Are you trying to build and track your email campaign reports?
Email marketing is still one of the best ways you can reach your audience. Unlike social media, SEO, or PPC, email marketing gives you direct access to your audience whenever you want.
Plus, you won't be vulnerable to algorithm changes that can affect your campaigns' efforts.
But for the best results, you need to see that you're hitting your goals. That's why, in today's post, I'll share 5 email campaign report KPIs you should start tracking today.
First, though, let's get clear on why email marketing is still such a valuable marketing channel.
Why Email Marketing Is so Effective
Email marketing is an effective way to reach your audience because it gives you direct access anytime.
You're not subject to algorithm changes or other factors out of your control that can affect the success of social media campaigns, SEO efforts, or PPC campaigns.
Plus, email doesn't rely on several people in order for each message to be read and sent on.
It's the most effective marketing channel for turning your traffic into sales because it delivers a message that was specifically created by you to address each person individually.
You'll also be able to reach out and stay in touch with prospects, customers, or past clients who prefer getting their messages via email rather than social media or other means.
The main reason that email marketing is so effective, though, is because it's the most personal of all channels.
What this means for you is that your messages will speak to individuals rather than a crowd and be received as such. That might sound like an obvious point but not every marketer recognizes how important it can be.
It's this personal touch and the direct access to your audience that makes email marketing such an effective way for you to turn traffic into sales.
Here are a few other advantages of email marketing over other marketing channels:
- It’s been proven to have higher open rates than social media, SEO and PPC.
- It’s one of the best ways to build a relationship with your customers
- Compared to other channels, it has lower costs for digital marketing (planning is cheaper)
- It can reach an audience no matter where they are in the world
Now that we're clear on what makes email marketing so powerful, let's look at how you can build an email campaign report to track your KPIs.
7 Email Campaign Report KPIs to Track Today
1) Unique open rate: How many people opened your emails in the campaign?
How often do they click on links contained within your email to visit webpages, buy products, and take other actions?
The higher this number is, the better. Aim for at least 30% unique open rates per month or more.
Email marketing has been proven to have higher open rates than social media or PPC campaigns. So as an email marketer, it's important that you focus on this metric in order to see how effective your emails are.
2) Open Rate: Is the number of emails opened in a campaign higher than it was last month?
If so, this is an indication that your email marketing efforts are improving. Track changes to see how they affect other KPIs like unique open rates and click-through rate.
If this number has decreased from last month or stayed the same, it might be time to make some changes.
You might need to change your subject line, body copy, or the offer you're making.
This is a key metric for measuring success in email marketing so make sure it's as high as possible.
3) Click-Through Rate: How many people clicked on links contained within your email to visit webpages, buy products, and take other actions?
The higher this number is, the better. Aim for at least 20% click-through rates per month or more.
The click-through rate is an important indicator of how well your emails are performing so it should be as high as possible.
Plus, a higher CTR means that people are finding what they want in your email and visiting those webpages to make purchases (without closing the email browser).
This is a good indication that your audience trusts you and values what you do, which might be why they're taking the time to click through links on their email rather than using one of the other channels.
4) Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of emails that are opened and then closed without any further interaction.
The lower this number, the better. Aim for a bounce rate under 20% per month or less.
A high bounce rate usually indicates a problem with the subject line or body copy.
It's important to test your email campaign content before sending it out on an ongoing basis in order to find these errors and fix them quickly. You'll see higher open rates, lower unsubscribe rates, better click-throughs, and increased revenue if you do this.
If your open rates and click-through rates are low, you might need to make some changes before continuing with email marketing efforts.
This will also help with your overall deliverability, as high bounce rates signal email service providers that you might be spamming your audience.
5) Newsletter Subscribe Rate: How many people clicked on links to subscribe to your newsletter in order to receive more email messages from you?
The higher this number is, the better. Aim for at least a 20% newsletter subscribe rate per month or more.
This is another important metric that indicates how well your email marketing efforts are performing.
If this number has decreased from last month or stayed the same, it might be time to change up what you're doing with your newsletter content.
You'll want to make sure there's enough variety in each message so people don't unsubscribe after opening one email.
6) Lifetime Customer Value: How much have people spent with your company over their lifetime? The higher this number is, the better it is for your business.
Aim to consistently increase customer lifetime value.
You'll want to make sure there are a variety of products or services in this number and not just one thing.
This is a metric that takes time to build up but it's worth the investment.
7) Average Order Value: How much does an average customer order from you?
The higher this number, the better it is for your business because it means they're spending more with you over a lifetime and seeing greater returns on their investment in you as a company.
Aim to increase orders by working to entice them towards larger purchases.
You can do this by extending your sales cycle or offering discounts.
As long as it doesn't negatively impact the bottom line, try different tactics to see what works best for your company's situation and goals in order to increase average orders per customer.
Keep track of these metrics over time so you can compare progress from month-to-month to see if your efforts are paying off.
How to Track These KPIs Efficiently
There are really only 2 methods for creating email campaign reports:
- By hand
- With an automated tool
While you can definitely create spreadsheets to enter data, this leads to a few problems.
First, it's time-consuming. One basic report can take up to an hour to compile, depending on how many metrics you need, who you need to send the report to, and how frequently you need to send them.
Second, because they're time consuming, they're also expensive. Whether you're doing these by yourself or passing the buck to an intern, you're still paying someone an hourly wage to create those reports.
So if you spend 5 hours total creating and sending reports each month, and you earn $50/hour, then you're spending $250 for that data.
Finally, creating these reports by hand leaves you prone to human error. That means you might not always be able to trust the data you're looking at.
As a result, you can create marketing strategies that are less effective than you'd hoped for.
That's why I always recommend using a report building too like Metrics Watch.
Metrics Watch is a web-based app that lets you build email campaign reports and track the metrics listed above without any manual data entry.
This means you can create an account, integrate your marketing channels to it, set up the KPIs for each report in about a minute or two, then send out reports automatically when they're done.
The best part is that it's completely frictionless.
Rather than sending messy PDF attachments or managing 3rd-party dashboard user roles (like logins and passwords), all of your email campaign reports go directly to your recipients' inbox.
That means you can send the right data to the right people in a format they already use.
Want to see it in action for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free Metrics Watch trial today (no credit card required):
Start Your Free Trial Now!And that's all for today! We hope you enjoyed this post.
If you did, you'll definitely want to check out the following resources:
These articles will have even more information on how you can create a stronger email marketing strategy based on data-driven reports.