In the world of email marketing, there is a lot of talk about the importance of metrics. That’s because any good marketer knows that without measurable data, it’s difficult to determine what you are doing right, and where you still have room for improvement.
But with so many different metrics to track, which ones should you focus on? We’re here to help.
Keep reading to learn more about some of the top email marketing KPIs to keep in mind.
Email Marketing Tools Kpis
So you’ve launched your email marketing campaign.
Whether it’s highlighting a new product or persuading leads to re-engage, it undoubtedly took you some time to determine the right copy and images to use.
Before you start tracking — know why you’re measuring.
Not all email marketing campaigns are about generating sales (although that’s likely your ultimate goal). Other goals might centre around re-engagement, generating brand awareness, growing another email list, collecting more data about subscribers, and so on.
Now learn the next steps by tracking your campaign’s performance effectively.
Far too many marketers are tracking just 3-5 KPIs, but there’s actually 10 you need to watch in order to get the full picture. To help you truly optimize your campaigns, here’s Maropost’s 10 essential metrics and KPIs for email marketing.
#1: Number of emails delivered
Just because you have 10, 100 or 1000 names on your email list, doesn’t mean your emails are being delivered.
That’s because a 100% deliverability rate is actually impossible.
For example, if 85% of your emails make it into the inbox, that means 15% might as well not exist. So if you have 1,000 names on your list, that means 150 people never got your email.
Secondly, you need to know if there’s a sudden dip in deliverability. Sometimes, through no fault of your own, a marketer can suddenly be blacklisted by an ISP, especially if you have a shared—rather than dedicated—IP. If you suddenly can’t email anyone with a Gmail address, for example, you need to act immediately to find out why and fix the problem.
One caveat: There’s a difference between an email being “delivered” and actually making it into the inbox. It could very well be delivered, yet go straight to a recipient’s junk folder. That’s why more marketers are starting to use the Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) as a KPI, so they can measure how many emails actually make it to the inbox.
#2: Number of emails opened
Simply making it into the inbox isn’t enough.
You’ll also want to note how many emails are opened. If you get 85% of your emails delivered, and you have IPR of 79%, that still doesn’t mean subscribers are paying attention to your message. That’s why you need to track the open rate.
Much like deliverability, you want to track trends in the open rate and adjust accordingly.
You might want to compare your open rates to what’s typical for your industry to have a benchmark. Make sure the comparison is industry-specific since some industries like finance and hospitality typically see higher open rates (which makes sense given that people are going to open emails from their banks and the hotels they frequent) — so don’t compare to a broad standard.
Keep in mind, some people use preview panes for their email. This can register email opens that aren’t actually opened. Also, text-only emails won’t register as opens, even if they are.
#3: Click-through rate
The click-through rate (CTR) indicates how many people clicked on a link in your email.
However, unlike opens and deliverability, you’ll need to dig a little deeper. For each campaign, you need to know not only which links interested them the most but also where those links were located.
For example, if most of the clicks are above the fold, then you’re passing the blink test.
Let’s say you offered the same link but worded two different ways and one performed better than the other, then you can optimize your text CTA accordingly. Also, compare buttons to text links.
Remember to track what recipients actually clicked on. Clicking on the unsubscribe link might count as a click — that’s a BAD sign!
#4: Click-to-open rate
Your click-to-open (CTO) rate is the number of opens compared to the number of click-throughs.
Of the people who opened your email, how many actually clicked on a link? This metric tells you how well your subject line and content are working together. If your subject line generated a lot of opens but few clicks, there was a disconnect. If you had a lot of clicks but few opens, you had a great offer but didn’t nail the subject line.
Other factors can influence your open rate, such as the quality of your list, the email address of the sender, the day/time you send, etc.
#5: Unsubscribe rate
Seriously, this KPI is a must!
There’s so much you can learn from your unsubscribe rate. For example, it means people didn’t report your email as spam, they just weren’t interested in your emails anymore and probably had them on the wrong list.
Watch for trends in your unsubscribe rate, especially after you make a change like segmenting, a template redesign, or a new sending schedule. If the number of unsubscribes suddenly goes up in response to the change, you’ll need to reconsider the alteration.
Remember that people who unsubscribe don’t want to be on your list and they are voluntarily leaving, which is much better for the long-term health of your deliverability.
[sc name=”guide-DeliverabilityGuide”]
#6: Bounce rate (hard and soft)
A hard bounce is a permanent bounce while a soft one is temporary.
Hard bounces are usually caused by invalid email addresses. This happens when someone leaves a job (deleted email address) or when an email address is entered incorrectly (ex: with a typo).
Pay attention to hard bounces because it indicates that you’re falling behind on your list cleansing. It may also indicate that you should use a double opt-in or some other method for verifying email addresses are entered correctly.
