Little Spam Never Hurt Anyone! Top 4 Email Metrics!

Little Spam Never Hurt Anyone!  Top 4 Email Metrics!

Written by Ricky Hacking

No I am not talking about a delicious processed canned ham, but I am talking about those emails you get from companies.  I might even be talking about the emails you receive from the Princesses in need from Uganda.

Let me paint you a picture… your omnipotent boss comes up with another idea that is going to revolutionize your business.  Guess who gets to head up his “special project”?  It’s you of course.  He wants you to start an email marketing program.  This is a novel idea, never thought of by any other business owner, ever, is now your responsibility and you know very little about email.

Now here is the real question for you, what email metrics do you need to track in order to run your program and to be able show your boss how fantastic you are?

I want to help you out so first I checked what is the most popular email metrics used by other businesses.  This led me to Marketing Sherpa.  They gave me some great insights.  They have already polled other businesses on what their top email metrics are.  This is what I found.

1

Before you say it, I have already thought it, spam with eggs and rice is delicious.  That isn’t what you were thinking?  The second thing is that it is surprising that Revenue per email is 7th on the list.  This suggests that businesses are more interested in the interaction with the customer than actual revenue per email.

Based on these findings and the definitions I found in the article Email Campaign Performance Metrics Definitions  found on www.iab.net, I have humbly compiled the top 4 metrics you will need in order to create the GREATEST EMAIL MARKETING PROGRAM EVER!  No ones inbox will be safe now. You’re welcome.

The top 4 email metrics to follow are:

•    Click Through Rate
•    Unique Open Rate
•    Delivery Rate
•    Revenue Per email

So now we know what they are called but what do each of these mean.  Well, let me and iab.net tell you.

Click Through Rate

This metric attempts to answer the question, "How many times did a person click on a link or multiple links within this Email?" This may or may not include clicks on unsubscribe links or other links and you may find it helpful to view click-through reporting by individual link. -2

Once the email is open, we need to know whether or not they are clicking on anything.  This helps us to know if your emails are engaging the client, we can use this to determine if the content of the email is effective.

Unique Open Rate

This metric is similar to Email Open, but here, duplicate opens are eliminated. This attempts to answer the question, "How many unique individuals viewed this Email campaign?"  -2

We got to know how many people open the email.  This can also tell you if your subject line is effective.

Delivery Rate

This metric attempts to answer the question, "How many valid Email addresses actually accepted my complete message?" In other words, it describes how many were completely transferred to the intended recipient’s mailbox provider without generating a “bounce” or other delivery error. This metric is calculated before the impact of content-based filtering is factored in. If a message is rejected by the mailbox provider, it does not count as delivered. However, if the message is accepted and placed in a “junk Email” folder it generally does count as delivered. -2

Well this will tell us if our email even made it to their inbox.  And it will help us to know if our list is any good.  If we can’t even get our email to their inbox then the rest of the analytics don’t matter.

Revenue Per email

This metric attempts to answer the question, “How much revenue was generated either as a direct result of this Email campaign, or, if Email is part of a multi-channel campaign, as a function of an advertiser-assigned value?” -2

I am assuming this email program is supposed to make money, do I need to say more.  If it aint makin money, it aint worth doing.  Even if our email needs to produce something other than revenue you can substitute Revenue per email with subscription, ad clicked, etc.… whatever your desired action is.  Is it producing?

So now that I have done the heavy lifting of your email program you can now take it easy, right?  No way, there are numerous other email metrics you need to track and discover to show that you are truly a Spammer.  Like unsubscribe rate, but that is for another time.  Until then use the top 4 email metrics and your will soon be showered with compliments from your boss.  However if all else fails just practice writing subject lines.  Because I am always falling for “You’ve been accepted to Hogwarts, school of Wizardry”. Subject line. It never fails, I always open that one.

                                                  


1.  Rice, Jeff  “Marketing Research Chart: Top email marketing metrics, tracked by email maturity phase” Marketing Sherpa, June 28 2011.  www.marketingsherpa.com accessed 1/22/13 http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/top-email-marketing-metrics-tracked#

2.  http://www.iab.net/guidelines/508676/508905/79176 Accessed on 1/23/13