One of the best reasons why email marketers simply like this communication channel is because it delivers metrics. Only with clearly identified metrics, we could benchmark success, compare results to previous or overall campaigns and have ways to measure the effectiveness of a test campaign.

In this article, you will find how to interpret what different metric variables mean to you and how you could use those numbers to objectively measure results.

Basic Email Metrics

Read my previous post about basic email marketing metrics for a quick introductory tutorial to this.

It is worth mentioning again that different email marketing system delivers different metrics. Some email systems may provide detailed numbers per recipients, others only provide aggregate statistics.

It goes without saying that aggregate data are less useful but nevertheless important to measure your email marketing efforts.

What Do You Measure

It is very critical that you know what you are measuring. Although sometimes there are standards of which a specific metric means, not all email service providers (ESPs) follow this rule.

For instance, click-through rates (CTR) are usually measured as the percentage of clicks out of the delivered messages.

This number comes from the fact that we can not measure open rates accurately especially if we send text only email campaigns, or the end-users block tracking — which is common.

Yet sometimes ESPs measure percentage of click-through out of opens as the CTR. Knowing which number is which helps, because only if you know you are comparing apple to apple that you could somewhat trust the result.

Interpreting Email Metrics

What do open rates mean? Are they good indications that recipients are interested in your offer?

Each metric should be interpreted differently based on the message content and other factors. To get you started, here are some of the examples:

• Open rates: the measurement of how the recipients are interested in your content or offer in the subject line.
• Click-through rates: if they want to take the next actions; either get more information about the product, evaluating it or jump to the order page.
• Forward to friends: an indication that your content is unique, useful or fun to let their friends know about.
• Unsubscription: Either that they are not interested anymore in the content, too many emails, strayed messages, etc. You have to ask to find this out.

It is worth repeating again that only if you know what exactly different metric means that you can safely assume what each number represents in real-life.

Three Basic Rules to Measure Results

In order to come out with objective numbers that you can use to measure your marketing results, you need to follow three rules:

1. Change one thing at a time. Otherwise you will not be able to know which aspect of your changes affect the result.
2. Have large enough and consistent sample. You can not measure segment A to B if they don’t represent the same characteristics. A sample has to be large enough for the test to be valid.
3. Measure reliably. Only depends on a reliable measurement system. Don’t assume that the metric you see are final. Sometimes results still pour in days or weeks after sending.

While there is a mathematical and statistical approach to analyze email campaigns, the method outlined above is very simple and easy to carry out.

The success or failure of an email campaign depends on how you plan and implement it. It is best if you can get the feedback from various data so that you don’t make the same mistake and maximize the result. Carefully examine the metrics is important because it allows you to safely measure success rate and feed the data back for future uses.