When you get hard bounces, you need to remove those addresses from your list ASAP because those email addresses will never work.
Soft bounces, on the other hand, are temporary and caused by an issue on the receiving end. For example, it could be the inbox is full or a server is down. Depending on the email service provider or the email marketing platform you’re using, the system will automatically try to resend the message only so many times.
#7: Spam complaints
Monitor spam complaints in conjunction with your unsubscribes because there are people that simply report emails as spam rather than go to the trouble of unsubscribing.
If both KPIs are trending the same direction — that is telling you something. Also, watch this number if you made a change.
#8: Social shares
This KPI indicates engagement on social media and is a good indicator of the quality of your content. So make it easy for your readers to share your content by adding social buttons to your emails.
One email blog I read produces such great content but makes it nearly impossible to share to the point that it’s comical. The only link in the entire email links back to their homepage, then you have to click and weave through various sub-menus to get to their blog.
Complicating things further, they send out the article by email days before they post it on their blog, so the only way for me to share it is to set myself a reminder to come back to their blog in a couple of days to see if they’ve posted it, THEN I can share it.
#9: Forwards
This KPI is kind of like social shares, but with one key difference: People on the receiving end of email forwards tend to be more receptive to the content compared to people who receive content shared with them via social channels.
This is because a forward is like answering a phone call or receiving a physical letter in the mail…it stands out because it’s rare. Again, this is measuring the level of engagement and the share-worthy quality of your content, both of which you want to increase.
#10: Conversions
Finally, the KPI that matters the most: conversions.
Now, don’t assume this means dollars. Depending on the goal of your email campaign, a conversion might be a sale or it could be a registration for an event, a subscription, registering for a demo, downloading a piece of content, or something else.
Ultimately, you can have different goals for your email marketing campaigns. Knowing why you’re measuring is as important as knowing what you’re measuring, and this is particularly true when it comes to tracking conversions.
Time to start tracking these email marketing metrics
Now that you know the 10 essential email marketing metrics and KPIs, start testing to optimize your campaigns going forward. This way you can set new goals unrelated to conversions, such as increasing your subscriber rate or lowering the number of spam complaints.
email marketing analytics tools
Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies at your disposal. Whether you’re using it to deliver demos, increase brand awareness, or launch a new feature, email lets you reach prospects at any time — no algorithms, no payment required.
Making the most of email efforts, however, is another thing altogether.
This is why most B2B businesses track metrics like open rates. But just knowing someone opened your email isn’t enough.
It doesn’t tell you where that person is in the buyer’s journey
It doesn’t help you understand why they clicked or where they went from there.
It doesn’t help you contextualize the role email plays in your larger marketing efforts.
Say you know someone has opened your email and clicked on a link; how do you move that lead forward?
You don’t know which link they clicked on, you don’t know whether that person already engaged with your brand, and you don’t know what they did on your website after clicking.
Without context, data is just numbers.
But email tracking tools are a dime a dozen, and one that works for you might not work for another company. The right software depends on your team’s needs and the gaps in your existing tech stack.
So instead of listing a bunch of basic email open tracking tools, I’m sharing the tools that can help you track your email marketing campaigns and sales operation from end-to-end, and I’ve broken them down by use case:
Tools for tracking email opens and engagement
Marketing and sales software that includes email tracking
Tools to gauge email list quality and subscriber engagement
All-in-one email marketing tools with robust analytics
But first, let’s talk about why you should care about email tracking services in the first place.
Note: Want to see which companies your emails and campaigns drive to your website? Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Leadfeeder to find out who’s visiting your website, which pages they look at, and more.
Why Leadfeeder users should care about email tracking and analytics
Leadfeeder is a website visitor identification tool that shows B2B businesses which companies visit their website, plus details on the company, where they came from, and what they’re looking at on the website.
Additionally, we can identify IP addresses and match them with company names — which makes us the perfect tool for web personalization.
website visitor identification
Website Visitor Identification Guide
The people visiting your website don’t have to be a mystery
DOWNLOAD
If you’re wondering why a website visitor identification software company is talking about email tracking tools, it’s because our customers send emails, and they want to better understand how their email marketing drives ROI.
Let’s say you have an email campaign designed to drive demo signups. Regular email tracking tools can tell you when people open the email and maybe when they click on a CTA.
But what if you could see way more than that?
What if you could see all the pages they looked at on your website after clicking on the CTA?
What if you could see whether this click-through is the 1st, 3rd, or 15th person from their company to visit your site?
What if you could get notified if they come back to your website—unprovoked?
Our tool gives B2B companies access to all of this information and more — because we saw that gap in what email tracking tools provide.
We even built an integration with Mailchimp to bridge the gap between email and website activity and add the context of company identity to our customers’ email data.
