Key performance indicators (KPIs) are very valuable in evaluating the success of strategies and their effectiveness in achieving what was intended. Within the realm of email marketing, KPIs serve as an unbiased measure that can determine whether or not this particular campaign is meeting its initial goals.

However, numerals without any context are nearly meaningless. Contextualization is essential for email marketing KPI data to have any meaning. Two primary methods exist for achieving this – contrasting your latest campaign against other campaigns and measuring it against industry averages.

As an example, if marketers wanted to analyse whether this year’s holiday promotion emails had a higher or lower open rate than those in previous years and what this could imply for the success of the current campaign, they would be enabled by comparing some specific KPIs from one campaign against the corresponding KPIs of other similar campaigns.

The marketers quickly match their email marketing KPIs with the industry benchmarks and it’s not without good reason. For example, if you come across a situation where the bounce rate of your campaign is far above what is considered normal then it would be an indicator that maybe you should do away with the invalid email addresses or even change your current email service provider.

While marketers are currently equipped with devices capable of assessing virtually everything, it might be quite appealing to evaluate everything. However, such information overflow can occasionally result in less clarity rather than more. For this reason, some email marketing KPIs are worth monitoring.

Inbox Placement Rate (IPR)

• What it is: This is the proportion of emails that reach customers’ inboxes as opposed to being caught by a spam filter or bouncing back completely.
• Why it matters: Even if you have the most wonderful email content ever made but no one receives it, then there’s no point in sending it out. So keeping an eye on this KPI is critical because they help determine trends and sudden drops in email deliverability rates. Suddenly, more people may start marking your messages as spam instead of just unsubscribing from them altogether. Alternatively, there could be a delivery problem like getting flagged temporarily, which requires changes in sending frequency and IP warm up to build lasting partnerships with their ISPs.

Open Rate

• What it is: This is a measure of how many emails sent are opened by its recipients.
• Why it matters: Many emails land in someone’s inbox and remain unopened. This email marketing KPI reveals how frequently individuals access that message (though image-blocking mechanisms may interfere with accurate open rates). If your subject lines have poor performance on a given campaign, you could make guesses about why they did not achieve desirable outcomes for people who received them. An additional factor could be seen in the low levels recorded from September to November 2021 as a result of Apple’s iOS15 updates which transformed open rates forever – but there is no need to be alarmed since there are several options available for marketers to remedy these changes.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

• What it is: It is the percentage of email recipients that clicked on a link in an email. CTR may be calculated in terms of total clicks or unique clicks, depending on the relevance. Just ensure to use a consistent method of calculating this KPI across campaigns.
• Why it matters: This KPI for email marketing gives you an insight of how many users are interacting actively with your content. Moreover, CTR is also helpful in determining the specific placement of links within email messages. When conducting A/B testing, you could as well come across a scenario that shows that links at the top of an email have better click-through rates than those displayed on the right side of the message. In case, your main aim is to enhance the number of clicks (and who does not want this?), this advice might lead one towards placing more clicking spots in those areas with good performance statistics. With a low CTR, it may indicate that it was affected by an Apple iOS15 update and so you should substitute your call to action (CTA) for an attention-grabbing image as opposed to this plain text message.

Conversion Rate

• What it is: The number of recipients of an email who established intended actions after the reading of your email, as a percentage. However, conversion is not always synonymous with sale. For instance, such intended action may include registering for a webinar, downloading a guide or simply contacting an organization for additional information.
• Why it matters: This is probably one of the key performance indicators (KPIs) used in e-mail marketing which determine whether e-mail marketing strategy realizes its objectives. Because call-to-actions can be very particular therefore making it difficult to compare conversion rates among various industries.

Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

• What it is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked an in-email button to share that content on social media or send the email to someone else.
• Why it matters: When content is shared by a friend, people have a higher chance of opening and engaging with it. As such, when email receivers do this as an act of kindness, they provide brands with an excellent opportunity to interact with new people and also possibly boost their emailing registers.

List Growth Rate

• What it is: As implied, this KPI indicates how fast your mail register is growing. To calculate it, add all new subscribers and deduct those who have unsubscribed plus spam complaints from that figure then divide it by the total number of addresses on your email marketing list.
• Why it matters:  Email lists shrink automatically with time unless new addresses were added or have lost their value—because people stop subscribing, change emails or simply go away. So as to keep such lists alive, new emails must constantly be obtained - this is where you can gauge whether your reach is stagnant or increasing by observing this specific indicator.

Optimizing Marketing Email KPIs with Cross-Channel Marketing

The use of a cross channel marketing platform such as Iterable can help you optimize your campaigns against the email marketing KPIs that really matter to you.

You will be able to optimize for higher engagement by reaching out to customers personally and including the content they love on their favourite channels. For instance, automatically sending a subsequent email if any of your emails are deleted or going back again into someone’s inbox is possible through adopting other channel messages for following them up like SMS following e-mail messages. That way you might push them into reading the SMS sent to them, not forgetting also going back and checking an old email which was unread by them earlier.

More opportunities for personalized messaging that drives customers to action are provided by cross-channel marketing. You can have increased email open rates, conversion rates, click through rates and other email marketing KPIs that matter to your brand by using personalized nurture campaigns to involve and re-involved your customers.