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Is your email marketing strategy working for you? That shouldn’t be a tough question – not if you’re tracking the email metrics that matter most.

Email Open Rates

Open rates are one of those email metrics that marketing gurus debate over. “Oh, that’s not important,” some will say. But the fact is, if your emails aren’t being opened, there’s a problem!

True, an open doesn’t equal a conversion, but tracking your open rates can tell you a little something about the effectiveness of your email subject lines and your sender name and address.

Click-Through Rates

As email metrics go, this one is considered universally important. These are the people who not only open your email, but click through one of your URLs or CTAs to reach a landing page.

Click-through rates can give you some insight into the effectiveness of your email content. If you’re getting a click, you’ve delivered the right message at the right time.

Conversion Rates

Once a subscriber has clicked through, you want them to do something! Maybe you’ve asked them to fill out a contact form, sign up for your newsletter or download a demo. Your click-through rate tells you the percentage of subscribers that successfully completed that action.

Bounce Rates

These email metrics show you the negative side of your email list – the emails that aren’t being delivered. There are two types of bounce rates: hard bounces and soft bounces.

Hard bounces are permanently undeliverable. Drop them from your list before they hurt your sender score.

Soft bounces may be salvageable. They’re often due to temporary problems, such as an overflowing inbox. Try sending again, but if they continue to bounce, cut and run.

Email Sharing/Forwarding Rates

These email metrics tell you when subscribers share your content to social media or forward your emails – referral leads! And we don’t have to tell you the importance of lead generation.

Pay attention to which content encourages sharing. This can help you plan more effective content down the line.

List Growth Rate

Email metrics for list growth rate not only give you an idea of new subscribers, but also take into account the subscribers you’ve lost – unsubscribes, spam reports, hard bounces, etc.

Keep in mind, email lists naturally decay by 22.5 percent each year. If you want to continue growing, you have to find ways to generate leads consistently.

Here’s a tip. Clickback MAIL allows you to purchase email lists, clean the data, and send deliverable, CAN-SPAM compliant campaigns that turn cold contacts into warm leads for your nurturing and sales campaigns.

In other words, you can grow your email list virtually overnight!

Return on Investment

Of all the email metrics you’re tracking, this is the most important. Of course, how you determine your ROI depends on the return you’re looking for.

Is it a matter of sales? Or was the campaign set up to generate new leads? ROI email metrics will tell you how well your money is being spent.