In our previous Back to Basics with Email Marketing blogs, we covered the design and the content of your campaigns, and in our final part, we will be looking at analytics! Even though this might not seem as fun and frilly as the design aspect of email marketing, it is a vital part of ensuring that all of your hard work this far has made an impact and learning how to improve, keeping you on your A-game and in your subscribers' inboxes.📨

Email marketing is a powerful tool, offering unmatched reach and ROI. The real magic happens when you look into the analytics behind your campaigns. In this blog, we will be looking into the key metrics that you should be tracking, and best practices in order to optimise your email marketing efforts. 

Email analytics provide insights into how your audience interacts with your emails and most email marketing tools already have some of these metrics built in to allow you to start tracking your efforts from the get-go. Some metrics covered within MailChimp or Hootsuite for example help you understand subscriber behaviour, improve campaign performance, and boost ROI, allowing you to see what content and subject lines work, fix what doesn’t, and make data-driven decisions, to get the most out of your email marketing investments.

Key Metrics to Track

Open Rate is the percentage of recipients who open your email. It shows how effective your subject line is. Improve your open rate with compelling, personalised subject lines and recognisable sender names.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of recipients who click on links in your email. It measures how engaging your email content and call-to-action (CTA) are. Boost your CTR by creating engaging content, including clear CTAs, and segmenting your audience.

Conversion Rate is the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action after clicking a link. This ties your email efforts to business goals. To improve your conversion rate, ensure a smooth transition from email to landing page and align content with conversion goals. This is especially important if you are an eCommerce business as you can see what sort of emails are taking people to your shop page, is they are vouchers, discounts or the latest products etc.

Bounce Rate is the percentage of undelivered emails. High bounce rates can hurt your sender reputation. Reduce your bounce rate by regularly cleaning your email list and following spam filter requirements. There could be a variety of reasons that you are getting bounces, like the email address doesn't exist, the inbox is full, server outages or a poor sender reputation due to spam complaints.

Unsubscribe Rate is the percentage of recipients who opt out. It shows how well you're maintaining audience interest and managing email frequency. Lower your unsubscribe rate by providing valuable content, avoiding excessive emails, and offering preferences.

Spam Complaint Rate is the percentage of recipients marking your email as spam. This affects your deliverability and reputation. Minimise spam complaints by sending relevant emails, getting explicit permission, and making it easy to unsubscribe.

Best Practices for Email Marketing Analytics

Once your email is sent, it's time to analyse its performance. Look at the open rates to see how many people opened your email, check the click-through rates to see how many clicked on links, and measure conversion rates to see how many took the desired action, like making a purchase. Use these insights to tweak and improve future emails. Most email marketing tools, like Mailchimp, come with these reports already set up, making it easy to monitor your email's success.

Segmenting your audience allows you to send targeted content to different subscriber groups for better engagement and accurate analytics. A/B testing, or split testing, involves sending variations of emails to identify what works best for your audience. Monitoring long-term trends provides strategic insights beyond individual campaigns. Us platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, and Campaign Monitor to your advantage for detailed insights and reporting. Establish specific objectives to guide your analysis and optimisation efforts.

Creating a company newsletter is your chance to connect with your audience in a fun and meaningful way. By setting clear goals, planning varied content, and keeping things personal and engaging, you’ll craft emails that your readers can’t wait to open.

Email marketing analytics help you understand your audience and improve your campaigns. By focusing on key metrics, following best practices, and continuously optimising, you can maximise your email marketing success.

At Purple, we know every business is unique. That's why we customise our email marketing support to fit your business’s needs—whether that be through training, designing templates, or crafting marketing campaigns for you.

Let us help you with your email marketing so you can not only reach your subscribers but also resonate with them. Get in touch with us at [email protected] or give us a call on 01748 821888, we would love to chat with you! ☕