Abstract
- Email marketing metrics. Successful email campaigns focus on detailed business metrics, far beyond opens and clicks.
- Diverse strategies are required. Tailor your email metrics to specific business types, such as retail, B2B, subscription services, and media.
- Benchmark wisely. Accurately measure the success of your email program using benchmarks that match the scope and size of your business.
It's frustrating to hear “it depends” when you need an answer, but it's far worse to get an oversimplified answer that negates all the nuance of the situation. This is often the case with email marketing metrics.
Email opens? Clicks? Revenue? You've probably seen these listed as the end goal for your email program. And they may be for you. But probably not. And even if you have one or more of these email marketing metrics, they may not be the only metrics you should consider.
That's because every industry is unique, and that uniqueness needs to be reflected in your email program's overall mission and key performance indicators. So there are some things in common. The fourth edition of my book Email Marketing Rules describes his four buckets into which corporate email programs tend to fall:
- Revenue-driven email program
- Prospect-driven email program
- Retention-focused email program
- Engagement-driven email program
Each of these types of programs has its own goals and therefore its own key performance indicators (KPIs). Let's talk about each one.
Related article: The four stakeholders involved in each email marketing program and what they want
4 Important Email Marketing Metrics
Revenue-driven email program
Retailers, direct-to-consumer brands, and other B2C companies are likely to focus their email marketing efforts on increasing sales, which is measured by tracking metrics such as:
- revenue
- profit
- average order size
- order frequency
- Aim to reduce order returns
- customer lifetime value
Prospect-driven email program
B2B companies, financial services companies, insurance companies, and sellers of high-value durable goods focus their email marketing efforts on acquiring qualified leads to pass on to sales reps and agents. You will be tracking important metrics.
- Filling out lead forms (webinars, reports, etc.)
- Volume of calls and emails sent to sales representatives.The goal is usually to increase
- marketing qualified leads
- Sales qualified leads
- Lead quality and lead scoring
- Conversion rate from lead to deal
- Pipeline value and pipeline growth
- closing time
Retention-focused email program
B2B services and B2C subscription-based companies are likely to focus on customer satisfaction and retention by tracking metrics such as:
- Email engagement (opens and clicks)
- Web page visits or app sessions from emails
- Volume of customer service calls and emails. Reduction is usually the goal.
- Number of monthly active users
- Annual recurring revenue
- Update rate
Engagement-driven email program
Media companies, consumer goods companies, and manufacturers are likely to focus on engagement, which is measured by metrics such as:
- Email engagement (opens and clicks)
- Web page visits or app sessions from emails
- Time spent on site or app
- Social media initiatives
- evangelism
Your first thought might be, “Most of them aren't even email marketing metrics!” And you're right. Most of the metrics you use to measure your email program have nothing to do with email and everything to do with metrics you use to measure your business. Email marketers need to track subscriber activity down the funnel as much as possible to truly demonstrate effectiveness.
This doesn't mean that measuring email marketing metrics like opens, clicks, inbox placements, and unsubscribes isn't important. they are. However, these metrics are typically indicators of the health of your email program, not its performance.
The next thing to think about is, “Our email program spans two or more of these four groups.” That may certainly be the case. For example, many B2B companies always have one part of their program that is lead-driven for acquiring new customers and another part of their program that is retention-driven for retaining existing customers. Use the right metrics to measure different aspects of your email marketing program and its different audiences.
Related article: 4 reasons why brands are getting their digital marketing metrics wrong
Each campaign has different goals.
Even if your brand uses email in a unique way, you'll almost certainly need to consider additional secondary metrics for other types of email programs. That's because the goals of every campaign you send may not be the same.
For example, while retailers overwhelmingly send out promotional campaigns aimed at driving sales, many also send out events, articles, etc. aimed at driving engagement and evangelism (which are precursors to purchases). We also send campaigns promoting , videos, and social media content. Most retailers also send re-engagement campaigns that focus solely on generating measurable opens or clicks.
For each campaign you send or automation program you set up, understand your goals and measure its success using the right metrics.
Related article: 10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes and Solutions
What about external benchmarks?
Everyone likes benchmarking because everyone wants to compare their performance to others. Some want to see how great they are, while others just want to make sure they're not (too) behind.
However, because of these four very different ways of using email marketing, benchmarking can be misleading. If the target audience used to build the benchmark doesn't use email marketing more or less the same way you use email marketing, the benchmark will be less useful.
Typically, brands look for a wide world of benchmarks. However, if that world is full of companies similar to yours, you may be better off choosing a smaller world. For example, some ESPs specialize in servicing retailers and their B2B brands. If so, these ESP benchmarks will be more useful than ESP benchmarks that focus on the needs of small businesses or large enterprises across many industries.
Some ESPs and third-party sources analyze benchmarks by company size or industry. Pay attention to how many companies these numbers are based on to make sure it's truly representative.
That being said, even if you can get benchmarks that match well with your email program, we recommend focusing primarily on using external benchmarks as guide rails. It will tell you if an aspect of your program deviates significantly from the norm.
Otherwise, focus on internal benchmarking and planned program improvements. The best benchmarks are last quarter and last year's performance. If you consistently exceed them, your program will do well.
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