Ever since I took my first marketing workshop in 1997 I found an affinity for marketing you can measure.
Not all marketers share my obsession with tracking marketing results and they quote the trite marketing citation, “I know that 50% of my marketing budget is wasted. I just don’t know which half.” Well, we know which half…
We know which half because we track and monitor marketing activites and compare the data against our activities.
It’s never been easier to use your email marketing statistics to monitor and compare your results.
Here’s the 5 Email Marketing Statistics I would suggest you get to know.
1. Your List Size
Many email marketers fail to keep an eye on their list size week to week and month to month. I simply pick an interval (like weekly) and count the total mailable email addresses on your list. Then watch for trends. If your list is shrinking in size, that’s a problem. You may be losing more people to email bounces and unsubscribes than you are signing up. If this trend continues you’ll have a smaller and smaller return on your email marketing investment.
2. Your Email Open Rates
Email open rates are almost always provided by your email software. Normally this number is the number of emails opened divided by the number of emails delivered (after bounces). (Now I KNOW there are some of you out there who know that email open rates are not a precise number but rather are more of an educated guess. It’s just the way it is.) Keep an eye on patterns. Does your open rate vary all over the map? Is it closer to 5% or closer to 45%? This is a great number to try to improve through split testing.
3. Your Clickthrough Rates
I count clickthroughs as the number of clicks divided by the number of emails opened. Again, do some analysis to see if the rate changes from email to email and why. What happens if you have one call to action vs having 10 calls to action? Which is better? Are they 2% or 22%? Why do you think that is? (HINT: clarity in your writing increases clickthrough rates)
4. Your Unsubscribe Rates
What does your unsubscribe rate tell you? After you’ve been mailing for awhile you’ll find your unsubscribe rates will settle at a certain baseline–let’s say .14% is typical for you. If your unsubscribe rate suddenly jumps to .75% you’ve done something wrong! Did you send an message not relevant to your audience? Did you increase your sending frequency? Did you simply say the wrong thing?
5. Your Email Results (Advanced)
Let’s say you’re sending an email to your list to invite them to register for and attend an event? Let’s say you’re sending three emails in your invite sequence. First question. How many people registered after the first email? The second? In total?
It’s important to keep an eye on how email registrations may differ from your Facebook or telephone or website driven registrations.
The mistake I see many marketers make is not connecting the email with the business result. The second biggest mistake I see is marketers don’t really look at the numbers at all. The third biggest mistake I see is marketers don’t look for trends.
And it’s rare to see a true marketing professional split testing all aspects of their email campaigns in order to TEST their way to the highest possible results.
The biggest difference I have seen is a 12X difference between the first test and the final email campaign released. The difference meant the difference of… let’s just say it was a lot of money.
