Finetune your email campaign by tracking these metrics
In short: Track opens, clicks, and conversions to see whether your campaigns work. Open rate shows how many delivered emails were opened (Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates it), click rate shows how many led to a click, and click-to-open rate compares clicks with opens. Send HTML emails with text alongside your images, and judge your campaigns mainly by clicks and conversions.
Open and click rates can help marketers determine whether their approach is working as intended. The higher the open and click rates are, the more people your business is reaching.
Open rate: This is the percentage of delivered email messages that have been opened. Apple Mail Privacy Protection can record an open when nobody reads the email, so treat open rate as a directional number.
Click rate (click-through rate): This is the percentage of delivered emails in which the recipient clicked at least one link or button (unique clicks divided by delivered emails).
Click-to-open rate (CTOR): This is the percentage of recipients who opened your email and then clicked a link or button (unique clicks divided by unique opens).
How are open rates measured?
In order to track open rates, we add a one pixel image to the email itself. This is known as a "web beacon" or "tracking image". Every time a subscriber's email program loads that image, it contacts our email marketing software, at which point the email opening is logged.
Some email programs now load that image automatically, whether or not the subscriber reads the email. Apple Mail Privacy Protection does this, so reported open rates run high and open times and locations can be wrong. That is why clicks and conversions are the more dependable measures.
How are click rates measured?
Any time a subscriber opens an email campaign and clicks on a link or button, it counts as a 'click through'. Click rates help gauge how effective your email campaign is. Click-throughs indicate that the recipient is engaged with the content and wants to take the next step. So, when the click rates start to drop, it is time to check and revamp the content. Clicks are recorded through tracking links, so they are still counted when a recipient's email program blocks images.
How do you measure conversion rates?
Conversion rates are the ultimate measure of your marketing campaign's efficacy. It is a metric of the number of subscribers or potential leads that you have been able to convince to take an action. For example, when you send out a survey form the conversion rate represents how many people actually complete the whole survey.
How can opens, clicks, and conversions remain uncounted?
There are a few scenarios where some metrics may be missed:
Plain-text emails
It's impossible to track open rates when a campaign has been sent in plain text format. Clicks can still be tracked: Zoho Campaigns replaces the links in plain-text emails with tracking URLs. Because opens can't be tracked in plain text, we advise that you send out HTML-based emails so that we can collect metrics on your campaign.
Image-only emails
Some email programs, such as Outlook, do not display images in emails until the recipient allows them. The email recipients are expected to actively click on "display images" to view the content.
So, when you send an email with image-only message and if it's not displayed by default, your recipients will view only a blank email. This will not be counted as an email open and only when the recipient clicks "display image", it'll be considered as opened.
To avoid this, Zoho Campaigns recommends you to avoid image-only emails and use text along with your images.
Other metrics worth tracking
Opens and clicks tell you about engagement. Three more numbers tell you about your sender reputation, so watch them in every campaign report:
-
Spam complaint rate: the share of recipients who mark your email as spam. Google asks senders to keep their spam rate below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%, and Yahoo recommends staying below 0.3% as well. See how to avoid complaints.
How to improve your open, click, and conversion rates
-
Write a great subject line that prompts users to open your message. See how to craft a dynamic subject line.
-
Make sure your emails are HTML-based, not plaintext.
-
Make it easy and convenient for recipients to see your call-to-action buttons.
-
Use a sender address that the receiver can easily identify as genuine, and authenticate your sender domain. See sender recognition.
-
Ensure that each link and button works properly.
-
Ask subscribers to add your sender address to their contact list. This will ensure that your emails reach their inboxes every time. See how to add a sender address to the address book.
-
Schedule your emails so that you can capture the attention of your subscribers when they are most likely to be checking their mails. Consider their geographic location to decide when you should send your emails. See send and schedule email campaigns.
- Targeted marketing based on your subscribers' interests is one of the best strategies to increase your open and click rates. See target marketing and how to improve open and click rates.