8 Key Email Marketing Metrics Every Small Business Should Be

Email marketing is a crucial tool to engage with your audience in recent days. It helps you directly tap into the user’s inbox with your personalized messages and update them with new offers, announcements, and much more. But how do you know if your audience is actually opening or loving these emails? Or are they just being the other unread text in their mailbox? Well, here comes email marketing metrics.

Tracking your email marketing metrics is important to understand the progress of your emails. For example, imagine sending out two different email campaigns with distinct subject lines for a sustainable beauty business. Now, you can use the open rate to see what content resonates better with your audience. This simple understanding can be used further to generate more engaging and exciting content. The higher the engagement, the higher the conversions.

Now that you know the significance of email marketing analytics, it’s time to delve deeper. Stay tuned to learn more about some of the most important email marketing metrics and how they empower you to improve your marketing strategy.

Key Email Marketing Metrics That You Should Not Ignore

Here is a list of a few email marketing metrics that help you analyze the performance of your emails.

Click through Rate
Open Rate
Bounce Rate
List Growth Rate
Conversion Rate
Forwarding Rate
Unsubscribe Rate
Overall ROI

Let’s understand each of these email marketing performance metrics in detail.

Clickthrough Rate

Click Through Rate is one of the most powerful email marketing metrics that every marketer must be aware of. In fact, around 73% of marketers use clickthrough rate as their primary tool to gauge the success of their marketing campaigns, says Ascend2.

But what is a clickthrough rate? A clickthrough rate is the ratio of the number of clicks made by an email recipient to the number of times they were exposed to that mail.

Here is how you calculate it:

CTR = (Total Clicks/Total Delivered Impressions)×100

Let’s understand this with an example. Let’s say you sent a total of 500 emails and garnered a total of 200 clicks. Now based on the formula, your CTR will be:

CTR= (200/500)*100 = 40% CTR.

With CTR, you can track the performance for each mail sent and the same can be used to analyze how your CTR changes based on the mail.

Tips to Improve Clickthrough Rate:

To improve your CTR, you may follow these easy tips.

Optimize your headline by adding local keywords that catch the audience’s attention.
Create prompt and catchy CTAs. Ones that appeal to your audience to click.
Add visuals to make your content look more engaging. You may use A/B testing to see what images suit best for your business type and targeted audience.
Use trendy hashtags related to your copy. These hashtags are relevant across different platforms like Facebook , Twitter (X), Instagram, and so on.

Open Rate

Based on a report by Eco Consultancy, around 42. 7% of marketers believed open rates as one of their effective metrics to track an email’s success.

What is the open rate? An email open rate refers to the ratio of users who opened a particular email to your total subscriber count.

Calculating the open rate is simple.

Here is how you do it:

Numbers of users who opened your mail ÷ total number of individuals you sent the mail to

For example, let’s say 200 people opened your mail while it was sent to 500 individuals. Now, the open rate here is:

200÷500= 0.5% open rate.

However, you need to understand that open rate may be a helpful analytical tool, but it should not be the only tool you rely on. Before using this metric, you must understand a few factors. For example, for automatically enabled images, the mail will be counted open every time the user clicks the mail. This can lead to misleading figures.

Here is how you improve your open rates:

Let your subject lines shine using emoticons. Level up your audience’s curiosity.
Make your emails personalized by adding the sender’s name.
Maintain a fresh mailing list while eliminating inactive subscribers.
Segment your audience and send emails accordingly.

Bounce Rate

Wondering what a bounce rate is? Well, let’s get into it. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of the mail that remains undelivered to the user’s mailbox. Now, this may happen because of several reasons, but before we do that, let’s learn how to calculate the bounce rate for your emails.

Here is the formula for calculating the bounce rate:

(Bounced mails/Total mails)×100

Let’s say you received 100 bounced emails out of 1000 emails sent. So, the bounce rate will be:

(100/1000)×100= 10% bounce rate.

Bounces can happen because of soft and hard reasons. The soft reasons come from a temporary concern with a valid mail address. This may include issues like insufficient storage, or server problems.

These bounces can be solved once the specific concern is addressed. Alternatively, hard bounces occur from invalid or closed mail IDs. Consider removing these addresses from your email list.

List Growth Rate

Making your emails catchy and adding a CTA is important. But so is keeping a tab on the count of subscribers. This includes understanding how many new subscribers you have and how many you have lost. This helps calculate your list growth. Growing your email list signals an extended reach and wider audience. Plus, you look like an industry expert with a fast-growing list.

List growth rate simply refers to the rate of growth of your email list.

