Metrics like these allow you to establish a baseline and understand the effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) of your e-mail campaigns over time. The first step to tracking your e-mail campaigns is to look at the following metrics: open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate and unsubscribe rate. These four measurements allow you to get a good understanding of the effectiveness of your e-mail campaigns, and allow you to understand customers a little bit better. I purposely left out Deliverability Rate because most of you should have a very high deliverability rate. To help ensure that your delivery rate remains high, examine your means of collecting e-mail addresses. If you rent or buy lists, then expect this number to be low. But if you acquired these addresses from a sign-up form on your website or from customers who ordered from you in the past, then you can expect this number to be close to 100%. Here is what these four measurements can tell you:
• Open Rate – This metric will tell you whether or not people found your subject line compelling enough to open the e-mail and see what you have to offer. Pretend someone is walking through the mall and they walk past your store and see what is on display in the window. Was that window display attractive enough to get them in the door?
• Click-through Rates – This metric will tell you whether or not the body of the e-mail was persuasive enough. Did you have a desirable offer, significant savings, universal product that would appeal to a large group, or a strong call to action? This is like getting people in the door of your store. Did they find the offer convincing enough to enter your store, could they find the door easily, and was it easy to open?
• Conversion Rates - This metric will tell you whether or not someone actually purchased after they made it to your store. This is probably the most important metric, so you’ll want to ensure that it is set up properly. This is the metric that you will use to calculate your return-on-investment (ROI). E-mail has been one of the top marketing methods with a high ROI consistently over the years.
• Unsubscribe Rates - This metric tells you how many people signed a petition to get your store out of the mall in the first place. Okay, maybe not that harsh. But, these are the people on your list who do not associate with the e-mails you are sending them. You will experience some people unsubscribing every time you send an e-mail, and you will learn how to be okay with that.
So now, let’s look at some highlights from MailerMailer’s report:
• How soon do people open their e-mail? – 74.5% of opens occur within the first 24 hours and 84.3% occur within the first 48 hours.
• Open rates – The overall unique open rates stand at 12.52%, which is a marginal decline from the 13.20% open rate experienced in the first half of 2008.
• Click rates – Click rates held steady. Subscriber clicks in the second half of 2008 were comparable to those in the previous six months, rising a mere 0.08%, around 2.80%.
• Best days to send – Though weekends and the beginning of the week outperform the other days, Monday is the clear winner having both the highest open rate and click rate.
• Subject lines – Yet again, e-mails with subject lines shorter than 35 characters were opened more than e-mails with subject lines longer than 35 characters.
You, too, can make some sense of your e-mail campaigns when you examine the four core metrics and consider the impact variables which will help you answer the burning question, “Is my e-mail marketing effective or not?”
