Email campaign metrics isn’t just a term that people throw around to make themselves look really smart in front of their bosses, or to convince people that they really are a “social media expert” as opposed to an “aspiring social media expert with an emphasis in bovine scatology.” Email campaign metrics are real life, quantifiable bits of data that can essentially tell you if you’re succeeding with your efforts, or failing miserably. These are a few of the most important, and what they can tell you.
• Open Rate – This tells you the percentage of your email marketing list recipients who actually opened your message. If your percentage is miserably low, this is usually an indication that you need to work on the subject line of your email. If your subject header usually reads “This month’s marketing message” or something similarly uncreative, it needs work.
• Click Rate (also called Click-Through Rate, or CTR) – If your email campaign metrics are returning low results here, it means your recipients are opening your message but they’re not following through by clicking on any of the hyperlinks that direct them to your site. You may need to work on your persuasion skills, or include a more compelling call to action.
• Conversion Rate – This is the culmination of your open rate and click-through rate and is the desired end result. It tells you what percentage of your readers followed through and made a purchase (or commented on your blog, or “Liked” your Facebook page, or whatever it was you were asking them to do). High open rates and click rates that result in low conversion rates can tell you a variety of things, from your website being unappealing to your prices being too high. Focusing on this can help you arrive at creative email campaign solutions that’ll hopefully result in an increased conversion rate.