Here is the formula for calculating the same:

{(New subscribers – total unsubscribes and spam complaints)/ total emails on your list}×100

Let’s say you gained 200 new subscribers and 50 unsubscribes and email complaints. The total number of emails on your list is 1000. So, the list growth rate will be:

{(200-100)/1000}×100= 10% list growth rate

Here are a few tips to improve the list growth rate:

Create clear and concise sign-up forms.
Tailor your content based on their data and records.
Segment your mailing list to send personalized content to your audience.
Clean your mailing list to understand your active and inactive subscribers.

Conversion Rates

Small business owners! Tracking your conversion rates is important for a variety of reasons. First, it is one of the email marketing key performance indicators. Wondering how? Well, it lets you track who all turned into your consumers from your audience. Let’s make this simple.

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of users who click on the mail and complete the action as asked in the mail. For example, consider sending an e-mail with an offer to download a free blueprint on marketing tactics, now conversion rates count those users who download that blueprint.

The conversion rate can be calculated using a simple formula:

(Total users who completed the action/ Total number of mails delivered)× 100

Let’s say you sent 1000 emails and 200 of the users completed the action desired. Then the conversion rate will be:

(200/1000)×100= 20% conversion rate.

Tips to improve your conversion rate:

Track the performance of your current ads. Analyze and make adjustments accordingly. An increase in the conversion rate signals improved performance of your ads.
Consider using specific keywords. For example, don’t simply write iPhone. Consider writing the brand, model, and product number to make it specific and better. For example, Apple iPhone 14 Pro.
Use search terms to refine your keywords based on their performance. Doing so can help you adjust who your ads are visible to.
Consider adding prices to your campaigns. When you add prices and a user still clicks on your ads, it signals a potential buyer.

Forwarding Rate

Given how everybody loves sharing content these days, your email-sharing pr forwarding rate is probably one of the top key metrics to track your marketing performance. Why, you ask? Well, the forwarding rate helps you add new contacts.

No doubt, conversion is important to generate revenue, but the forwarding rate helps you create new leads.

The forwarding rate can be understood as the ratio of email recipients who clicked on the share or forward button to the total number of delivered emails.

Here is how you calculate the forwarding rate:

(Total clicks on share this or forward button/ Total delivered mails)× 100

Let’s say, you sent mail to 1000 people. And 150 recipients clicked on a share or forward button. The forwarding rate here will be :

(150/1000)×100= 15% Forwarding rate.

Tips to improve email sharing your forwarding rate:

Create useful and engaging content. Your content is the best tool to help you gain new leads.
Create catchy subject lines that force your recipients to share your mail.
Create personalized emails.
Keep cleaning your mailing list to reach relevant audiences.

Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate refers to the portion of your mail recipients who have now unsubscribed from your email list following a specific mail.

However, it is important to note that the unsubscribe rate may not always give you a truthful or reliable picture. For example, often tired of continuous, irrelevant messages, a lot of recipients stop following your emails. Meaning they don’t bother to open or read it but they don’t care enough to follow the process to unsubscribe. So, the figures may not be that accurate.

But you need not forget that keeping track of the unsubscribe rate can help you understand your list growth rate. So, try calculating the same every once in a while and use it with other email marketing metrics to come up with a reliable estimate.

ROI Rate

Your ROI rate is one of the most valuable tools to track if you’re spending in the right direction or not. The ROI rate is the total revenue earned on the total investment or spending of your marketing campaigns.

The ROI rate can be a key tool to understand the types of leads generated by your email marketing. It can also help you understand if those leads are contributing to the actual revenue.

You may calculate the ROI rate using a simple formula. Here is how you do it.

{($ made from sales – $ invested)/$ invested}×100

For example, let’s say you made $900 from your sales while investing $100 in your campaigns. The ROI rate here will be:

{($900-$100)/$100}× 100= 800% ROI.

Final Word

Your email marketing strategy keeps on varying based on your objectives. Understanding what you exactly want to achieve from your mail campaigns can help you use the right tracking metrics for email marketing. For example, if you want to grow your email list, using a list growth rate can help. Additionally, if you want to tap into your potential customers, clickthrough and conversion rates can help. Tapping into these email marketing KPIs helps draw your email campaigns accordingly to drive the best results. However, doing all of this on your own can seem like a lot.

Here comes Small Biz Marketing. We are a digital marketing agency helping small business owners share their personal stories while also creating revenue with strategic email marketing. Here is how we do it:

We start with a strong foundation, understanding your brand, audience, and competitors.
We believe in delivering engaging content that is relevant and authentic.
We nurture relationships with personalized communications.
We follow an effective content strategy employing SEO and other relevant practices.
We believe in consistency and regular communication.
We offer advanced tracking and analytical tools to gauge your open rates, conversion rates, and more.

Get in touch with us at info@smallbizmarketing.com