What Email Marketing Metrics Should You Track? 8 MailChimp Partners Give Advice
Crowdfunding, Ecommerce

If your brand uses email marketing, chances are you periodically track campaign performance. When measuring its success, how do you know what metrics to use? Eight Mailchimp Partners share their tips for determining what indicators to pay attention to when gauging the success of your email marketing efforts.
How to Track Email Marketing Success (Besides Looking at Open and Click-Through Rates)
With any business effort, gauging its effectiveness is key and email marketing is no different. We all know open and click-through rates tell us the percentage of people who opened an email and the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email, respectively. But what else is there to look at when measuring the growth and success of your brand’s email marketing? Consider these tips when deciding which measurables to track.
1) Determine your goals.
“Goal conversions. This is something not many people do, but open and click rates don’t pay the bills. Instead, we set goals for the individual campaign and tailor the campaign around this goal. If you were advertising, whether it’s via Facebook or Google, you would set a goal and track conversions, and chances are you set these goals for your business (annually or quarterly sales, customer retention rates, monthly recurring revenue, etc), so why not do the same for your marketing campaigns?”
– Doug Dennison, CEO & Co-founder, MailNinja
2) Make it part of a broader strategy.
“The most important metrics are the nearest to your business goals: eg. revenue generated from campaigns if you sell online, pages visited on your website if you are a publisher.
Open and click rates are an intermediate measure of how well you’re working to accomplish your goals, but you must always remember that email marketing is part of a broader strategy: email is a channel, a very peculiar and powerful one if you use it well, but it’s not important “per se“ (unless you’re a publisher and newsletters are the content you sell).”
– Alessandra Farabegoli, Digital Strategist, Co-Founder, Digital Update and Freelancecamp Italia
3) Dig deeper into the analytics.
“Opening and clicks are the first impressions, but the real information is in Google Analytics of your website. CTR is important, time on page and of course the conversion from this mailing.”
– Nick Beuzekamp, CEO and Founder, Online Marketing Bonaire
4) It’s all about the audience.
“People should be tracking Audience Growth over time and Audience Engagement – that is how often people open the emails or the last time they opened them. Conversion is the key driver of any business so once you know what you want people to do, you can focus on making that happen.”
– Glenn Edley, Director & Email Strategist, Spike
5) Attrition rate is key.
“Attrition rate is key to maintaining list health. For every list there is a normal level of attrition that is expected: some subscribers will purchase elsewhere; others move to a different geographic area, or lose interest in the products or services offered. These are the people whom you want to see unsubscribe since they are no longer a fit for what you offer.
A large list that is unproductive has less value than a small one with high interaction rates. Learn what typical attrition rates are for your industry, and more importantly for your organization, so that you can actively monitor your list for the expected responses and be able to take action when you see your list underperforming or trailing behind expectations.”
– MaryAnn Pfeiffer, Digital Marketing Strategist, 108 Degrees Digital Marketing
6) Sales are important but so are email replies.
“Sales- how many sales you received after the email sent. This isn’t really an email marketing metric, but it’s a critical business metric.
If your email isn’t geared toward sales, keep track of the replies to your email. There is gold in your replies. You’ll learn what people want to hear about and what info they need to move further down your sale funnel.”
– Amy Hall, Email Marketing Strategist and Certified Mailchimp Partner, amyhall.biz
7) Details matter—Mailchimp has you covered.
“There are many metrics you can and SHOULD track besides opens and clicks. We look at how many people converted or purchased from that email. Is there an increase in unsubscribes? Any spam/abuse complaints? How many subscribers were added to your list in the last week? Where are they from (location)? Also, are they forwarding or sharing your email? If you post the Campaign URL on Twitter, did anyone retweet it? With Mailchimp’s extensive reporting data, there are many things you can look at to determine if your email marketing is or isn’t working. I highly recommend taking a look at that “View Report” button after each email you send to view all the data.”
– Emily Ryan, Co-Founder and Email Strategist, Westfield Creative
8) Conversions give the most value.
“CONVERSIONS! Opens and clicks are indicators of success, but even if you get 100% open and click rates and no one converts, then the campaign has little value. Improving open and click rates can lead to more conversions, but ultimately conversions are what matters. We also track audience growth, delivery rates, click-to-open rates, bounce rates, unsubscribes, abuse complaints, orders generated, revenue generated, and ROI.”
– Adam Q. Holden-Bache, Director of Email Marketing, Enventys Partners
Grow Your Email Marketing with Enventys Partners
Enventys Partners is passionate about email marketing and knows how to ensure your customers look forward to your emails with every send. If you need help with your email marketing strategy, reach out to the experts.
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