It’s a fact that email marketing can drive customers to your online store. But then, is this strategy really effective, and how can the effectiveness of e-mail advertising campaigns be measured directly?
If you can’t confidently answer these questions, then maybe it’s about time that you refine and check your measurement techniques. Relying on click-through rates and open rates can measure the effectiveness of an email marketing strategy.
However, there are other key metrics and data that you can consider for a better insight on its effectiveness. Let’s check out some of the ways to directly measure the efficiency of e-mail advertising campaigns.
How Can the Effectiveness of E-mail Advertising Campaigns Be Measured Directly?
Several marketing metrics can be measured to measure e-mail advertising campaigns effectively. Some of them are:
1. Check the Email Bounce Rate
Check the corresponding bounce rate on your e-mail advertising campaigns landing pages. This is way better than by simply setting up expectations on the emails themselves.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who land on the webpage but immediately leave without doing anything else or staying on the site for a long period.
The use of a bounce rate can determine whether there is a line-up between your message and the landing page. The email may effectively direct the reader from one page to another. However, if the reader doesn’t stay long in your webpage, a reevaluation of the alignment between the email and the landing page content should be done.
2. Measure Web Traffic
The success of your emails can also be checked by analyzing website traffic. This includes the total traffic coming from the e-mail advertising campaigns.
Do note though that before using this metric system, you need to set up your tracking platform. You can also follow several guides on the proper way to set-up campaign tracking. This can give you data regarding your total traffic from your e-mail advertising campaigns.
3. Look into the Email Conversion Rate
The conversion rate refers to the number of email recipients who clicked the link and completed an action. These desirable actions usually include making a purchase, filling out forms, downloading a lead magnet, or signing up for membership or webinar.
This rate will also determine how convincing and actionable the emails are. It is computed by considering the total number of customers who completed a particular action and dividing it with the total number of emails delivered. The result is then multiplied by 100 in order to come up with the conversion rate.
4. Monitor the Growth Rate of the Email List
The effectiveness of email marketing will have a significant impact on the size of the email list. If the emails are ineffective, then the list will decrease due to more people who are unsubscribing than those who are signing up.
On the other hand, if emails are effective, then the list will remain as is or will grow in size. Be sure that you are continuously building your email list and keeping the number of unsubscribing at a very reasonable rate.
To compute for the email growth rate, you have to consider the number of new subscribers (A), the number of people unsubscribing (B), and the total number of subscribers on the list (C).
Use the formula: (A – B)/C x 100
5. Verify the Share Rate of the Email Campaign
Subscribers who find the content useful and interesting have a higher chance of sharing it to others. Check and measure the number of subscribers who are sharing the email content as this ensures trust building via authoritative contents.
To check, get the number of people who clicked, shared, or forwarded the email. Divide this figure with the total number of emails sent or delivered. The resulting value will be multiplied by 100 to determine its percentage.
Some may not consider this as an essential factor to measure, but this metric is a good thing to increase. If your existing customers are forwarding the emails to their friends and relatives, then it means they are becoming your brand ambassadors who are generating new customers for your business.
6. Track the Spam Complaints
There are times when the emails you sent are annoying the receivers. The higher complaint rates may be due to the use of purchased email lists, lack of an unsubscribed link to emails, irrelevant email contents, out of date email addresses, and frequent receiving of e-mail advertising campaigns.
It is best to monitor those recipients who marked your email messages as spam. This can be done using the formula: Total Spam Complaints/Total Emails Delivered x 100.
7. Know the Campaign’s Revenue
The return of investment of the email campaign will determine its effectiveness. This will give an overview of the net amount of revenue you get from sending emails to possible customers.
To determine the ROI of your campaign, it is important to establish a service level agreement between the sales and marketing teams. Compute for the possible ROI using the formula:
Amount of additional sales – Total money invested / Total money invested x 100.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is an effective tool to increase your online traffic. Nonetheless, figuring out how can the effectiveness of e-mail advertising campaigns be measured directly is not as easy or as simple as you think. There are several marketing metrics that you can use, though, in order to get a clear view.
Learn to benchmark your E-Mail Advertising Campaigns performance. This is a very crucial consideration to measure any of your e-mail advertising campaigns effectively. Try to establish and set the baseline to understand the numbers produced by different metrics fully.
These will help you judge whether the campaign is effective or not, better or worse. Knowing them will give you key variables that will help improve and reach your goals.
Integrating email campaign with other online marketing platforms can be done to achieve stronger analysis. This may include marketing analytics, social networks, and search engine marketing techniques. The incorporation of several methods will help you come up with a smarter and better marketing strategy that will definitely give the best results for your business.