I know, I know. Metrics are not a topic people usually love. Every time I entered the classroom to teach that subject I heard a lot of things like metrics are boring, there are so many numbers, I hate math, and things like that…
But let me tell you a secret, just between us: learning about metrics doesn’t have to be (and it’s not) boring and can be (believe me) a great differential in your marketing and communication strategy.
Thinking about that, I decided to make a series of posts about Metrics. And the first one is going to be about e-mail marketing. Shall we?
Number of Subscribers
Subscribers’ number is pretty self-explanatory. It is the number of people that you have in your e-mail list – those people who subscribed to receive something from you (it can be an e-book, an infographic, a video, exclusive content, a newsletter, or just your company news).
What does this metric tell us?
When the number of subscribers in your list is rising, it can mean you started a new campaign to generate traffic (that can be a paid campaign, an organic campaign, a new partnership…). It can mean your forms at your website and other media are working fine – also that the integration with your e-mail marketing tool is well set, your page has a good call to action and a good headline…
The growth of subscribers means that your visitors are seeing good value in the content you offer through your e-mail campaigns.
What can be wrong?
When the number of subscribers keeps falling, what can be happening?
There are a few things that can be responsible for that. For example, it could be happening in a decrease of traffic at your squeeze page – the paid campaign has finished, a drop of ranking at Google, some offer that is not appealing to your public anymore… Or it can be a problem with your form integration.
Those two factors are easy to identify and correct. But there’s another point: the value you offer to your contact list. Think about how many e-mails people receive each day – a lot, believe me. If people do not see a good value in what you are delivering, they can unsubscribe from your list.
So, always focus on producing content according to your audience’s needs – and don’t forget to use the right segmentation.
Open Rate
Open rate is the percentage of people who receive your e-mails and open them. We know sometimes people don’t open all your messages, and we are gonna talk about some reasons it might be happening.
What does this metric tell us?
When you have a good open rate…
– Wait… What can I consider a good open rate?
Depends…
– But depends on what?
Depends on how many e-mails you are sending, how long people are on your list, your previous open rate, how many tests you’ve done… A lot of things.
Coming back to the point, when you have a good open rate it indicates that your subscribers have interest in your content, that they know the sender’s name (you have no idea how much it interferes at your open rate. People are much more likely to open an e-mail from someone whose name they recognize), the subject or e-mail’s preview (you know that the first line you see in your inbox before you open an e-mail? That’s the one) calls your subscriber’s attention.
What can be wrong?
What to do when your open rate starts to drop?
The quality of your list is a big factor that interferes with your open rate – if you’re not sending your e-mails to the right people there’s a big chance they stop opening them. Your subject line also has a good impact on this metric.
The tip is: do more tests! Test your subject line, your list segmentation, your e-mail preview… This way you can understand better your subscriber’s needs and desires.
Click Rate
This metric talks about the number of people who click on the links you put in your e-mail campaigns – any link. What does affect this metric?
What does this metric tell us?
When someone clicks on a link in a campaign you sent them, it means they have an interest in the content, the e-mail was well written – and was able to get the readers involved on the e-mail until they clicked on the links that needed to be clicked. Oh, and don’t forget that the links were well placed.
Links well placed? What do you mean? We will talk about that in a bit…
What can be wrong?
My e-mails click rate is not good. Nobody clicks on the links I put… What can be happening?
The quality of your list (spoiler alert: this is gonna show up a lot here!) influences that – remember: the right message to the right people, or it can become a problem. The e-mail’s copy – text needs to guide the reader into clicking. And take time on the CTA!
Another point is a poor insertion of links – it normally works better to put more than one link along with the e-mail than just one in the end.
You’re probably asking what about the “links well placed” thing? I didn’t forget.
You can’t complain that people are not clicking on the links you put in your e-mail campaigns if you put the links in a hidden place, lost in the middle of the text, without a clear Call to Action. Remember to ask the slightest effort from your subscriber: make clicking in the links easier for him. 😉
Unsubscribers
This is a metric that talks about the number of people who ask to leave your list and no longer receive your e-mails.
