The 11 most important metrics for measuring email marketing campaign success

When it comes to analysing the success/failure of an email marketing campaign, there are many metrics to consider.

Obviously, different companies with different goals and different ways of doing business will interpret these metrics in completely different ways.

With this in mind, we have foregone the traditional listicle format of ranking things. Instead, we have chosen to identify and then list, in no particular order, the most widely useful metrics available.

So, without further ado, we present,

The 11 most important metrics for measuring email marketing campaign success.

1) Total opens

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This one is pretty simple. How many people actually opened the emails we sent out?

This metric can give us good general insight into the relevance of our mailing list and the effectiveness of our subject lines.

Once opened, it’s time for the body of the email to do its work.

2) Open rate

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If we weigh our total number of opens against our total number of emails sent out, we get our open rate. This can give us a pretty good indication of how effective our email subject lines really are…

If people are receiving our emails, but the percentage that are opening them is too low, we might need some help getting our subject lines up to speed.

3) Average opens per person (AOPP)

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If we want to take a deeper look at our open rates to measure overall email engagement, average opens per person can clear the picture up a bit more.

This metric measures how many emails each person on our mailing list is opening against the number of emails we have sent that person.

If people are opening a high percentage of the emails we are sending them, they can be considered to be highly engaged, and we can give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done.

If the percentage is low, then we know that we really aren’t accomplishing much, since we are not engaging that person in a meaningful way.

4) Click rate

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This metric, also known as click-through Rate (CTR), measures the number of people who have opened our email and then clicked on a URL link in the email to view the website of the product/service it directs to.

Click rate is very effective when attempting to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the content in an email marketing campaign. It tells us the exact number of people who clicked on the link associated with the campaign, based on what they read in the email they received.

From there, it is up to the website to close the sale.

5) Click to open rate (CTR)

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The click to open rate gives a different kind of insight into how effective the total package of a specific marketing email actually is.

CTOR measures the click-through rate against the total number of opens. This tells us what percentage of people who opened the email were persuaded to click through to our website.

6) Hard bounces

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If we send out an email and it is permanently undeliverable to the email address we used, that’s a hard bounce. We now know that email address is invalid and it can be taken off our mailing list.

7) Soft bounces

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If our email is undeliverable due to a temporary issue, for example a full inbox, that’s a soft bounce. It means we need to monitor that address and if the issue persists, we can consider removing the address from our mailing list.

8) Conversion rate

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The conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients that click on a link in the email and then go on to complete a desired action. These desired actions or conversions occur when a recipient interacts with a company in a meaningful way, for example requesting more information or purchasing a product/service from us.

9) Abuse Reports

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An abuse report is when someone on our mailing list decides to report our email as “spam”. Realistically, this is completely unavoidable, and so long as there are not extremely high numbers of such reports, this can be filed under “The cost of doing business”.

If, however, the numbers of abuse reports are unusually high, we might want to re-think our approach, or get some professional help with our strategy.

10) Email revenue

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As DJ Quik famously remarked in his song “Dollaz and Sense”- “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”

Email revenue is the total monetary value of the sales generated by our email marketing campaign. If it isn’t generating revenue, we are doing something wrong, and we could probably use a hand. In fact, even if we are already generating revenue through email marketing, wouldn’t we rather generate some more?

In one awesome email campaign, Phrasee’s subject line generation technology delivered a 417% revenue increase versus the human written subject lines they had been using previously.

11) Average revenue per email sent (ARPES)

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Knowing our total email revenue can give us a pretty good indication of whether or not our email marketing campaign is producing results, but exactly how good are the results really?

Average revenue per email sent can help us measure the efficiency of our efforts, and help us to focus our efforts by identifying how much money is generated each time we send an email to someone on our mailing list.

If we can measure our efficiency in this way, and find ways to generate more income per email sent, our email marketing campaigns will steadily become more successful.

We here at Phrasee recently delivered a client a 22.7% increase on this sum, which translates to a massive improvement in the efficiency of that client’s email marketing strategy.

When this is done well, we will conduct more business and make more money.

And isn’t that really the whole point?