Measure your online marketing

Sending an email to a list of opt-in contacts or to a bought-in list may be a quick way to market your product or service, but it may not be the most effective. As with all direct marketing, it is important that you:

• have clearly defined objectives
• make sure you get the message right
• target the correct people
• get the required response

The best way to conduct any email marketing campaign is to use email campaign software with web analytics software that will help you measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

Email marketing key metrics 

Some of the key metrics to be tracked for email campaigns include:

Delivery rate

The number of emails delivered as a percentage of those sent

Bounce rate

The number of emails that cannot be delivered as a percentage of those sent

Open rate

The number of times an email is opened as a percentage of those delivered - can include multiple openings

Unique open rate

The number of times an email is opened as a percentage of those emails delivered, excluding multiple openings

Total click rate

The number of times the links in the email were clicked as a percentage of emails delivered - can include multiple openings

Unique click rate

The number of times the links in an email were clicked as a percentage of emails delivered, but excluding multiple openings

Responder rate

The number of recipients who clicked on one or more links in an email, as a percentage of emails delivered

Click to open rate

The number of unique clicks as a percentage of emails opened

Unsubscribe rate

The number of respondents who unsubscribe, as a percentage of emails delivered

Members get member rate

The number of new opt-in registrations as a result of recommendations by existing recipients

These metrics will help you decide whether your email marketing campaigns are effective, and if any issues might affect on response rates. They will help you identify any problems with the quality of your mailing list, the effectiveness of your targeting or the design of your email.

As with all metrics, it is helpful to benchmark results to provide a key performance indicator for future email marketing.