You just hit the send button for your last email marketing campaign. Now is the time to see what is happening to this campaign and your business.
Your campaign had a specific goal, which could be a direct purchase, but we know that emails sent to our audience often serve different purpose. So make sure you are confident about your campaign’s goal prior to sending it.
Check out our Email Marketing Framework to know how to set the goal for each campaign.
In order to help you understand and know how to calculate all metrics in email marketing and pick the right one for each campaign, we put this ultimate analytics list together.
Table Of Contents
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- Number of emails sent
- Open rate
- Click-Trough Rate (CTR)
- Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)
- Quality Score
- Unsubscribe rate
- Spam rate
- Social shares
- Forward
The Complete List of Email Marketing Metrics
Engagement KPIs
Our first category of metrics directly shows how well your email performed. Were you subscriber intrigued by the subject line? Did they have a reason to click on a link?
Number of emails sent
The total number of emails that you are sending on a campaign basis. This is not It is key to understand
Open rate
The first metric you need to get right. As if no one open your email, all the work you put into the copy or design goes to waste.
Main factors for a great open rate: the subject line and context of when the email is sent.
Compare your open rate with the industry
How to Calculate the Email Open Rate?
# Emails Opened / # Delivered Emails × 100
Click-Trough Rate (CTR)
For example, if you send an email campaign to 100 people and 10 people clicked on links within your email, then your click through rate would be 10%.
How to Calculate the Email Click-Through Rate?
# Emails Clicked / (# Delivered Emails – # Bounced Emails) × 100
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)
An alternative to the traditional CTR, CTOR will show you how well your email did for all of those that opened it. As CTR could be somehow mislead by the number of subscribers that never opened the emails.
How to Calculate the Email Click-to-Open Rate?
# Unique Clicks / # Unique Opens× 100
Quality Score
The only metric that tells you exactly how many people are annoyed versus how many people are delighted by the emails you are sending them.
So if you or your brand care about the right frequency and the best content for your emails. This is the metric for you.
At Airbnb, we always aimed at 80% or more.
I explained in a dedicated post how to improve your quality score.
How to Calculate the Email Quality Score?
1 — (Unsubscribes / Unique Clicks)
Unsubscribe rate
Someone didn’t appreciate what you sent them and decided that it is time to leave this list. They are hitting the unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email.
Please don’t add a confirmation or shady tactic on the page you redirected them. It makes things worse.
How to Calculate the Unsubscribe Rate?
# Emails Unsubscribed / # Delivered Emails × 100
Spam rate
Even worse than someone unsubscribing from your list: the person hitting the spam button. Note that this can also be done automatically by the inbox of your subscriber based on different factors.
How to Calculate the Spam Rate?
Emails Marked Spam / # Delivered Emails × 100
Social shares
If your email was a great one, it could be interesting to measure how many times it was shared over social media.
Check out our guide to creating viral email campaigns and our examples.
Forward
Old school email marketing that could be replaced today by the number of times your email was screenshotted.
Deliverability KPIs
The second category of metrics is around the technical performance of the email.
Number of emails delivered
This can be different than the number of emails sent.
How to Calculate the Delivery Rate?
# Emails Delivered / # Emails Sent × 100
Bounce rate (Soft or Hard)
This is telling you that out of all emails you sent, those were never delivered. Which can come from two categories of email bounces:
- A soft bounce may be a temporary problem with an email address, for example, a full inbox or a down server.
- A hard bounce indicates a permanent problem, like an incorrect email address.
How to Calculate the Bounced Rate?
# Emails Bounced / # Sent Emails × 100
Inbox Placement Metrics
In 2013 Google introduced the Gmail tabs and it changed email marketing forever. Where did your email land in someone’s inbox
You usually don’t get this information from your ESP. You need to work with another tool like Glockapps or Return Path to learn about this.
It is helpful to understand how Google and other ISP using different tabs sees your email. Overtime you can work on improving your placement aka How do I avoid having my emails into the Promotions tab?
Business metrics
Conversion rate
Finally, the KPI that matters the most: conversions.
This comes back to the beginning of this post if you had a specific goal for this email. How well did it perform against this goal?
From a sale to a webinar registration to scheduling a call, downloading a freebie, or anything else that is directly tied to the success of your business.
How to Calculate the Conversion Rate?
# Action taken / # Emails Sent × 100
Revenue per subscriber
How do you tell the ROI of email marketing? Well this is the best metric to answer this question: the revenue per subscriber.
Knowing this metric can help you determine which audience is responding better than others and help where to emphasize your effort next.
How to Calculate the Revenue per subscriber?
(Total Email Revenue – Overhead Cost) / # Subscribers
Revenue per campaign
Similarly to the above, you can look at it on a campaign level.
How to Calculate the Revenue per Campaign?
(Email Campaign Revenue – Campaign Cost) / Campaign Cost
Email Analytics FAQ
Why do I see more Clicks than opens? Email opens are tracked with an invisible pixel in the email body. If this pixel is blocked by X reason it will not be counted as open.
While the click tracking is counted in the URL and will be correctly accounted for.
Time to update your tracking spreadsheet
So how many of these do you already track?