Knowing email marketing KPIs and tracking them helps you create better email marketing campaigns and achieve your goals. Email marketing is the best method to build a relationship with your target audience and generate relevant traffic that results in increased revenue.

Regardless of your industry and your products or services, you can always use email to increase your sales. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 81% of B2B marketers use the email newsletter as a form of content marketing.[1]

To ensure that your email marketing efforts are paying off, to ensure that each of your email marketing campaigns is a true success and to increase the ROI of your email marketing over time, you need to understand which email marketing KPIs to track and how to measure the results of your email efforts.

In this article, we’ll review the 11 most important email marketing KPIs for measuring the success of your email marketing campaigns, how to calculate them, steps to take to improve results and create data-driven strategies to increase your sales and brand awareness.

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What Are Email Marketing KPIs?

Email marketing KPIs are metrics that help you build better email marketing campaigns. They measure the performance of critical elements of your email campaigns, improving marketing efforts and aligning them with business goals.

To determine the success of your campaigns and grow your audience, you need to analyze them from all angles. Monitoring the performance of your campaigns through email marketing KPIs and comparing them to previous performance, trends and industry norms allows you to make data-driven decisions that will improve your email marketing campaigns.

What Are Your Email Marketing Goals?

To find, track and effectively use the right email marketing KPIs for your business, the first thing you need to do is identify the primary objective of each email you send. Your goal may be to acquire leads, increase brand awareness, increase customer engagement, generate direct revenue, grow your subscriber list, collect additional customer data or collect additional customer data.

Once you have determined your email marketing goals, you can choose the most relevant and important email marketing metrics to determine how you are progressing towards that goal. Each email marketing campaign may be different, especially if you have different goals for different campaigns (for example, generating leads and increasing subscribers), so the marketing KPIs may also change as your business needs and goals change.

Whatever your goal, there are some basic email marketing KPIs that every email marketer should learn to track.

Read more: Email Marketing Beginner’s Ultimate Guide

 11 Best Email Marketing KPIs to Measure the Success of Your Email Campaign

Tracking these eleven essential email marketing KPIs will help you get the most out of your company’s email marketing.

   1. Email Delivery Rate

Email delivery is usually the first KPI measured after an email is sent. This KPI tracks the number of emails successfully delivered to a recipient’s inbox. The delivery rate of your emails depends on many elements, such as the email service provider, the quality of the email list, the frequency of the emails, etc.

If you have a larger deliverability problem, you will see your delivery rate drop, which may indicate that you are in trouble altogether. A delivery rate below 97% should get your attention.

You may need to check the way you collect email addresses. Using real-time verification at the time of collection can be helpful in this case.

Another common reason given for undelivered emails is the low reputation score of the sender. This is a score assigned by an Internet service provider to an email sender that is calculated on a scale of 1 to 100.

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The higher your score, the more likely you are to reach your recipient’s inbox. So make sure you have a good reputation as a sender. It is important to note that a high delivery rate does not mean high inbox placement as your email may be delivered, but end up in the junk or spam folders, where the recipient will not see it.

This may be because of your email service provider or because you used spam trigger words in your message text. Or because you used subject lines that look like spam. However, because these emails have been delivered, you will not count them as “undelivered”.

2. Unique Opening Rate (UOR)

The open rate is the second most important deliverability measure. It is the number of emails opened out of the total number of emails sent.  This KPI shows you both that the emails are reaching the inbox of the customers and that the subject line has caught their attention.

This is a sign of good audience engagement, which is usually the result of a good brand reputation, an attractive subject line, or relevant and catchy content. According to Campaign Monitor, the average opening rate for 2020 across all sectors was 18 percent.[2]

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How to calculate the open rate?

To calculate the open rate, simply divide the number of emails opened by the total number of emails sent.

(Number of opens/emails sent) * 100

A problem often associated with this method is that you have to take into account the number of bounced emails that may have come back to the total you sent. You can solve this problem by taking the total number of emails sent and subtracting the number of bounced emails; then take that number and divide it by the total number of emails opened.

Open rate is actually an inaccurate and unreliable metric for marketers, as an email is only considered opened if the recipient also receives the images embedded in that message. If a large percentage of your email users have image blocking enabled on their email client, that means that even if they open the email, they won’t be included in your open rate.

How can you improve email open rates?

•  Write great headlines that make subscribers want to open your message.

A low open rate can usually be attributed to poor subject lines and email opens. That said, email clients can also filter your content into spam folders before your audience has a chance to read it.

