Do you know how well your email marketing is performing? Key measurements most companies use are open and click-through rates but do you know how your email marketing compares?
A 2019 study by Mailchimp provided the following email marketing data collected across all industries:
- Average email open rate of 21.33
- Average click rate of 2.62%
While these are the average rates taken across a huge range of industries, it still gives rough statistics for you to draw comparisons from.
We’re going to build on this by explaining how you can measure the success of your email marketing campaign in more detail.
What is success to you?
While the data from Mailchimp shows broad, average results, it might not be relevant for every business to look too closely into.
It would be better to list a few end goals that are both significant but realistic. You want growth, but you don’t want to aim for something that’s entirely out of reach. Ask yourself: “What has to happen to make this campaign a success? What am I hoping to achieve?”
For example, you might be a startup company that’s trying email marketing for the first time. While you’re still learning and getting to grips with things like email data lists, your goals may look something like this:
- Increase the open rate from 12% to 15% within the next 3 months
- Increase the click-through rate to our landing page from 1% to 2%
But if you’re a large and established organisation that’s looking to boost revenue to take you to the next step, your goals will look entirely different.
Different email campaigns should be measured in different ways, and it’s up to you to determine how.
Remember to keep these steps in mind as you do so:
- Know where you are now
- Judge if you are heading in the right direction
- Understand the speed you are travelling at
- Know how far you have to go
- Predict when you might get there
- Manage diversions when unexpected situations arise
Where to look for the statistics
Use your email service provider to look over the open, click and unsubscribe rates of your emails. How can these be improved?
If your email suffered from opens, try a different approach to your subject lines and run spam checks.
If it suffered from clicks, look at your Call to Actions and think of ways you could improve the user experience to make clicking through easier or more appealing.
If it suffered from unsubscribes, think about how you can generate more interest. Is it the content itself? Is it relevant? Have you sent one too many emails to the same person?
It’s important to know what to aim for as email metrics change from industry sector to the industry sector, and differ depending on if it’s an acquisition email or a retention email.
How to build on your success
Marketers should be measuring their past campaigns before setting up new ones. Research has shown that it can take up to 5 emails before you get a response; therefore one email is highly unlikely to get your desired result.
And if you do manage to hit your target, don’t rest on your laurels. Like all marketing, what works in emails is constantly changing. You need to make sure you’re making the most out of your business data as what’s successful now might completely fall flat in six months time.
So make sure that you’re always trying to find out the reason for your success as well as your failure. This way, when you send out your next round of emails, you’ll be able to implement the elements that worked best for you while leaving out the parts which weren’t so great.
Good email marketing is all about sending the right message to the right target through the right channel at the right time. It’s a goal post which is always on the move, so you’ve got to make sure that you’re ready to keep up with it.
