Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach customers, drive engagement, and boost sales.

But here’s the thing: It's not just about firing off a series of emails and hoping for the best. To understand what’s working and what’s not, you need to dive into the numbers, analyze your email marketing metrics, and use that data to improve.

So, which metrics are essential for email marketing success in the ecommerce world? And more importantly, how can these numbers help you drive conversions and grow your business?

Let’s discuss!

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Email Marketing Metrics You Should Track

1. Conversion/Placed Order Rate

If there’s one email marketing metric that stands above the rest, it’s conversion rate. After all, the ultimate goal of any marketing effort is to convert leads into customers.

The average conversion rate tells you how effective your emails are at turning recipients into customers, whether that action is making a purchase, signing up for a webinar, or downloading a resource.

In ecommerce email marketing, conversion rate is also known as placed order rate.

Why It’s Important

The conversion rate (or placed order rate) is an important indicator of campaign success. It directly measures how successful your marketing efforts are at driving desired actions, like sales or sign-ups. It's the most straightforward way to assess whether your email campaigns are turning subscribers into actual customers.

How to Improve It

Consider refining your audience targeting, making your offers more enticing, or clarifying your call-to-action. Most ecommerce email marketing platforms, such as Klaviyo and Mailchimp, offer advanced tracking and analytics to help you track conversions accurately. You can also use Google Analytics to measure conversions.

2. Open Rate

Until recently, open rates were one of the top metrics for email marketing. They indicated how many recipients opened your emails, which was a good measure of how engaging your subject lines were.

But after the introduction of iOS 15, which affects how opens are tracked, this metric has become less reliable. On average, ecommerce open rates for promotional campaigns used to hover around 18-20%. Post-iOS 15, this number skyrocketed to 59% due to changes in how opens are tracked.

That said, open rates still offer some valuable insights, especially for gauging subject line and send time performance.

Why It’s Important

Open rate gives you a rough idea of how well your subject lines are performing. Are you catching your readers' attention? If your open rate drops significantly, it may be time to rethink your subject line strategy.

Additionally, a gradual decrease in open rates could indicate issues with the timing of your sends or signal potential problems with deliverability and sender reputation.

How to Improve It

acFocus on crafting short, engaging subject lines that provoke curiosity or promise value. Avoid spammy words like "free" or "cash," and personalize your subject lines for a higher likelihood of getting opened. But if your open rate remains low, try testing different send times to identify when your audience is most active.

Also, make sure you’re sending emails to engaged segments to boost your results. If you continue to face issues, it could indicate potential problems with your sending domain. In that case, you may need to work on warming up your account or improving your sender reputation by reducing spam rates and enhancing deliverability.

3. Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who clicked a link after opening the email. This is one of the most revealing email engagement metrics, as it shows how compelling your content and calls to action are.

A high click rate or CTR indicates that your audience is not only opening your emails but actively engaging with them.

To calculate the CTR, divide the number of unique clicks by the number of delivered emails, then multiply by 100. For ecommerce, an average click-through rate of 4-7% is considered solid, but segmented campaigns can push this number even higher.

Why It’s Important

CTR is a powerful indicator of engagement. If a balanced or expected number of profiles are clicking, it means your content, layout, and offers are relevant and interesting to your audience.

How to Improve It

Make your emails scannable and easy to read. Use clear, actionable CTAs, and focus on making your content visually appealing with enough white space to guide the reader’s eye. Personalized content that matches your recipient's preferences will also boost click-through rates.

4. Bounce Rate

Bounce rates tell you how many of your emails didn’t make it to the recipient’s inbox. A “soft bounce” means the email couldn’t be delivered due to a temporary issue (like a full inbox), while a “hard bounce” happens when the email address is invalid or no longer exists.

Why It’s important

A high bounce rate can damage your sender's reputation, leading to lower deliverability rates in the future.

Additionally, keeping invalid emails on your list wastes resources, as most email service providers (ESPs) charge based on the number of active profiles. This means you're paying for contacts that will never convert, making it cost-inefficient to maintain a dirty email list.

How to Improve It

Regularly clean your email list to remove invalid or inactive addresses. Make sure to use double opt-ins for better-quality subscribers, and keep an eye on bounce rates after every campaign.

5. Return on Investment (ROI)

Calculating your email marketing ROI is important for understanding how much value you’re getting from your email campaigns. In ecommerce, emails often generate impressive returns, with many businesses seeing an ROI of $40 for every $1 spent.