The more readers who open an email, the more likely you are to make the sale. Avoid writing headlines that are an invitation to buy. Move from a pure sales approach to a more narrative approach and be more persuasive by using narration and storytelling even in the subject line. Your open rate can be improved by different factors that you can A/B test:

Try different subject lines, sender names, greetings, and emojis. The sender’s name is the main reason people open their emails. The more familiar the name, the better. That’s because when they know you better, they trust you more.

• Make the pre-header a complement to the subject line.

The header is the short line of text that appears in the recipient’s inbox after the subject line. It is the text that repeats the information from the subject line. The pre-header is a strategic element because it functions at the threshold of the marketing funnel as an element used to convince recipients to open an email, which certainly helps increase open rates.

Create a pre-header that complements the subject line, offering additional meaning, more detail.

•  Try different times of the day and week to understand when your customers are interested in your emails.

 This can be very helpful in planning campaigns and getting better conversion rates.

• Check the average number of people on your email list who responded to your message.
• Send personalized content, as it is more likely to be successful.

The more you can segment your audience and send them specific information, the more likely they are to be intrigued and enticed to open an email.

• Ask your customers for feedback to find out exactly what users like and dislike about your content.
• Send fewer emails to the audience that is least engaged.

Sending fewer emails with the same number of opens per customer would also mean an increase in your open rate! This KPI is useful to know if customers are returning to emails containing your product or service or other loyalty program information.

If they do, you may want to consider sharing this information in a way that is easier to find, so they don’t search for old emails. This KPI also helps you understand that one domain is performing much worse than the top-performing domain.  For example, Gmail may have a higher open rate than Hotmail.

Mobile Open Rate

This metric works the same way as the normal open rate, except that it applies specifically to mobile devices like phones and tablets. Note, however, that this will also be affected by Apple’s email privacy protection feature, and not just because of the inability to track opens.

PPM prevents us from seeing what type of device or operating system a user is on, which means we will no longer know if users are opening their messages on a desktop or mobile device when they choose PPM.

3. Email Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your emails leading to your website. This KPI is one of the most relevant to measure because it shows you that your recipients not only open your emails but also actively engage with your message.

It indicates good subscriber engagement and active interest in your emails and products. These are the people who want to know more about your brand, products, and services. Of course, before aiming for a high click-through rate, you should aim for a good delivery and open rate.

Indeed, the more emails are delivered and opened, the higher the chances that someone will click on your links. CTR is especially useful for evaluating the performance of your email campaigns because it shows that your subscribers are interacting with your brand.

High click-through rates indicate that your audience wants to learn more and engage with each ad. In addition to tracking the total number of clicks, most email marketing solutions allow you to see which links each user clicked on.

This is a great way to see exactly which parts of each email were successful and which could be improved. You can also test two versions of each ad using the click-through rate to measure their effectiveness.

A low CTR may mean that customers were not convinced to open the email, or they opened it but were not convinced to click.

How to calculate the CTR of e-mails?

You can calculate the percentage of your click-through rate by dividing the number of unique clicks on the links in your e-mails by the total number of e-mails sent, multiplied by 100. Keep in mind that the total number of emails sent does not include those that bounced for some reason.

(Total clicks/number of emails sent) * 100

How can I improve my email click-through rate?

To get more people to click on your links:

– Keep your emails to a minimum and aim for the basics.

– Format all your emails and make them mobile-friendly.

– Motivate your readers and give them a reason to click.

– Create a clear call to action and repeat it throughout the text of the email.

– Add a video to make the email text more interesting.

– Optimize the speed of your site

If a customer clicks on a link to your site, but your pages are slow to load, they are having a bad experience with your brand.

Mobile Click-Through Rates

Mobile click-through rates work the same way as their desktop counterparts but are tied to mobile devices such as phones and tablets. Like the mobile open rate, the mobile click-through rate will be affected by the PPM.

But if you’re primarily looking to reach your audience on their mobile device, it’s good to keep in mind that weekends are generally the best time to do so.

4. Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)

The CTOR measures the number of clicks in relation to the number of openings. It is therefore the most accurate indicator to measure the level of interaction that messages can trigger.

How to calculate the CTOR of e-mails?

(unique clicks/unique opens) * 100

Keep in mind that a short read time and one-click means that the customer found what was important almost instantly, but a long read time and no click may indicate that the customer did not find the content they were looking for.

If you see a low CTR, but a high CTOR, it usually means that customers were not convinced to open an email, but once they did, they engaged. This is a key performance indicator to keep an eye on, but not a critical business metric.

How can you improve email open rates?

• Be sure to study your click-through metrics by the time of day, if possible.

If you notice a trend such as an increase in shares between a specific time period, try sending an email at that time for your next campaign. You may find that you’ll increase your click-through rate even more by simply responding when your audience prefers to read emails.

5. Unsubscribe Rate

Unsubscribe rate is another key performance indicator for email marketing. It is the percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your email list after opening a given email. The unsubscribe rate simply tells you how many recipients clicked on the unsubscribe link in your email.

 This KPI is important because sending emails to people who are not interested in your emails can hurt your email deliverability in general. But your unsubscribe rate helps you get more out of your email marketing campaign by making sure you’re on the right track.

 To make sure you’re on track, the number of people who unsubscribe should always be lower than the number of new subscribers. But you need to prioritize this email marketing KPI because it tells you how your subscribers are finding your emails and if they are interested in your emails.

Email providers will tell you how many people unsubscribed after receiving an email from you. In fact, every person who clicks on the unsubscribe link reduces your email client’s costs and also helps you increase your engagement rate.

But a low engagement rate can tell an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that your email content is not good enough. Email clients may be aware of low engagement rates and send emails from known gray mailers directly to recipients’ “junk” folders, which means your emails will technically be sent and delivered, but not necessarily seen.

How do I calculate the unsubscribe rate?

The calculation of your churn rate is quite simple.

(Number of unsubscribed users/sent emails) * 100

How to improve the e-mail unsubscribe rate?

Most of the time, emails that are too long, with too much text or images, unclear or poorly placed calls to action are the cause of email churn. To reduce your churn rates, list segmentation for A/B testing will be essential.

•  Reduce email frequency

To reduce your churn rates, you need to limit the frequency of sending for less engaged customers and make your emails relevant to the customer who receives them. Email frequency is one of the most common causes of high unsubscribe rates, as readers will lose interest if they constantly hear from you.

 Sending emails too frequently will also make each email less unique. You can offer new subscribers the opportunity to choose the frequency of emails they prefer. It’s better to keep in touch with occasional emails than to lose them completely when they unsubscribe.

• Ask for customer feedback

Customer feedback can also be used to identify other problems in your business. Don’t hesitate to periodically ask your audience for feedback.

This will help you solve their problems and develop more personalized marketing in the future. Users who unsubscribe can offer even more valuable feedback by letting you know exactly what is driving your audience away.

•  Segment your lists

Segment your lists based on recipient demographics to create more targeted emails, and your unsubscribe rates should stay low.

• Create a clear unsubscribe link

It’s essential that every email you send has a clear, easy-to-see unsubscribe link that takes users to an equally clear and functional page.  By clearly giving subscribers the option to unsubscribe, you’re letting them know that they can choose what type of content they receive from your brand and when which helps build trust.

If there is a sudden increase in unsubscribe rates, you need to analyze exactly what your subscribers didn’t like and avoid it in future campaigns.

6. Spam Complaint Rate

 Spam complaint rate is the key performance indicator for e-mail marketing that measures the number of people who report your e-mail as spam or mark it as unwanted. This means that you should immediately stop sending them e-mails.

The complaint rate per campaign is even more problematic than the churn rate. This KPI generates a message sent to both the user’s ISP and your email marketing service provider that you have sent spam.

And this can ultimately have a negative effect on the deliverability of your emails. Email service providers will start skipping the inbox and pushing your emails straight to the junk folder.

So it’s important to track this KPI and reduce it as much as possible. Spam complaints should represent less than 0.01% of your mailings.

How to reduce the spam complaint rate?

• Reduce the frequency of your emails

Just because you have permission to get into someone’s inbox doesn’t mean you should overwhelm people’s inboxes. But don’t send emails so infrequently that people forget they signed up to receive them.

•  Use relevant subject lines that don’t look like spam to build trust with your email list
•  Use a confirmed opt-in.

This means that when someone enters their email address to subscribe to your list, they must activate their subscription with a confirmation email, reducing the chance of unwanted subscriptions.

• Make the unsubscribe process easy

To avoid increasing complaint rates, highlight the unsubscribe option in your email because you are required by law to include one. Because if people can’t find it, they will go to the “spam” button.

It’s better for people to unsubscribe than to report your message as spam. Plus, it means your list won’t need to be cleaned up.

7. Email Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of the total number of emails sent that reach the recipient’s inbox. Emails can be returned to the sender for many reasons, but to keep things simple, marketers divide them into two categories: hard bounces and soft bounces.

Soft bounces are primarily due to a temporary delivery difficulty. This can be due to a full inbox or even a technical problem with the recipient’s mail server. The recipient’s server may hold these messages for delivery once the problem is resolved, or you may attempt a later transmission of the email to remedy the situation.

Hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address to which the message can never be delivered. You should automatically exclude any bounced addresses from your list and regularly clean your list of bad email addresses. Too many bounced emails can lead to brand damage.

How to measure email bounce rate?

The email bounce rate can be calculated by dividing the total number of bounced emails by the total number of emails sent.

(Emails bounced/Emails sent) * 100

A high bounce rate may indicate that your email list contains a large number of old or bad email addresses. The bounce rate helps determine the quality of your subscriber list.

How can you reduce the email bounce rate?

• Keep your database clean

Making sure your database stays clean means dealing with delivery errors in a timely manner. So buying email lists is not a good idea.  Not only is it not cost-effective, but it’s also counterproductive. The starting point of any email marketing activity is the collection of email addresses obtained with the consent of the recipient.

• Remove hard bounce email addresses

Immediately remove hard bounce email addresses from your list, mainly because it affects your reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

• Add a double opt-in form to prevent people from using fake email addresses

In general, you should aim for a bounce rate of less than 0.5%.

8. List Growth Rate

The list growth rate is the metric that tracks the growth rate of your list. It is the key performance indicator for email marketing, allowing you to evaluate the speed of growth of your email list over time.

 It is critical to email marketing success because it helps you reach a wider audience and achieve your marketing goals. A high growth rate indicates that your email list is growing quickly.

Of course, you should seek to grow your list to expand your reach, broaden your audience and position yourself as an industry thought leader. If your goal is to grow the top end of your funnel – get more visitors to your site, sign up more subscribers to your blog, get more people to use your free tools, etc. – then you need to grow your list.

Of course, the most important metric you need to track for this goal is the growth rate of your subscriber list. The obvious reason to grow your email list is to reach a wider audience and get more out of your email marketing. Try to increase your list growth rate, focusing on getting quality subscribers.

How to calculate the growth rate of the email list?

You can calculate it by taking the number of new subscribers minus the number of unsubscribes and bounces, then dividing that number by the total number of email addresses on your list, and finally multiplying it by 100.

([(number of new subscribers) minus (number of unsubscribes + email/spam complaints)]/total number of email addresses on your list]) * 100

How can you improve your email list growth rate?

•  Identify sources of new subscribers

To maximize your list growth, you need to know if your new subscribers are coming from a website sign-up form, forwarded emails, or online ads.

• Re-engage inactive subscribers

Regularly remove inactive subscribers from your email list to gain valuable data about your campaigns. Try to re-engage them by sending them a personalized confirmation email, offering them a coupon for a product discount, or reminding them what they’ll be missing out on if you remove them from your mailing list.

9. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

Email share/forward rate measures the percentage of recipients who have shared your email on a social network or forwarded it. Email shares/forwards indicate that readers find so much value in your content that they recommend it to others, extending the reach of your messages and even generating new subscribers in this way.

How to calculate the email share/forward rate?

The email share/forward rate can be calculated by dividing the number of forwards/shares by the total number of emails sent and multiplying by 100.

(Number of clicks on a share or forward button/total number of emails sent) * 100

Tracking this metric allows you to know which types of articles and offers tend to be shared the most, which allows you to plan your future email campaigns.

How to increase email forwarding and sharing rates?

• Include share buttons

 Make it easy for people to share your emails by including sharing buttons on social networks as well as a forwarding option in the email.

• Use single subject line emails

People will be more likely to share or forward an email if it has a single subject line, as this means there’s no need to explain which section to pay attention to or ask people to figure it out on their own.

10. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is more important than any other email marketing KPI, as one of the main reasons businesses build email lists is to increase revenue. Your conversion rate shows the number of email recipients who clicked on the call-to-action link in your email and performed the required action, such as registering for an event, signing up for a demo, purchasing a product, or filling out a form.

The conversion rate measures how much you spent on a campaign compared to the number of people who took the intended action, which shows whether the campaign is working or not. The conversion rate is directly related to the overall ROI of your marketing.

When you know how much you’ve spent and how many subscribers are converting, it’s easier to determine whether or not the money you’re investing in your campaign is paying off.

How to calculate the email conversion rate?

This key performance indicator is measured by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of emails sent.

(Number of people who took the desired action / Total number of emails sent) * 100

Email marketing campaigns have different objectives. Depending on what you want to achieve from your email marketing campaign, the conversion for you may be to register for a particular event, fill out a lead generation form or contact form, sign up for a product/service demo, download a free software tool or piece of content, purchase a product or sign up for a free trial.

Once your subscribers have opened your email, you need to convert them by getting them to take the action you want them to take such as downloading a software tool or free content, buying a product, or signing up for a free trial.

