Understanding Your Email Analytics
Sara Qualls
Ed Tech ?? I help businesses amplify their ideas + stories through Digital Marketing so they can make an impact ?? Social Media | Email | SEO | Community Builder ?? People Enthusiast
What does "email analytics" even mean?
In a nutshell, email analytics is just a fancy way of saying how we track what your email subscribers are interacting with. From copywriting to design choices to your offer, understanding your email analytics will help you learn what your audience is into and what they're not.
Email marketing works.
If someone tells you email marketing is dead, I want you to RUN. It still is the move effective marketing tool to have in your toolbox as a small business owner. The ROI for email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent. You read that right. With that kind of potential, it's important to continually build your email list.
Treat them differently. Because people are different.
It seems like a no-brainer when you put it that way but so many people do not take the time to segment or split up their email list into different groups. To be the most effective, you need to personalize your emails as much as possible. And that starts with segmenting. Think about it. Even if you start segmenting your list with the basic things of gender and age. Are you going to craft your message by greeting Grandma Berta with a "Hey Sis!"? Probably not. Unless you like wasting your time.
What to do after you've divided up your email lists?
If you're a bit of a data nerd like me, you'll enjoy this part. We need to figure out what all of those numbers and percentages even mean.
Even if the results of your email are bad, you can still learn to love this part. Why? Because it's going to give you answers. It will help you save time down the road in understanding how to talk to your people.
Deliverability Rate
Deliverability Rate: The percentage of emails sent that were successfully delivered.
Formula: The number of emails that reach the inbox divided by the number of emails sent.
Pro Tip: This number doesn't include emails that are sent to spam or bulk folders.
Did It Make It In Their Inbox?
Before you can even market to your audience, you need to make sure your emails are arriving in their inbox. On average if you are seeing a number of 95% or above, you can breathe a sigh of relief. If you are below that, it's time to investigate why it's not making it past email servers. After all you took all that time to create the perfect copy but it's just a bunch of words if nobody gets to read it.
Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that weren't delivered.
Hard Bounce: This email was completely undeliverable and your email service provider will not even attempt it again.
Pro Tip: Hard bounces usually mean that the email address just doesn't exist.
Soft Bounce: It's not the end of the world...yet. Your email service provider will attempt it after a few days. If it continues to bounce, they will note it but will still attempt a few more times before they take it out of your email list.
Pro Tip: Common soft bounces are due to server/mailbox full, email is too large to deliver, or the server could be down.
Getting a hard pass before you can even explain?
Again, what's the point in taking the time to perfect your copywriting if nobody will read it. On average, across all industries, you can expect a 2% and under to be standard as a bounce rate. If you have more than that, start investigating ASAP. It can directly affect your your sender reputation with email servers.
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Open-Rate
Open-Rate: The percentage of recipients that opened your email.
Formula: The number that people that opened your email divided by the number of people you sent the email to.
Pro Tip: Try testing the time of day you send your email to help increase your open rate. Think about the routine of your audience and when they may read their emails.
Did you get their attention?
This rate is a good indicator of if your marketing strategy is getting your reader's attention. This is why segmenting your list is so important. You can come up with a subject line that will relate to that specific group. People don't want another generic email. They want something that is useful for them.
190+ million emails are sent daily. Of that huge number, 80% of them are left unopened. You want to give yourself every chance to make it in that 20%.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Click-Through-Rate: The percentage of recipients that clicked on at least one link in your email.
Formula: The number of people that clicked divided by the number of delivered emails. Multiply that by 100 and you've got your email CTR percentage.
Did it flip or flop?
This magical number is going to start to give you direction on where to start tweaking things. It could be your copy, design, subject line, and the list goes on. Your end goal is to get them to your website, see your offer or services, and then hopefully, purchase!
Fun fact: 47% of emails are opened because of the subject line. However, within that same group of people, 69% of them are sent to the spam folder. So, the subject line is a huge factor in your CTR.
Across all industries, the average CTR is 2.69%. If you're not hitting this, examine these factors that may be affecting your CTR.
Click-To-Open-Rate (CTOR)
Click-To-Open-Rate: Percentage of recipients who opened your email and clicked a link.
Formula: The number of unique clicks divided by the number of unique opens.
Pro Tip: If Susan clicks two links in your email, she will still just count as one click and not two.
Meh? Or Magical?
This is where you'll get to see how effective your copy and design were. The higher the number would indicate that a reader found your email not only valuable but relevant and engaging. If you're not achieving an average CTOR of 10.5%, figure out what will generate interest and the action you want your customer to take.
To improve your CTOR, check for these:
So those are some basics for you to start with. Get ahead of your competitors by taking the time to actually understand what your audience is telling you before they click that dreaded unsubscribe button.