Email campaigns and tracking are a key part of the buyer’s journey for most B2B marketers and sales teams we work with, and it’s our job to help them track that journey.
8 Cold Email Templates
Get Your Cold Email Templates
Download all the cold outreach email templates so you can reference them whenever you need.
DOWNLOAD
Top tools for tracking email opens and engagement rates
Learning who does and doesn’t open your emails can help you purge inactive email subscribers, tweak email subject lines, and optimize your email marketing strategy.
The tools below help do more than just send read receipts for your email. They also show you how many times an email was opened and if it was forwarded. Some offer other features, such as link tracking and valuable email engagement data.
- Right Inbox
Right Inbox website screenshot
Email service supported: Gmail
Pricing: Right Inbox offers a limited free version. Paid plans start at $5.95 per month if you pay yearly.
Right Inbox is a Google Chrome extension that works within Gmail to supercharge your emailing efforts. Find out who reads and clicks your emails, how many times, and when with the email tracking feature. In addition to email tracking, Right Inbox also offers email reminders, sequences, and scheduling features.
- SalesHandy
Saleshandy home page screenshot
Email service supported: Gmail and Outlook
Pricing: SalesHandy offers unlimited email tracking free for a lifetime for Gmail users. For outlook, its regular plan starts from $9/user/mo
SalesHandy offers free unlimited email tracking and scheduling for Gmail. (Unfortunately, Outlook users can’t use the free version.)
SalesHandy provides insights to increase your email productivity. You get an instant desktop notification for every email open and link click. You can also create and save email templates on the go.
Paid versions allow you to integrate email insight with your CRM and Zapier so you can make the most of email data.
- Mailtrack
best email tracking tools mailtrack
Email service supported: Gmail
Pricing: Mailtrack offers a limited free tier. Their paid Pro tier is $4.99 per month.
Mailtrack is another Gmail email tracking tool that works as an extension in Google Chrome.
Perhaps one of the most capable, Mailtrack’s tool offers at-a-glance engagement information, a dashboard to view all tracked emails, and also works on mobile.
Their free plan is pretty limited, but the paid plans are affordable, starting at just $4.99 a month.
- Streak
best email tracking tools 4
Email service supported: Gmail
Pricing: Streak offers a free plan. Paid tiers start at $15 per user/ per month for a limited number of contacts.
Another Google Chrome extension for Gmail, Streak sets itself apart from other open tracking apps by leaning hard into the relationship management aspect.
It’s essentially a CRM solution built right into your Gmail inbox. You can track leads as they move through your pipeline and collaborate with your team via automatic sharing.
- MailTag
mailtag best email tracking tools
Email service supported: Gmail
Pricing: $9.99 per user/ per month, billed annually (They also offer a free 14-day trial.)
MailTag is one of the few open tracking tools that also gives you a high-level look at your overall open rates, link-click rates, and more.
With its Pings feature, MailTag adds a level of automation right to your inbox—enabling you to set up automated follow-up emails and get real-time notifications.
- AtomPark Software
Atomic Email Tracker home page screenshot
Atomic Email Tracker is an online service for analyzing the effectiveness of email newsletters.
Find out who your subscribers are (based on their IP address and country), when they read your email, what links they click on, what device they used, and the results of previous campaigns.
It’s easy to set up, so you can start tracking the results of your email campaigns fast.
- MailTracker by Hunter
MailTracker by Hunter homepage
Email service supported: Gmail
Pricing: Hunter’s MailTracker is free for everyone.
MailTracker from Hunter is a simple and totally free 🎉 email tracking tool for Gmail. Once you install MailTracker, you don’t need to guess whether your emails are opened and read.
As soon as your recipients open your emails, you can see the tracking details directly in Gmail. You can also see when emails are opened, how many times, and what devices users are on.
While it’s not as powerful as other email trackers, it’s free and provides a good amount of data.
Marketing and sales software that includes email tracking
Many sales and marketing software tools include support for email marketing and tracking, in one form or another. The tools in this section are the stand-outs for their email tracking and analytics features, on top of their main marketing and sales capabilities.
Note: If you want to see which companies your emails and campaigns drive to your website, sign up for a free 14-day trial of Leadfeeder. We’ll show you who’s visiting your website, which pages they look at, and much more.
- HubSpot
HubSpot home page screenshot
Pricing: HubSpot offers free plans for all of their software. Paid plans start at $50 per month for both the Marketing and Sales Hubs.
HubSpot offers a range of marketing and sales software, and each Hub has its own email tracking features tailored to the needs of marketers and salespeople.
The HubSpot Sales Hub tracks email opens and engagement, and it automatically loads that information into your CRM.
The Marketing Hub offers support for A/B testing emails, and full-funnel tracking helps you understand the long-term impact of your email marketing efforts.
