The phrase “tracking emails” means different things to different people. If you’re a marketer, you want to understand how to track emails so you can monitor the performance and bottom-line results.
If you’re in sales, for example, maybe you’d rather track emails directly from your inbox so you can efficiently follow up with leads and clients.
Either way, the goals are pretty similar: You want to know who is opening your emails, when they’re opening them, and if they’re taking action inside.
What should you track in emails?
Tracking your email results is crucial.
Monitoring your open rate lets you know if your subject lines are engaging subscribers enough to actually open your emails. Getting your emails opened is the first step. Shoot for an average open rate of between 15% and 25%—anything less requires a little attention.
Shoot for an open rate ranging between 15% and 25%.
Understanding your click-through rate is necessary for determining the quality of your email body copy. If your content isn’t interesting, relevant, valuable, and action-driven, your subscribers won’t feel compelled to take action. 4% is average across all industries. Keep in mind that your click-through rate is also largely dependent on your open rate.
It’s also important to look at other metrics such as bounces and unsubscribes.
Soft bounces aren’t a major problem unless you’re seeing dozens of them. A 2% bounce rate is nothing to worry about. These usually indicate a full mailbox or overloaded email client on your subscriber’s end. If you’re seeing too many soft bounces, break your email list up into segments and send out emails at different times.
Hard bounces, however, can damage your sending IP address reputation and need to be removed immediately. These indicate an incorrect or deleted email address.
Although it’s important to monitor your unsubscribe rate, don’t concern yourself with a few unsubscribes here and there. If your unsubscribe rate creeps up past 0.5% or 1%, you should carefully consider your content, its quality, and what your subscribers expect from you.
How to measure your email metrics
If you’re unsure how to track your emails, don’t worry. Your email service provider makes it very easy. Just log into your dashboard and click over to your individual campaign results.
You’ll see everything you need to make informed decisions about your email content, such as open rates, bounce rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes, and much more.
If you’re a business professional rather than an email marketer, you can install Chrome extensions that integrate with your email client to help you track email metrics and results.
Email service providers like Campaign Monitor make it easy to analyze and interpret your email results.
Source: Campaign Monitor
Does it really matter?
Yes. As a marketer, you want to monitor several metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and bottom-line conversions. If you don’t track your email results, you could potentially be wasting your campaign material.
Monitoring and interpreting your campaign results can help you deliver the best content possible to your subscribers’ inboxes.
As a business professional, tracking your emails can help you stay on top of hot leads and important clients. If someone has opened your email multiple times in one day, it might be a good idea to send out another feeler email to touch base.
What now?
Now that you understand how to track emails and the importance of monitoring metrics, you can create the best campaigns possible. By using this information, you can then run A/B tests to develop the best strategy. If your metrics are lackluster, consider segmenting your list and creating unique content for the different demographics in your contacts.
Do you need a little more help in understanding how to track emails and analyze metrics? We have an in-depth guide that explains everything.