Are Your Email Campaigns Working?

Email marketing uses strategic email campaigns designed to deliver your company’s messages to your target market, engage the audience, and ultimately drive action. It’s a cost-effective way to stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds.

But if you haven’t set specific goals for the campaign, how will you know whether or not it’s working? Determining goals for the campaign before you begin will allow you to measure the campaign’s success, and which metrics you need to track in order to see how you are achieving your overall goals.

Analytics are the only surefire way to make sure your email marketing campaigns are working the way you want them to.

There are many tools and metrics marketers can use to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns. Below are a few of the top metrics used by marketing professionals to track email results. Remember, the metrics you select depend on your company's goals and campaign strategy - pick what works best for you!

1. Conversion Rate

This metric measures how many responses a particular email receives, or how many contacts were converted into potential customers by that email. The conversion rate is one of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of an email campaign.

2. List Growth Rate

Companies should aim for a low unsubscribe rate, and instead try to increase their lists of contacts. This metric measures how quickly a company’s list is growing.

3. Open Rate

The open rate measures (you guessed it!) how many people actually opened a particular email. This metric provides insight on which subject lines and what dates and times received the most opens.

4. Click-through Rate

This metric allows marketers to better understand whether the content of the email is reaching your target audience’s needs and interests, and can also provide insight into how the link placement, wording and color usage are working. The click-through rate measures how many people click on the link in the email to visit the company’s website.

5. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate measures how many emails are returned (or bounce back) after they are sent out, or how many recipients did not receive the message. There are soft bounces, such as a full inbox, or hard bounces, such as invalid email addresses. Like the unsubscribe rate, companies should strive to maintain a low bounce rate.

So it’s up to your company to decide which metrics to measure based on your goals, or which will best help their email campaigns succeed. Start tracking results now in order to produce better email campaigns and maximize the impact your company can have through this marketing strategy.