- Salesforce Pardot
Salesforce Pardot home page screenshot
Pricing: Starts at $1,250 per month for up to 10,000 contacts
Pardot’s B2B marketing automation software focuses on the marketing side of email tracking. They also offer a wide range of automation features.
Features include email A/B testing, lead identification, integrations, plus rendering, and SPAM filter check-ups to help optimize every aspect of your email marketing efforts.
- Mailchimp
Mailchimp home page screenshot
Pricing: Mailchimp offers a limited Free plan. Paid plans start at $9.99 per month for up to 500 contacts.
Mailchimp is the OG of email marketing, but they’ve expanded their platform to offer a variety of other marketing automation tools and channels.
Their early roots still show, though. They offer powerful email marketing tools including A/B testing, robust email analytics, and all the email automation features you need to grow your business.
- Zoho Campaigns
Zoho email marketing home page website screenshot
Pricing: Zoho Campaigns offers a limited Free plan. Paid plans start at $3 per month or $7 for 250 email credits.
Zoho offers a range of marketing tools, including Marketing Plus, email, Bigin (a pipeline CRM for small businesses), and social media management.
Their robust email tracking helps you pinpoint who’s opening your emails, how they’re engaging with them, and where.
Zoho also supports A/B testing, so you can find the most effective subject line, CTAs, and more. Other features include dynamic emails, drag-and-drop workflows, and autoresponders.
- Cirrus Insight
Cirrus insight home page screenshot
Email service supported: Gmail and Outlook (their highest tier is only available for Gmail)
Pricing: Starts at $27 per user/ per month
Cirrus Insight works a little differently than most of the email tools on our list—it’s effectively a sales software, but it’s entirely run and managed within your email inbox. (No switching back and forth between tools — woot!)
That emphasis on email means they offer robust email tracking and analytics, plus less common features like attachment tracking and email templates.
It also syncs with Salesforce and your calendar to make scheduling meetings easier.
Tools to gauge email list quality and subscriber engagement
A lot of businesses focus on quantity rather than the quality of their email list.
The problem is when your list is low quality and full of unengaged, uninterested subscribers, all of your email metrics suffer. The tools in this section help ensure your emails are going to real, engaged humans who actually want to hear from you.
- Kickbox
Kickbox email verification software
Pricing: Kickbox prices by the number of verifications—starting at $5 for 500 verifications.
The fastest way to waste your email marketing efforts is to send them off to misspelled or nonexistent email addresses.
Kickbox works on top of popular marketing automation and email marketing tools to verify email addresses before you hit send.
By identifying misspelled addresses, Kickbox improves deliverability rates and increases email marketing ROI. They also provide detailed analytics from users including geolocation, open timing, devices, and email clients.
- NeverBounce
NeverBounce email deliverability
Pricing: Starts at $0.008 per email for up to 10,000 emails. Volume discounts apply from there.
NeverBounce is the email verification and cleaning tool for enterprise businesses.
The software works on top of your email marketing system and verifies email lists each time you send to improve list health. Other features include bulk and automated list cleaning.
- Bounceless.io
best email tracking tools bounceless
Pricing: Starts at $19 for 2,500 email verifications
Bounceless.io promises to clean your email lists—so you can actually trust and glean insights from other metrics like email open rates, bounce rate, click-throughs, and more.
Other features include spam trap, duplicate address removal, risk validation, disposable email identification, and SMTP validation.
Email marketing tools with robust analytics
While there are dozens of tools you can use to improve your email efforts, there’s no substitute for picking the right email service provider (ESP) in the first place.
These top-notch ESPs boast some of the best email analytics in the game.
- Campaign Monitor
campaign monitor software tool
Pricing: Starts at $9 per month for up to 2,500 emails
Campaign Monitor is known for making it easy to create visually compelling emails—but their email analytics features are no slouch.
Billed as a “full analytics suite,” Campaign Monitor offers in-depth analytics including geography, acquisition, and engagement, all broken down by campaign.
- ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign email software
Pricing: Starts at $9 per month for up to 500 contacts
ActiveCampaign offers more than email marketing, but it’s best known for email automation.
With a focus on split testing for improvement, ActiveCampaign makes it easy to optimize emails for opens, clicks, and purchases.
- Yesware
Yesware email outreach
Yesware is one of the few email service providers that targets sales teams rather than marketing—and their email tracking features reflect that.
With Yesware, sales reps can see and monitor leads and their email behavior throughout the customer journey. The reporting features also measure outbound prospecting performance and individual template performance.
Email tracking software for more opens and better results
The right email tracking software isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, all you need is a quick add-on to tell you whether or not recipients open your emails.
Other times, you need a full-featured email marketing software with robust reporting.
No matter what features you need, the tools above will help you measure your efforts and improve your email game — and in the end, that’s what it’s all about, right?
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines