[Email Marketing] 04. Measure Results

Determine if your email was successful

Bounce rates: try to keep bounce rates low to less than 1%

hard bounce: the email address is not valid or it doesn't exist.

soft bounce: the mailbox is temporarily unavailable, full, the message too large, or the server down. 

Email metrics that matter

Open rate: 

The percentage of list subscribers that open an email

Click rate:

percentage of totalrecipientss who clicked any tracked link in the campaign. 

Clicked: 

The number of recipients who clicked any tracked link. You can click this number in your report to open a list of subscribers who clicked.

Total clicks: 

Total number of times any tracked link was clicked. This count includes multiple clicks from individual recipients.

Conversion rate: 

The number of subscribers that performed a specific action on your website after clicking on the email(i.e. purchase).

Other metrics

The Good

Forwards (customers love your emails so much that they are forwarding them to their friends!)

The Social Stuff (Facebook likes, tweets, etc.)

The Bad

Unsubscribe rate. This should be kept at a minimum. For example, <1%. If your unsubscribe rate is too high, consider reducing the frequency of your emails or analyzing how you can make your content more relevant and engaging to your customers. It’s important that you provide a means to unsubscribe, or you run the risk of falling into the next bucket.

The Ugly

Abuse/complaint rate. Most mailbox providers have a way for customers to flag emails as spam. While it’s possible for subscribers to mark your emails as spam accidentally, if a high number of customers are complaining about your emails, you need to change course immediately. A high abuse rate not only spawns enemies of your brand and your business, but it can also get you flagged as a spammer. Do not, under any circumstances, let this number get too high.

A/B testing in email best practices

• limit your A/B test to isolate only one variable to test at a time
• choose a success metric based on your campaign objectives
• use a large sample size to conduct your A/B test

Opportunities for A/B testing

• from name
• subject line
• pre-header
• content(images, copy, or call-to-action)
• send time, date, or day