What does this metric tell us?
When people ask to leave your list, it means that the content you’re offering is not valuable for them at the moment. This lack of interest can be caused by a number of factors, like the frequency you send e-mails – the subscriber may have no time to see all the e-mails you send and they can think there’s no value for them there.
Or maybe the subscriber just changed the e-mail address and decided to unsubscribe the e-mail that it’s not useful anymore.
What can be wrong?
I’ll give you a piece of candy if you can guess the first factor…
I bet you guessed right: the quality of your list! Here’s an important point to pay attention to: you know when we say you should never buy a list of e-mails from someone else. A list you buy like that is just adding quantity, not quality. The quality of your list matters – a lot!
As mentioned before, the frequency you send e-mails can also trigger some people to unsubscribe from your list. So, pay attention to your list and your subscriber’s behavior – it won’t help to send 10 e-mails a week if your subscribers don’t open more than 2, right?
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate represents the number of e-mails sent that are not delivered to the subscribers. There are two types of bounce: soft bounce and hard bounce.
The soft bounce happens when an e-mail address is mistyped – a wrong letter, comma instead of a dot, and so on – or your subscriber’s inbox is full, for example.
The hard bounce is more serious. It can mean that your subscriber had marked your e-mail as spam (we’ll talk more about that later) or that the server that sends your campaigns is on some blacklist of some e-mail’s server (and it is not necessarily your fault!).
Andreza, how does it work?
When you use a tool to send your e-mails (like MailChimp, Infusion, AWeber, for example), it uses the same server to send your e-mails and other client’s e-mails too. So, if one of these people has a lot of spam abuse reports it can be bad for everyone who is using the same server.
What does this metric tell us?
The bounce rate is going to tell you how many of your subscribers are not receiving your e-mails. Besides that, it’s a good indicator to pay attention to the kind of bounce – soft or hard – it is showing.
What can be wrong?
Your subscribers can be mistyping their e-mails when subscribing, someone can be using boots to subscribe to your website and receive your content (like an e-book, infographic, or white paper) or your server can be blocked by the e-mail’s server.
Spam Abuse
This is another self-explanatory metric. It’s going to talk about how many spam abuse report the e-mails you send are receiving.
What does this metric tell us?
What happens when your subscribers are marking your e-mails as spam? They can not recognize the sender’s name on your campaigns (that’s why it’s important to keep it all together), the subject of the e-mails can be leading the receiver’s to think that is a spam e-mail or maybe they don’t remember to have subscribed to your list (it happens).
What can be wrong?
What can be factors that lead people to report your e-mails as spam? I could offer another candy for the answer, but I’m sure you already know by now: quality of your list! How can you get a good match between your subscriber and your content if your list has no quality or no interest in what you have to offer?
Never stop paying attention to your subscriber’s behavior within the e-mails you send.
And last but not least…
Conversion Rate
What is the conversion rate on your e-mail campaign? It is how much your subscribers made the action you choose that was the main reason for your e-mail – the one you define back in the planning stage of your e-mail marketing strategy. It can be a lot of things: subscribe to a squeeze page, visit your website or blog, answer to research to get to know them better, update their information on your list…
It’s basically anything you define as the goal of your e-mail campaign.
What does this metric tell us?
This metric is going to tell us about how close you and your list are – the better the relationship you have with your list, the easier it gets to understand how they behave and what they need, so you can offer them exactly that.
What can be wrong?
What can harm your e-mail’s conversion rate? The writing – as I said before, the e-mail needs to be well written, get your reader involved, and lead to taking the action you want them to.
Important to mention: do not choose a lot of goals for just one e-mail campaign. It confuses your subscriber and asks for more effort than it should. If you want your subscriber to click on a link that leads to your blog, that is your focus. You cannot ask them to visit your blog, answer a form, see your new video from your channel and download your new e-book all at once.
And, of course, we can’t forget the quality of your list. But by now you know the reason why, right?
I hope this post was helpful for you to start using your e-mail marketing metrics to improve your business results. And don’t forget to tell me what you think. 🙂
See you in the next one 🙂