Email metrics are critical to evaluating the effectiveness of your cold email marketing efforts. Here are 7 key metrics to track in your emails:
1. Open Rate
Open rate is one of the most valuable email marketing metrics. It reflects how compelling your subject lines, sender names, and email previews are at enticing recipients to open the message and read its contents. It is also indicative of how well-crafted and engaging your cold email content is. Did you know that there is already cold email marketing tool in the market? Check it out to start building your business.
This metric is calculated by the number of emails opened divided by the total number of email delivered (excluding bounced emails), and multiplied by 100. By comparing your results to industry averages, you can gain insight into what tactics are resonating with your audience.
This data can be useful in determining how to optimize your message for higher engagement. For example, personalization techniques like addressing recipients by name or tailoring content to their specific interests typically lead to better click rates than generic messages. It is also important to note that open rates are highly dependent on email delivery, with automated emails often performing much better than manually crafted messages. By analyzing the specific events that drive your open rates, you can make informed decisions about how to best optimize future campaigns for unrivaled success.
2. Click-Through Rate
As the name suggests, this metric measures how many people clicked on a link or ad included in your email. It’s a good indication of how interested your potential customers are in the content you’re sending them. If your subject line is enticing and your content is interesting, people are more likely to click.
However, keep in mind that the click-through rate is different from conversion rate. Digital marketers use the two metrics for different marketing/sales funnel stages. Click-through rates are a good indicator of what’s working at the top (MOFU) and middle of the funnel (BOFU), while conversion rates are more useful in measuring the success of campaigns at the bottom (FU).
Getting a high click-through rate is important, but it shouldn’t be your only goal. You also want to focus on targeting the right recipients and making sure your emails are relevant.
For example, if you’re reaching out to busy executives, it’s important to keep your emails short and to the point. Otherwise, you might risk overwhelming them and losing their attention.
Another way to improve your click-through rate is by using personalization tools. These tools allow you to create personalized emails that include the recipient’s name and a photo of them. This personal touch can help you stand out amongst other cold emails and can even lead to a reply.
3. Reply Rate
The reply rate is a key metric to track in cold email marketing. It’s the percentage of recipients who respond to your email. A higher response rate suggests that your email content resonates with recipients and that they’re interested in hearing more from you. A lower response rate may suggest that you need to improve your email content, subject lines, or targeting.
To increase your reply rate, write emails with relevant and accurate personalization, concise and scannable content, and a clear call-to-action. Also, include icebreakers and detailed information upfront to make your recipients feel like you’re a genuine resource, rather than a sales rep. Finally, send timely follow-up emails to keep your prospects engaged without being too pushy.
Remember, though, that even if you don’t get a reply, each email still affects a larger audience than those who do reply. It educates, builds trust, and may lead to future engagement. Increasing your reply rate is not only important for building relationships, but it can also help you avoid getting filtered into spam folders. While there is debate over whether throttling (putting a delay between each email) increases deliverability, many cold emailers use it to simulate individual sending cadence and reduce the risk of their emails being flagged as spam.
4. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a common and well-known metric that everyone in marketing knows to keep an eye on. It shows how often people visit your website and only spend time on one page before leaving. However, this metric is not the same for every website, it’s more like a beat that fits different songs – it has to be adjusted based on each site’s unique features.
First of all, a high bounce rate is not always a bad thing. It all depends on your industry and what kind of content you have on your website. For example, if you have a news site that serves one purpose, a high bounce rate might be okay as visitors come in for a quick update and get what they need without exploring any other pages.
It’s best to look at your overall website bounce rate as a whole, but then also analyze different segment reports to see what is going on with the content you have. If you notice that your audience is bouncing because of certain pages, it’s time to make changes. A few things to try include adding imagery, optimizing CTAs, and using scannable text for easy reading.
5. Spam Rate
Spam rate is an important metric to track in cold email marketing because it indicates how often your emails are marked as spam by recipients. It’s calculated by dividing the number of spam complaints received by the total number of emails delivered and then multiplying it by 100 to get a percentage.
A high spam complaint rate can damage your sender reputation and negatively impact your deliverability. This is because inbox providers take spam complaints into consideration when determining whether to deliver your emails to the inbox or spam folder.
While it can be difficult to achieve a high open and click-through rate with cold emails because they aren’t targeted to recipients who have opted in, you can still improve your deliverability by following best practices. This includes using a clean list, crafting compelling subject lines, and sending personalized messages that are relevant to the recipient.
In addition, it’s important to keep your spam rate low by using a variety of content types and sending emails at different times of the day. This will prevent your emails from appearing too similar to each other and will help ensure that more of your emails reach the inbox.
6. Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is a vital email metric to track in your cold email marketing strategy. It measures how many of your subscribers (or leads) have opted out from receiving future emails from you. A high unsubscribe rate indicates that you are sending irrelevant content to your leads. This could be due to the type of content you collect your lead’s information on, or the frequency at which you send emails. It’s essential to clean your lists regularly and remove inactive or uninterested subscribers, in order to keep your email unsubscribe rates low.
Having a good unsubscribe rate is important to maintain because it helps you eliminate bad leads from your list. Ideally, you should only keep in touch with those who are interested in your products or services.
However, there are times when your leads may not be ready to make a purchase. For example, they may have opted in to receive a freebie such as an eBook or webinar, but may not be ready to convert just yet. In these cases, they may end up hanging around in your email limbo. They may read the content you send but never reply, or they might even start to unsubscribe from your emails. To avoid this, try to offer an initial benefit in your email copy or try a different approach to your cold email campaigns.
7. List Growth Rate
The list growth rate is a key metric to track in cold email marketing, as it shows the speed at which your email list is growing. Ideally, this number should be increasing over time, indicating that your outreach and content are resonating with audience members and encouraging them to subscribe.
A high list growth rate also demonstrates that your agency is effectively attracting and engaging new subscribers, which can then lead to enhanced sales opportunities for the client’s brand. This can be accomplished by optimizing landing pages with clear CTAs, offering incentives like discounts and downloadable resources to encourage opt-ins, promoting sign-up forms on social media profiles, and using segmentation to send relevant emails to specific groups of audience members.
By analyzing and reporting on these metrics, you can identify areas for improvement and refine future campaigns. To get the most accurate results, measure your subscriber growth rates on a monthly basis. You can also break these figures down by acquisition channels to see which methods are delivering the best results. Keeping your list clean by removing inactive and invalid email addresses on a regular basis will improve your deliverability and overall email engagement. For more information on measuring and enhancing your email campaigns, contact a Lark representative today.