Newsletter Growth Agency Tips: Email Metrics That Matter Most
Improving the performance of your email campaigns requires the combination of experience, technical expertise, analytical skills, creativity, and time. To analyze your campaigns like a newsletter growth agency, start by assessing a short set of key metrics to determine where your campaigns should be and where they are now.
By monitoring a core set of email marketing metrics, you’ll be better able to understand the impact of your email campaigns as well as how your subscribers are responding to your email newsletters.
Follow this guide to understand what metrics to measure in your email marketing campaigns, what to do about them when they are not meeting expectations, and how to incorporate the performance of your email marketing program into an integrated marketing plan.
10 Email Marketing Key Metrics
When it comes to determining the performance of each email campaign and a series of campaigns overtime, use these ten top email marketing metrics.
Build a baseline of campaign performance by tracking email metrics by campaign, by month, by quarter, and by year. As you accumulate more data and construct a fuller picture of your email campaign metrics over time, the effects of seasonality and trends in user behavior will become more apparent.
| Email Marketing Metrics | Definition & Use |
| Open Rate (OR)
| The percent of users who opened your email newsletter divided by the number of emails sent. A benchmark average email open rate will depend on multiple factors, including your business type, industry, audience, and even the day and time of day your email newsletters are sent. Contact us for an assessment of your email marketing program and expert insight into how you can improve your average open rate. |
| Opens
| The number of users who opened your email newsletter. |
| Click Through Rate (CTR) | The percent of users who clicked on any link in your email newsletter divided by the number of unique opens. Like open rates, the average click through rate can vary widely by business type, industry type, and email list. Aim for consistent progress over time in the average click through rate for your newsletters and test different content, layouts, and buttons to draw more attention to the links in your emails. Want an expert email newsletter agency review of your newsletters? Schedule a call with our team and get practical, actionable advice to increase your average click through rates. |
| Clicks
| The total number of clicks on all links in your newsletter. |
| Bounces
| The percent of users for whom their email inbox rejected your newsletter or your email was otherwise undeliverable to their inbox. Review the bounce report for each newsletter and look for any updates you can make to your subscriber list, such as removing email addresses that are no longer active or do not exist. |
| Bounce Rate
| The percentage of undelivered emails divided by the number sent. |
| Unsubscribes
| The number of subscribers who choose to stop receiving emails from your company. Regularly monitor and review this metric for your email marketing program, or by campaign type if you send a variety of campaigns, to look for areas of improvement. |
| Unsubscribe Rate
| The percentage of subscribers who opted out of your email marketing campaigns divided by the number of emails sent. Your goal should be to maintain as low an unsubscribe rate as possible. Try to keep your unsubscribe rate at or below 1% to avoid deliverability issues and missed opportunities to connect with your audience. |
| Spam Reports
| The number of subscribers on your list who clicked to mark your email as spam or your email was routed to their junk folder. Always make sure the list of users who marked your email as spam and opted out remain off your email list are not reimported to your target list. Maintain a good email deliverability rate and sender reputation by sending high quality content that your users find relevant and useful, adhering to best practices for list hygiene, and taking action where you can on your bounce and unsubscribe reports. |
| Conversions
| The number of conversions attributed to your emails and growth marketing newsletters. Conversions can be key events such as leads, purchases, or phone calls. It may also be helpful to track other actions that lead to key events, such as landing page views or the number of times users add products to their carts after clicking to your website from your email marketing newsletters. |
As you review your email marketing data, pay close attention to which newsletters had the highest and lowest results. Dig deeper into the content of those newsletter to uncover what types of subject lines drove the best open rates, how and where your subscribers clicked through most or least often to your website, and which types of email campaigns resulted in the most conversions for your business. Once you are armed with insights and ideas for your next email campaign, try A/B testing email subject lines or content sections and watch how your subscribers respond with changes to your open rates, click through rates, and conversions.
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Growth Marketing Newsletters: Advanced Analysis
When you have a clear picture of how your email campaigns have been performing individually and collectively over a period of time, shift over to your website analytics program, such as Google Analytics, and drill down to how the traffic from your email campaigns behaves on your website.
Ask yourself these questions to jumpstart your review and zero in quickly on opportunities to improve your growth marketing newsletters.
Once users click through from your emails, how often do they do the following?
- On average, how long do email subscribers spend on your website compared to the amount of time as the overall average user?
- Do email subscribers spend more or less time on your website than users who click through from other marketing channels?
This can help you determine if your landing pages are relevant to your email subscribers and a good fit for the content in each of your email campaigns.
On average, how many web pages do email subscribers look at on your website?
- Is it more or less than the overall average number of pages per session?
The answers to these questions can help you determine how engaged your email subscribers are, and if your landing page could use different content or a more thought out plan to move your website visitors through to conversion.
How did your email subscribers interact with your other marketing channels?
- For instance, how much overlap is there between clicks from users on your email list and clicks from users who saw your ads from your Google Ads campaign?
- What about your social media followers and email subscribers? How many users clicked through from your company Facebook page and also engaged with your email campaigns over time?
Seeing the full picture of how users interact with your company across multiple marketing channels can help better inform your overall message, offers, and drive a more holistic and consistent view of your marketing plan.
What percentage of the clicks from users from your email campaigns lead to valuable actions on your website?
- Count the total number of events and goals in your Google Analytics account from your email marketing channel, such as phone calls, lead form submissions, booked appointments, chat messages, add-to-carts, and purchases.
Pay close attention to how that number changes over time, especially with regard to any major changes in your email marketing program.
What is the average cost to acquire a new customer from your email channel?
- Of the types of valuable conversion actions on your website, do email subscribers favor one particular type? Such as phone calls?
- What is the average cost per acquisition (CPA) for new sales from your email marketing channel?
How to Calculate Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Your Annual CPA = total marketing costs / number of new customers
This information can help determine what changes to make to your content or email template to better meet prospects’ needs.
Email marketing consistently offers the best ROI of all traditional and digital marketing channels. You may also be able to find more ways to optimize your overall ROI by analyzing your average cost per acquisition for a new customer both overall and for your email marketing program.
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Email Newsletter Growth Marketing
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