into the subject. Use your company’s name.
- Date of send. Is it a business audience, meaning weekdays work best? Or is the email geared more towards consumers who check their emails on weekends?
- Time of send. Mid-morning so they have already cleared their initial email backlog? Just before lunch? Just after lunch? Just before 5pm when people leave work?
Clickthrough rate
The next important measure is your clickthough rate. How many people clicked links in your email? Which links did they click the most? Which people clicked on which links? Some things to test and measure to improve your clickthrough rates:
- The number of links in the newsletter. One main link, or many different links?
- The position of the link. In the first paragraph? Towards the end of the newsletter?
- The wording of the links. Using a clear call to action? Not using “click here”, or “more info”?
Unsubscribe rate
What’s your unsubscribe rate after each campaign? In other words, how many people decide to not receive your newsletter in the future. Less than one percent is average for lists that are contacted regularly, and well maintained. If you haven’t sent an email for a while, or if it’s your very first send, your unsubscribe rate may be much higher.
Check your unsubscribe rate after each mail out. If you see it rise markedly after a particular campaign, try and figure out if there was a problem with the content. Maybe you’re sending too often or possibly not often enough. Keeping a good quality list should result in a very low unsubscribe rate.
Bounce rate
Your bounce rate – or number of emails that weren’t able to be delivered – is another metric you should monitor after each campaign.
There are two types of bounces: soft and hard.
Soft bounces are email addresses that exist, but for some reason, they couldn’t be delivered to. For instance, their server might have been too busy at the time of your delivery. Hard bounces are undeliverable— perhaps the email account doesn’t exist anymore, or there was a typo in the address.
One of the advantages of a professional email marketing system is that it will manage this process and keep your list clean. Otherwise, if your list includes lots of emails that are no longer valid, you can get labelled as a spammer.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
