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Email marketing metrics are key indicators that provide insights into how effective and relevant your emails are to your target audience. This blog breaks down the top email marketing metrics you should track to improve email marketing ROI, the best practices for email marketing reporting, and more.
Email marketing has stood the test of time and proved to be one of the most affordable and effective ways to reach the target audience, drive conversions, and build loyal relationships with the end user.
According to a report by Statista, approximately 52% of marketing professionals surveyed reported a two-times improvement in their email marketing campaigns’ ROI in 2023.
But how do marketers check if their email marketing campaigns are performing as expected and meeting all email marketing KPIs?
Email marketing metrics are the key indicators that help gauge and understand how well email campaigns are performing in terms of deliverability, engagement, and conversion. By closely tracking and analyzing email metrics, you can pinpoint what works for your brand and optimize the email marketing strategies accordingly.
There are many email marketing performance metrics, but not all of them are equally relevant or useful. You need to understand which email metrics to track based on your marketing goals and how to decipher and use that data to boost email marketing ROI.
Before we get to the top email marketing metrics to monitor, it is important to understand what KPIs and performance metrics mean.
While both these terms are quantitative in nature, there is a difference between the two. KPIs are associated with business targets, and metrics are related to business processes or activities. KPIs help you determine if you’re on track to achieve your goal, while metrics refer to the measurements of some process or activity.
For example, if your company sets an email marketing KPI to improve conversions by 20% by the end of 2025, it will trickle down to specific email campaign KPIs. For the hot lead campaigns, for example, the KPI could be to increase lead generation by 45%. The metrics for this KPI could be people downloading product factsheets or registering for product demos, etc., via the email CTA button.
Let’s look at the top 10 email marketing metrics that should be on top of your minds while evaluating the performance of your email campaigns.
The deliverability rate indicates the percentage of emails successfully delivered to the intended recipients’ inboxes. It is calculated as:
Deliverability Rate = (Number of Emails Delivered / Number of Emails Sent) X 100
While the benchmark deliverability rate varies between industries and also depends on email providers, a good email deliverability rate is generally considered to be between 85% and 95%. A low deliverability indicates that the emails are being filtered or rejected by the email service provider. A low rate of deliverability can adversely impact email marketing ROI.
You can improve the email deliverability rate by:
The open rate indicates the percentage of emails from campaigns that were opened by the recipients. This metric indicates if the subject lines and sender names are attractive enough, resonate with the end users, and motivate them to open the email. It is calculated as:
Open Rate = (Number of Emails Opened / Number of Emails Delivered) X 100
A good email open rate is generally considered to be above 20%. For example, the average open rate for e-commerce is around 34%, for finance it is around 26%, and so on. Dwindling open rates hurts email campaign metrics as it signifies that email campaigns are unable to pique the users’ interest.
Better open rates can be achieved by:
The click-through rate or CTR denotes the percentage of emails that have received a minimum of one click on a button or link. This email marketing metric indicates how engaging and persuasive the content and call-to-action buttons are in any email campaign. It is calculated as:
Click-Through Rate = (Number of Clicks / Number of Emails Delivered) X 100
The benchmark for email CTR is between 2–5%, depending on the industry. For example, the average click-through rate for e-commerce is around 2%, for finance it is around 2.7%, and so on. Email campaign CTRs can turn out to be low if they do not motivate the user to take the intended action. This can translate into a low email marketing ROI.
CTR can be improved by:
The conversion rate indicates the percentage of emails that have achieved the desired outcome like a purchase, a sign-up, or a download. It is a clear indicator of the efficacy of any email campaign. It is calculated as:
Conversion Rate = (Number of Email Recipients Who Took the Desired Action / Total Number of Emails Delivered) X 100
Conversion rate also varies by industry, type of campaign, and audience. The average email conversion rate is between 2-5%. If the email campaigns are aligned with the business goals, it can result in a low conversion rate and hamper email marketing ROI.
The conversion rate can be improved by:
The bounce rate denotes the percentage of emails that were not delivered to the recipients and were bounced back to the sender. It can be due to various reasons, such as the email address of the targeted recipient being disabled or shut, the recipient’s inbox being full, the email ID being fake, the recipient’s email server being done, etc. It is calculated as:
Bounce Rate = (Total Number of Bounced Emails / Total Sent Emails) X 100
There can be a soft or hard bounce:
Email bounce rate varies by industry. A good bounce rate is usually considered to be below 2%. For example, the bounce rate for the e-commerce industry is 0.29%, for the finance industry, it’s around 4%, and so on. A low bounce rate indicates a healthy, well-maintained email list with active subscribers.
