Top 11 Email Marketing KPIs Your Business Should Track and Measure

You've just started your first email marketing campaign. It takes effort to put together the perfect headlines, writing, and visuals when advertising a new product or generating prospects. However, this is just the first step.

The next step is to understand how to calculate your newsletter or email marketing KPIs. Check out the top 11 email marketing KPIs you should track and measure.

What Are Email Marketing KPIs

Key performance indicators of email marketing, or email marketing KPIs, are ways to measure how well different parts of an email campaign are doing. When creating a marketing strategy, one of the fundamental campaigns is email marketing.

As a result, it must also be analyzed precisely using KPIs. When you measure email marketing KPIs, you may discover various things. Every email marketing campaign is unique. Few are sent to produce leads, others to expand a subscriber base, and others to re-engage with your subscribers.

Why Track and Measure Email Marketing KPIs

Practically all organizations and businesses, big and small, have KPIs established for each department or employee. The reason for this is that email KPIs is a tool that provides several benefits:

• They provide a means of gauging how well goals are being achieved.
• They can assist in identifying areas that need improvement.
• They could encourage staff members to raise their performance levels.
• They may aid in evaluating the efficiency of various campaign tactics.

Email marketing is also an effective company growth tactic. As a result of KPIs' efficacy, you will get the most precise evaluation in terms of metrics to assist you in understanding what is working and what is not working so you can make the required adjustments.

Top 11 Email Marketing KPIs to Track and Measure

There are several email marketing KPIs that every business or marketer should take into account, but the specific metrics you choose may vary depending on the particular goals of your organization.

1. Open Rate

Definition: The proportion of email receivers who open a specific email is called the open rate. It helps you determine the worth of your email content and evaluate your subject line.

Formula: Open rate = (Emails opened Total emails sent) 100

Why it’s an important metric: Open Rate is perhaps one of the essential KPIs for email marketing campaigns since it reflects how engaged your subscribers are in your business and what you offer.

The failure of the open rate as a significant statistic, on the other hand, demonstrates its unreliability. This is because an open is only recorded if the user receives the embedded images in the same email. As a result, if the user has image-blocking enabled on their device, they will not be counted in your open rate.

2. Click-through Rate

Definition: The CTR, or click-through rate, is the proportion of email receivers that click on the links in your email. It assesses how well your campaign is doing.

Formula: CTR = (Link clicks Emails delivered) 100

For example, if you receive 500 clicks and 10,000 emails sent, your CTR is 5%.

Why it’s an important metric: Your CTR indicates how successfully an email piques the attention of your target audience. The greater your CTR, the more engaging your email. When you ask an email marketer what metrics they follow, the most frequent response is CTR. It's the "day-to-day" email marketing statistic since it allows you to assess performance for each email you send. You may then monitor how your CTR varies over time.

3. List Growth Rate

Definition: The list growth rate is the pace at which the total number of subscribers on your broadcast list increases. It is determined after new subscribers are added, and unsubscribers are subtracted.

Formula: List Growth Rate = [(New subscribers - Unsubscribes) Total subscribers] 100

Why it’s an important metric: It is one of the essential email engagement metrics since it represents the success of your lead-generation operations as well as the general engagement of the audience. If the number of individuals adding to the list is less than the number of persons unsubscribing, list growth will be negative. If you add more individuals than unsubscribers, your list will expand in a favorable direction.

4. Sharing/Forwarding Rate

Definition: It is the proportion of your subscribers that click links in your emails to share or forward them.

Formula: Share/Forwarding rate = (Unique clicks on share and forward links Number of emails sent) 100

Why it’s an important metric: Shared content has a higher effect than non-shared material. People who share a brand's content express their support for it. And, by extension, for that brand. That is a strong type of social evidence and word of mouth.

Furthermore, many rely on their purchasing choices based on what their peers share.

5. Conversion Rate

Definition: Conversion rate is the proportion of receivers who convert due to your email. A sale does not always follow a conversion. A conversion might be any desired activity, such as a material download or event registration.

Formula: Conversion rate = (Subscribers taking your conversion action Emails sent) 100

Your email Conversion Rate determines how many subscribers clicked on a link in your email and completed the intended activity (ex: made a purchase, submitted a form, etc.).