The formula is simple: Subtract the money you spent on email marketing, including platform fees, email marketing agency fees, etc. from the total revenue your email marketing efforts generated. Divide that amount with your total investment in email marketing, and you'll have your email ROI.

For instance, if you spent $400 on email marketing and your email campaigns and flows generated $20,000 in revenue your ROI is it means for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you're getting $42 in return.

Why It’s Important: ROI tells you whether your investment in email marketing is paying off and helps you justify continued spending on campaigns, tools, or outsourced services.

How to Improve It: Track and optimize expenses related to email marketing, including email service provider (ESP) fees and email marketing agency fees. Regularly review your resource usage. If you're subscribed to a plan to send 60,000 emails per month but only send 10,000 on average, consider switching to a smaller plan to reduce costs.

Similarly, if your SMS campaigns aren't converting, you might want to switch to a smaller plan or even cancel them altogether. In addition, use A/B testing to gather insights and optimize campaigns for better conversions, increasing your revenue while ensuring your resources are being effectively utilized.

6. Spam Rate

Spam rate refers to the percentage of recipients who mark your emails as spam or when your email lands in someone's spam box.

A spam rate higher than 0.01% is a warning sign that your sender's reputation and deliverability score may be unhealthy. If your spam rate continues to rise, it can seriously damage your sender score, further impacting your reputation and the ability to reach inboxes in the future. This indicates that your emails are not resonating with your audience, and they might perceive your content as spammy, which can negatively affect future email performance.

Why It’s Important

A high spam rate can harm your deliverability and prevent you from meeting KPIs. If your sender reputation is poor due to issues like missing DMARC or DNS problems, your emails may land in spam folders, even if recipients don’t mark them as such.

Once emails start going to spam, it’s difficult to recover, and future emails may still end up in spam despite being marked as “not spam.”

How to Improve It: Use data to determine the best times to reach your audience based on their engagement patterns. Regularly clean your list, check your DMARC and DNS settings, and ensure you have a branded sending domain to maintain a strong sender reputation.

Identify and optimize any variables affecting your reputation, such as updating your subject and preview lines and ensuring your sending email address has a healthy status.

7. Unsubscribe Rate

Unsubscribes are inevitable, but they’re not always a bad thing. If your rate is significantly higher, it’s time to evaluate the frequency and content of your emails.

Why It’s Important

High unsubscribe rates may suggest that your emails are either too frequent or irrelevant to your audience. Keeping track of unsubscribes helps you adjust your strategy to retain more of your list.

How to Improve It

Send fewer, more targeted emails by segmenting your audience based on their interests or past behaviors. While it’s important to respect preferences, such as those who consent to receive BFCM emails, focus on sending these at optimal times, which may involve intervals of 4 to 6 hours.

Ensure that your content genuinely relates with your audience by offering valuable information rather than constant sales pitches.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do I need to use additional tools to track my email marketing performance, or can the same email marketing platform suffice?

While most platforms provide basic analytics, using additional tools like Google Analytics can offer more comprehensive insights.

Using Google Analytics, you can track how email recipients interact with your website after clicking a link in your email. This helps you understand the full impact of your campaigns beyond initial clicks and opens by combining data from both your ESP's dashboard and Google Analytics.
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2. What role does A/B testing play in optimizing email marketing metrics?

A/B testing lets you compare two versions of an email to see which performs better on metrics like open rates or click rates. For example, you could test two subject lines to see which yields more opens or two different call-to-action buttons to compare click-through rates.

This method directly influences improvements in campaign metrics by letting data drive decisions.
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3. Can integrating social media insights improve my email marketing metrics?

Yes, by linking your Meta or Google accounts with your email platform, you can use social media data to improve email segmentation and personalization.

For example, if your paid media data shows a group of users frequently engages with posts about certain products, you can feature those products in your emails. This can lead to higher click-through rates and more conversions because you're aligning your emails with what your audience already likes.

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Conclusion

Email marketing is a powerful tool for ecommerce, but only when you track the right metrics. By keeping an eye on your email marketing analytics you can fine-tune your strategy, improve engagement, and drive more sales. Remember, the goal isn’t just to send emails; it’s to send emails that matter.

With this guide, you’re now equipped to better understand your email performance and use that data to optimize your future campaigns. Call us now to learn more about our services!

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