When you invest time and efforts into drafting an email and sending it to your subscribers, not to forget the monetary aspect, you ought to know whether or not your email was effective. It is important for you to be able to justify the spend on email marketing.
At this moment, as we are talking, 82% of the B2B and B2C companies are using the email marketing technology. A lot of these companies are adopting automation software to make the transition to email marketing easy and comfortable.
The reason being: automated emails get 70.5% higher open rates and 152% more click-through rates as compared to the regular emails.
Businesses are spending a lot of time, as a result, trying to carve a good campaign, which will win over the audiences, and turn their subscribers into customers.
However, the question remains- how will you measure the effectiveness of the campaign? What are the metrics that you will look up to get the much needed revenue?
Let’s have a quick look at the metrics that play an important role in measuring email marketing effectiveness.
The Metrics that Matter
#1 Open Rates
When you send out an email, the first thing that you measure to know whether or not the campaign was effective, is the open rate. How many of those who have received the email from your list, have actually opened the emails. It is important to also check how many of the emails you sent bounced back, which will also help determine this metric.
#2 Click-through Rates
It is not necessary that the person who has opened your email, has actually clicked on the call-to-action button and taken the necessary action. You need to check this metric as well, as that will give you an insight into the number of people who actually felt the email was relevant, and went on to read the contents and click-through the buttons.
#3 Unsubscribe Rate
How many, from your subscribers list, unsubscribed after they received an email from you? It is important for you to understand that there are different reasons why people tend to unsubscribe. Either they expected fewer mails from you or, they found that the mails you sent them were irrelevant.
#4 Complaint Rate
It is important you track the complaint rate for the emails you have sent, and check for the reasons why you have received complaints against the emails sent. It could be due to the fact that you bought the list or, you have not added the unsubscribe link to your email. The complaint rate can also help you understand the level of your brand
#5 Delivery Rates
It is important for you, as a marketer, to make sure you reach every one in your target market. A good deliverability rate essentially means that you have spread your wings across the target market. If you have not been able to achieve a good delivery rate, then you need to work on your subscriber list.
#6 Bounce Rates
Imagine not having reached the receiver’s inbox or, worse still being told that the subscriber does not exist. This means you need to rework on your email list, and if you don’t do this immediately, it could affect your email marketing campaign.
#7 Conversion Rates
This is the most important metric, one that also helps you track the revenue generated via email marketing. You ought to take this metric very seriously. A successful conversion happens when the subscriber clicks on the button and takes the necessary action to become your customer.
Now that you are aware of all the metrics that you need to know, let’s take a look at all the different ways in which you can track revenue generated through email marketing.
Tracking Revenue through Email Campaigns
#1 Sales Generated by Direct Click
Every email comes with a link that takes you to the part of the site where you can take the action. In this method, you tend to track the revenue that was generated when the user clicked on the link, and went to the website and completed the sales. There are coded links that tend to track this part.
How this helps? You get to track the immediate sales generated by email marketing. However, if the subscriber was interrupted while taking the action, and comes again via another channel, then the sales would not be counted as click-through sales. So, the revenue thus generated would not be attributed to email marketing.
#2 Match-back analysis of sales
The sales that occurs minutes after the email was sent via other channels is analyzed, and the customers converted are credited to the email marketing revenue generation. This method uses time-frame technique to analyze the sales that happened, and attributes all the sales within a particular time frame from the email to email marketing campaign.
The flip side of this technique is that the sales that did not occur due to the email marketing efforts made by you will still be credited to email marketing.
#3 Code redemption tracking
A lot of brands tend to send offer codes as part of the email campaign. These offer codes, when used, are tracked and a record it maintained. Every time an offer code sent in an email is redeemed, it will be considered as a revenue generated via email marketing. There are chances that the codes that you have sent via emails have been leaked to the coupon sites, and a lot of people are redeeming these coupons from the affiliate sites. At this point, you wont know whether the coupon strategy was effective due to emails or not.
If you feel the revenue generated by the email marketing efforts is not up to the mark, then here are a few things you might want to reconsider while sending emails.
- Time your emails perfectly so that you get a good open rate. For instance, if you know that the people in your target group tend to open an email at 12PM, make sure you time your email campaigns accordingly. There are some safe time zones, when you will be able to maximize your open rates. Research the time, and send your emails during those hours
- The email should be relevant to the subscribers. Make sure your subject line gives a hint on what the email is about. The topic of the email is also important if you want to gain better conversions with your email marketing effort. If the subject is neither relevant nor personalized, then your campaign may be rendered ineffective
- To ensure better click-through rates, you ought to test your anchor test, and make sure you have a strong CTA, which makes the user want to complete the action. Powerful words in the CTA will definitely up your revenue
- Finally, you need to work on the subject line. If it is not precise, attractive and meaningful, then your open-rate suffers majorly.
Wrap up
You need to identify your email marketing goals, and adhere to them when designing your email marketing campaign. Make sure you know which metrics to track for your campaign, and what metrics match your need to measure the effectiveness of the email.
You should sign up for at least one strong revenue tracking method, which will help you understand where the sale is coming from, and how effective your email campaign was.
In order to maximize your efforts, don’t forget to send the emails on a particular time.