Why it’s an important metric: If people click links in your email but do not convert, there might be inefficiencies in your email marketing funnel. Maybe your CTA is misleading, or your subscribers aren't getting the expected value from your product.

6. Overall ROI

Definition: Your return on investment (ROI) is typically an email metric used to assess the general success of your marketing plan.

Formula: Email overall ROI = [(Money gained - Money spent) Money spent] x 100

For example, if your profit is $40,000 and your costs are $12,500, your email ROI is ($40,000 - $12,500) / $12,500 x 100 = 220%.

• Money spent: This often covers the cost of marketing tools such as your email service provider (ESP), marketing staff, consultants, agencies, and so on.
• Money gained: This is the amount you earned from email marketing. You may monitor email profit using tools like Google Analytics or your ESP's reporting and analytics capabilities.

Why it’s an important metric: Any strategy must be successful in terms of investment. To do so, an Email Marketing campaign must also track this parameter. If you're investing more money in email marketing than you're earning, you may have a problem.

7. Revenue Per Subscriber

Definition: Revenue Per Subscriber is the amount of revenue earned in a campaign divided by the number of subscribers to whom it was delivered.

Formula: Revenue per subscriber = Total emails revenue Total subscribers

Why it’s an important metric: The value of your list may be determined by the revenue per subscriber. You have an extensive list if it's too low, but most subscribers are just looking for free stuff and aren't ready to buy. Therefore, you must ascertain what they want and price appropriately.

8. Revenue Per Email

Definition: It is revenue generated per email.

Formula: Revenue per email = Total emails revenue Emails sent

Why it’s an important metric: This KPI provides valuable information on the marketing emails most effective for your company. Examine your most lucrative email campaigns for any patterns or common traits.

9. Bounce Rate

Definition: The bounce rate is the proportion of emails rejected by the email client.

Formula: Email bounce rate = (Number of emails bounced Number of emails sent) 100

Why it’s an important metric: It's critical to keep track of emails that "bounced" — and why — so you can avoid bounces in the future. For example, block bounces indicate marketing mismanagement, whereas soft bounces are typically beyond the marketer's control.

10. Spam Complaint Rate

Definition: The spam complaint rate is the percentage of mail receivers claiming the email was spam.

Formula: Spam complaint rate = (Total of complaints Total emails sent) 100

Why it’s an important metric:  When calculating email metrics, always keep the spam folder in mind. When something appears suspicious, recipients may flag your messages using their mailbox provider's (ISP) spam option.

Before attempting to determine what went wrong, you must monitor your spam complaint rate to determine whether or not your audience reports your emails.

11. Unsubscribe Rate

Definition: The Unsubscribe Rate is the proportion of people that unsubscribe from your email list after receiving an email.

Formula: Unsubscribe rate = (Unsubscribers Emails sent) 100

Why it’s an important metric: The unsubscribe rate, like the open rate, isn't a trustworthy indicator of the health of your email list. Many subscribers bored of getting email communications from your business will not bother going through the official unsubscribe procedure. They'll just cease opening, reading, and clicking on your email messages.

As a result, measuring subscriber engagement via clickthrough and conversion rates is much more effective. From there, you may watch out for unengaged subscribers and consider eliminating them at some time, as we discussed before.

Bonus Tips: How to Create Realistic Email Marketing KPIs

Once you have established the KPIs for a marketing campaign, you must guarantee that they are realistic when implemented in the following ways:

Think about your objectives for utilizing emails as a marketing tool: Once you've determined your objectives, you can begin developing KPIs that will help you achieve them. For example, if you want to boost website traffic, you might establish a monthly KPI of improving your click-through rate by 10%.

Be realistic in your expectations: Remember that not all of your email marketing effort will result in a direct ROI. However, focusing on interaction and creating connections with your audience will increase your chances of long-term success.

Follow your process and modify your KPIs: KPIs should change as your email marketing approach does. You can ensure that your KPIs are always accurate and reasonable by monitoring your progress and making changes as necessary.

Final Words

There are several email marketing KPIs concerning the indicators listed above to guarantee that your campaign is successful. However, not all of these KPIs will be required for every campaign.

The most effective email marketing KPIs are those that have a direct influence on your company objectives. Thoroughly examine your objectives and expectations to choose the best KPIs for your company. Discover more marketing guides on DSers Blog.