Here are some best practices to reduce bounce rates:
The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of emails that led its recipients to click unsubscribe and opt out from receiving future emails. It is a key indicator of how satisfied and loyal the email subscribers are. It is calculated as:
Unsubscribe Rate = (Number of Unsubscribed Contacts/Number of Emails Sent) X 100
Generally, anything under 0.5% is considered to be a good unsubscribe rate. However, it differs from industry to industry. For example, for the e-commerce industry it is around 0.22%, for business and finance it is 0.16%, and so on.
Email campaigns that translate into a high unsubscribe rate signal that the emails are irrelevant or annoying to the users which can adversely impact the email marketing ROI.
To reduce the unsubscribe rate, you should:
The list growth rate refers to the rate at which your email list is growing, i.e., adding new subscribers. It is calculated as:
List Growth Rate = ((Number of New Subscribers – Number of Unsubscribers) / Total Number Of Subscribers at the Beginning of the Period)) X 100
A good average email growth rate is around 1-3% per month. A low growth rate could indicate that your email strategy is not working to attract new subscribers and keep existing subscribers engaged.
To improve the list growth rate, you can:
The spam complaint rate indicates the percentage of emails that have been marked as spam by the recipients. This can be due to many reasons, such as poor quality or irrelevant content, high frequency of emails, and bad reputation of the sender, among others. It is calculated as:
Spam Complaint Rate = (Number of Emails Marked as Spam / Number of Emails Sent) X 100
The industry standard for spam complaint rate is less than 0.1% or 1 spam complaint for every 1,000 emails sent. It is critical to immediately rectify a high spam complaint rate as it could lead to deliverability issues such as getting blocked by inbox providers or even blacklisted by email service providers.
You can reduce spam complaint rate by:
The revenue per email sent is a measure of the revenue generated from each sent email in monetary terms. It is a direct measure of the financial impact and effectiveness of email campaigns. It is calculated as:
Revenue per Email Sent = Total Revenue Generated / Total Emails Sent
A high revenue per email sent indicates that your email campaign is successful in generating revenue for your business. It is an important metric that helps to identify which email campaigns or specific segments of your email lists are driving the most revenue, enabling you to ensure the optimum allocation of resources and fine-tune your strategy for the best results.
Revenue per email sent provides you with insights into:
The engagement over time metric measures the overall activity of the emails, such as open rates, click-through rates, etc., on a given day or across a specific period of time. Tracking engagement over time helps identify trends and patterns in user behavior and content lifecycle, allowing you to further personalize your emails for maximum customer interest and engagement.
There is no single formula to calculate engagement over time. You need to:
Presenting the email marketing metrics in a well-structured report is essential to gain insights into the performance and effectiveness of the email campaigns, identify trends, and make better-informed marketing decisions. It enables you to better personalize and optimize content based on engagement and improve the impact and ROI of the email campaigns.
Most email marketing platforms today come with ready-to-use and customizable email templates that can help you get started with email marketing reporting quickly. While these pre-built templates are a great starting point, there are a few key considerations and best practices that you should keep in mind while reporting email marketing metrics:
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CleverTap offers features and capabilities that help marketers track email marketing metrics and boost ROI.
CleverTap has the power to harness big data and drive targeted customer engagement through features like automated segments, advanced analytics, and actionable intelligence. CleverTap can collect and unify customer data from multiple sources and touchpoints, create dynamic segments based on real-time behavior and attributes, and gain deep insights into email campaign performance, helping you analyze email performance metrics better.
To unlock the winning customer engagement strategy, CleverTap provides features like real-time experimentation, continuous testing, and customer life cycle optimization. Marketers can run A/B tests and multivariate tests on the email campaigns to compare different variants and measure their impact on email campaigns, business goals, and KPIs.
Tailor customer interactions based on demographics, prior behavioral patterns, real-time interactions, and recommend the next best experiences to the users with CleverTap. Marketers can leverage CleverTap to personalize email, subject lines, content, and CTA depending on customer segments and individual profiles, and deliver contextual and timely emails that resonate with the user base to drive conversion.
Automate customer engagement with CleverTap by leveraging multiple channels tailored and optimized for individual customer preferences and interests. Marketers can rely on the expertise of CleverTap to create and execute well-planned email campaigns along with other channels, such as push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS, and orchestrate cross-channel campaigns that drive conversions and retention.
Empower your brand with smarter, faster decisions with insightful, empathetic, and prescriptive intelligence with Clever.AI. Leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate and optimize email campaigns, like predicting the best time and ideal frequency to send emails recommending the best content and offer for each user, and identifying and preventing user churn.
Email marketing is a potent tool in every marketer’s arsenal, but to achieve the best results from each campaign, constant monitoring and optimization are necessary. Tracking and analyzing email marketing performance metrics can help marketers identify the strengths and weaknesses of the campaigns, understand trends and patterns in customer engagement, and tweak marketing strategy accordingly for optimum results.
With CleverTap, brands can create personalized and effective email campaigns that drive conversions and retention and enhance your email marketing ROI.
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