How to improve email conversion rates?

• Use an effective CTA

Tie the action you want your recipients to take directly to your CTA. You must have a clearly defined action that you want your recipients to take. Ideally, you should have one main action for customers; having more than one will confuse your results.

• Optimize your emails for mobile devices
• Add personalization

Customers expect personalized content more than ever. It’s essential to send relevant emails based on customer information. General content will lead your audience to ignore future emails or even unsubscribe from your newsletter.

To personalize your emails, you need to collect data such as age, income, gender, previous purchases, etc. from your customers and use it to segment. Then create more targeted emails and increase conversions.

• Take advantage of marketing automation

Email marketing automation allows you to send more personalized content based on specific triggers.  For example, with the help of email marketing automation, you can easily send a welcome email to new subscribers of your newsletter, which gives a positive impression of your brand and keeps them engaged for future interactions.

Email marketing automation also allows you to send cart abandonment emails to customers who abandoned their cart before purchase to simply remind them of the product they added to their cart and ask if they are still interested.

Sending reminder emails is one of the biggest sources of missed revenue for businesses that sell online, as it is always easier to sell to someone who has already expressed interest in a product.

With email marketing automation, you can even easily measure the conversion rate from other factors like opens or subscribers. Revenue per open allows you to measure the conversion rate from opens rather than delivered emails to better reflect the effectiveness of the content and offer.

Sometimes these changes can result in an increase in opens, so you need to know if revenue per open is increasing or decreasing. Calculating the conversion rate by revenue per subscriber allows you to measure the impact of changes in your e-mail strategy and the effectiveness of your e-mail marketing in terms of costs and revenues.

By finding out the revenue per subscriber, you can focus more on the particular demographic that brings you the most revenue or redirect your resources and change the emails.

11. Return On Investment (ROI)

Return on investment (ROI) is the most important key performance indicator of e-mail marketing because it measures the economic efficiency of your e-mail marketing efforts in relation to the time, personnel, and costs incurred to carry them out, in order to determine the added value, they bring to your company.

E-mail marketing is an investment with the highest ROI of all digital marketing strategies.

How do you calculate the return on investment (ROI) of e-mail?

The ROI percentage is calculated by taking the money earned, dividing it by the money spent, and multiplying that number by 100.

[(Value of sales related to an email campaign – Campaign costs)/Campaign costs] * 100

What makes ROI more difficult to calculate than other email marketing metrics is the difficulty of determining exactly how much you spent on a campaign.

How to improve email ROI?

• Segment and profile your emails
• Calculate revenue per email (ROI)

ROI will show you your overall ROI, but analyzing revenue per email will show you the success of each email. Tracking ROI will allow you to determine which emails are performing the best and if there are any that are dragging down your overall ROI.

Metrics such as clicks, web traffic, and conversations are the best way to track the ROI of a given email. Effective list segmentation will increase your ROI.

Perform An Email Marketing KPI Analysis

Email KPI analysis will help you determine the overall success of your campaigns. To get the most out of your email marketing strategy, you need to track and analyze a few email marketing KPIs on the relevant database.

Tracking and analyzing email performance indicators is quite tricky.  Having the right email analytics tools can make it easier for you. Most email marketing services platforms allow you to track email marketing KPIs and provide you with marketing reports on a schedule.

You need to review some metrics daily (open rate, open rate change, bounce rate), others weekly (overall campaign performance, campaign conversion, and revenue reports, click-through rates, spam complaint rates, unsubscribes, and active audience trends), and still others can only be checked monthly (opens per customer, revenue per customer, mobile open rate, email client share, spam score checks).

You can also analyze email marketing KPIs campaign by campaign. Choose what works best for you, taking into account your goals and available resources. By putting this data in context, you can determine the causes, then apply changes to improve your future campaigns.

Prioritize which KPIs to analyze based on the goals of your email marketing strategy and try to understand how the different email marketing KPIs influence each other to improve your campaigns more effectively.

Conclusion

I hope that reviewing these email marketing KPIs has helped you understand the best email marketing KPIs to monitor during your email campaign and the impact they can have on your business. Mastering email marketing can take time.  It involves regularly reviewing your practices for each campaign you create, overcoming mistakes, and making changes to optimize your emails and your results.

To ensure you’re on the right track with email marketing, it’s essential to choose email marketing KPIs wisely to effectively track and measure your email performance, the health of your email list, and your progress toward your goals. Measure the performance of your email campaigns against previous performance to see how much they have improved or deteriorated, keeping in mind that big changes, especially in email marketing, take time.