Back in the olden days, many romances were ruined by inadequate postal services. You pour your heart out in a letter, and your beloved doesn’t even bother answering?! How dare they?
Just like back then, there are two possibilities: your beloved (recipient) didn’t get the letter, or they didn’t care enough to open it and read it.
You’d think things are more accessible these days: you have electronic mail, and you can allegedly track who received your emails, who opened them, and who clicked on your links. But these metrics aren’t exactly reliable anymore.
This brings us to our first point:
If you’re thinking about deleting inactive subscribers who haven’t opened an email of yours in ages, think again. Open rates are very, very hard to track now for two reasons:
Click rates, on the other hand, are a better metric. They’re a valuable way to gauge interest in what you’re selling.
We’ve got nothing against click rates, but we think there are more relevant metrics you can track.
First off, it’s important to note that not all of these metrics will be relevant to you. My advice is to take a few moments to decide what success looks like to you.
Write down the most important goals you want to achieve, and make sure you track those metrics first.
I know some of them are hard to track via email alone. If you find yourself needing deeper insights into your marketing metrics, you can always integrate your CRM or ERP with your email marketing automation platform.
OK, let’s dig in:
CTOR is a better metric to track because it gauges interest. More importantly, it speaks volumes about the interest of the most relevant members of your audience: those who opened the email. If they took that first step, you know they have some interest in what you’re selling.
You can calculate it by dividing the open rate by the click rate.
Yes, it’s essential, even if the open rates are unreliable. While the real CTOR may be higher (because you have fewer opens than registered), it’s still an important metric.
Are they taking the next step and clicking? If so, your product/campaign is relevant to them.
Via SyncApps, you can see every click instantly in the combined dashboard. Let’s say you’re using the Salesforce to Mailchimp integration: if someone clicks on a link in your email campaign, your sales reps will see that in real time, and they can mark that lead as qualified and call them. Or you can keep nurturing them via your marketing programs — your choice!
Your conversion rate isn’t necessarily about sales. A conversion is any action an email subscriber may take.
For instance, you may want them to register for your webinar or schedule a call with your sales reps.
This is the most important metric you can measure because it shows you how many subscribers took the action you wanted them to take.
Depending on your ESP, conversion tracking can happen in various ways — some track it automatically, others don’t.
You can calculate it by dividing the number of conversions by the number of successfully delivered emails. Pay close attention, though, to ensure every conversion you’re assigning to email can be traced back to it.
You can use your ESP data along with Google Analytics, for instance, but again, you need to assign the conversions to the right traffic source.
If the conversion rate measures how many of your subscribers do precisely what you want them to do, the unsubscribe rate is the complete opposite. It measures how many people did what you least wanted them to do: unsubscribe from your list.
You can calculate the unsubscribe rate by dividing the number of unsubscribed users by the number of emails delivered. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get a percentage.
The unsubscribe rate matters significantly because it strongly signals that your subscribers aren’t happy with what they’re reading. A reasonable unsubscribe rate is below 0.5% per campaign.
If yours is higher, re-assess what you’re doing. Usually, people unsubscribe because your content is too promotional.
However, if you just started re-emailing a dormant list, a higher unsubscribe rate will be expected for the first couple of campaigns.
A healthy list growth rate signals that there’s an ongoing or growing interest in what you’re selling or what you’re writing about. Plus, the apparent reason: the more people you have on your list, the more sales opportunities you get.
You can calculate your list growth rate by dividing the number of new subscribers (minus the number of unsubscribes) by the total number of people on your list and multiplying the result by 100.
List growth rates vary significantly by industry, so there are very few benchmarks here. There is a study that says 2.5% is a reasonable growth rate, but I’d recommend you create your own benchmark by keeping a close eye on how your list is growing.
Calculate your year-to-date average monthly growth rate and see if you can increase it. If not, make sure you don’t drop below it.
This is another critical metric because it tells you exactly how much each email address is worth.
You can calculate it by dividing your total revenue by the number of subscribers.
For instance, if your email campaigns generated $20,000 from a 2,000-subscriber list, then your revenue per subscriber is $10.
It’s important to note that not all your subscribers will buy from you — or they won’t buy for now. As long as they are active and engaged, there’s no point in deleting them from your list.
A minimal revenue should be $1 per subscriber. If that’s not happening for you, see how to improve the offers you send your list or add more relevant subscribers.
Bonus tip: make sure you track your revenue the right way. Most conversions don’t happen directly via email, as most leads need more than one touchpoint to make a purchase. Our advice: integrate your email marketing platform and your CRM or ERP to get more accurate reporting and proper revenue attribution.
Not sure how? Reach out to us, and we’ll get you set up in less than a day!
The most profitable and easy-to-run companies aren’t those that sell to millions of new customers but those that can sell multiple times to the same customer. It’s cheaper and more accessible.
This is why CLTV is such an important metric: it tells you if you’ve earned your customers’ trust enough so they keep buying from you. In SaaS and other industries that rely on monthly subscriptions or retainers, this is a crucial metric.
You can calculate it by calculating your average customer’s yearly spend and multiplying it by the average number of years your customers are active.
I saved this one for the end because it’s a bit murkier than the others, and there’s no formula to calculate it. Still, it’s essential to track how engaged your subscribers are.
Even if they don’t buy, they may still act as brand ambassadors for you, so you want as many signs of engagement as possible.
Some engagement types to track include:
Briefly put, any sign that your subscribers aren’t entirely passive is a sign of list health. Encourage them and track them!
Since most conversions don’t happen directly from a link in an email, it can be hard to calculate your email marketing ROI. This doesn’t mean you should give up on it entirely.
SyncApps users have entirely automated this step. By integrating their marketing automation platform with their CRM, they get the bird’s-eye-view of every buyer journey, and they know precisely which tactic to attribute every sale to.
Have you tried bi-directional integration yet? It’s 100% free to try, so what have you got to lose?
