Artificial intelligence! Chatbots! Influencers! The digital marketing landscape is always brimming with new and exciting trends, all of which promise to lure customers with fresh tactics and innovative technology.

But sometimes the most effective marketing strategies are built on decades-old technologies—good old-fashioned email, for example. With a little creativity and a lot of attention to detail, you can turn your future email campaigns into conversion-generating powerhouses. Ready to get results? Start tracking the email marketing metrics that matter.

• Why You Need to Pay More Attention to Email Marketing Metrics
• Delivery Rate and Deliverability
• Open Rate
• Click-Through Rate
• Conversion Rate
• Unsubscription Rate
• List Growth

Why You Need to Pay More Attention to Email Marketing Metrics

You might associate the birth of widespread email usage with the 1990s, but it first came into existence much earlier. Incredibly, the first email ever was sent when Nixon was in office. It may be ancient by tech standards, but email marketing is still shockingly effective.

One of the primary causes of its success may be its sheer ubiquity. In 2019, there were 3.9 billion email users worldwide, or more than half of the global population for that year.

Even with an array of social media platforms competing for views, clicks and dollars, email marketing continues to generate strong results. A survey from email marketing platform Campaign Monitor found 89 percent of marketers view their email strategy as either somewhat or very successful, and 87 percent say performance is increasing:

To be successful in the 21st century, though, email campaigns need more than a catchy message—they also need to be informed by hard data. You can analyze key email marketing metrics to:

• see what is and isn’t working;
• monitor growth;
• understand who your emails resonate with; and
• measure each campaign’s cost and profits.

Want to take your next email marketing campaigns to the next level? Get ready to dig into some numbers.

Delivery Rate and Deliverability

Before you consider metrics like open and conversion rates, you need to know whether your emails are actually reaching recipients’ inboxes in the first place.

You can find out with the help of two related metrics:

• delivery rate, which indicates whether an email was received by the recipient’s email provider; and
• deliverability, which indicates whether an email reached the recipient’s inbox or was delivered elsewhere, such as their spam folder.

Delivery Rate

An email’s failure to reach a recipient’s email provider is called a bounce. An email can bounce for several reasons. The recipient’s email address may be invalid, or their email server may be temporarily down. While a small number of bounces are inevitable—a bounce rate of two percent or lower is typically deemed acceptable—you can take steps to minimize their frequency.

To improve delivery rate and reduce bounce rate, you can try:

• using a two-step opt-in process asking recipients to confirm their subscription via email;
• regularly purging invalid email addresses from your subscriber list; and
• refraining from purchasing recipients’ email addresses from third-party sources.

Deliverability

Next, check to see whether your emails are being sent to the junk pile. To improve deliverability and steer clear of the spam folder:

• create engaging and high-quality email content recipients will be less likely to mark as spam;
• authenticate your domain to demonstrate trustworthiness to internet service providers (ISPs);
• observe email list hygiene best practices;
• make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe from your list;
• send emails only to recipients who have opted to receive them; and
• warm up your IP address if you just started sending from it.

Open Rate

After learning how to reduce your bounce rate and sidestep the dreaded spam folder, you’re free to move on to more fun email marketing metrics (yeah, we think metrics are fun, what of it?). One of the most basic is open rate, an email marketing optimization staple.

As its name suggests, open rate refers to the rate at which recipients actually open and presumably read your emails.

Mailchimp, an email marketing service with more than 12 million active customers in 2019, reports the average open rate across all industries to be 21.33 percent.

Setting a realistic target for your own open rate depends on understanding both the average open rate for your industry and techniques for improving upon it.

Rates can vary significantly based on vertical. For example, government emails have a sky-high open rate of 28.77 percent, while emails from the vitamin and supplement industry have a comparatively low rate of just 15.03 percent. So check your industry’s average before judging your own open rate too harshly.

To increase your open rate:

• use personalized subject lines;
• avoid generic or spammy-sounding subject lines;
• create intriguing preview text;
• regularly purge inactive addresses from your email list;
• switch up your emails’ frequency; and
• send emails at different times or on different days of the week.

Click-Through Rate

Notice how each metric takes us further along the customer journey. First, the email arrives in their inbox. Second, they open the email. Next, they have the choice to either go back to their inbox and keep scrolling or click a link within the email to visit an external website.

The percentage of recipients who choose to click a link is the click-through rate, or CTR for short.

Expect your CTR to be much lower than your open rate. Mailchimp’s data shows the average CTR across all industries is 2.62 percent, with hobby-related emails taking first place (5.01 percent) and emails from the restaurant industry coming in last (1.34 percent).

To improve your CTR:

• optimize your emails for both mobile and desktop devices;
• experiment with different link and button placements;
• add personalized elements for each recipient;
• send custom-tailored emails to each customer segment;
• use high-quality images and graphics;
• fine-tune the call to action (CTA); and
• keep each email succinct, well organized and easy to read.

Conversion Rate

You’re not creating email campaigns just for kicks—you’re using them to convince recipients to take a desired action, or convert.

The form that action takes will vary based on your vertical and intentions. For instance, if you’re optimizing campaigns for a software as a service (SaaS) company, your goal will likely be to secure software subscriptions. If you’re optimizing campaigns for a nonprofit organization, though, your goal might be for recipients to donate or volunteer.

Whatever the case, your conversion rate is defined by the percentage of recipients who take the desired action.

Since desired conversions vary, it’s difficult to pin down a general or even industry average. You can set your own target conversion rate based on your email campaigns’ historical performance.

To boost your conversion rate, use all the same tactics you would use to increase your open rate and CTR.

If your desired conversion involves recipients making a purchase, you may also find it useful to send emails triggered by their actions. Data gathered in 2020, from ecommerce email campaigns found email my cart (EMC) emails garner the highest average conversion rates by far:

Unsubscription Rate

Email list recipients unsubscribe for a number of reasons. Perhaps they only signed up to get an introductory offer, or maybe they’re simply trying to clean up a crowded inbox. Your unsubscription rate refers to the percentage of recipients who do so, regardless of motive.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, unsubscriptions aren’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, they can even help your email marketing optimization efforts. Think of them as free list cleanup—each recipient who manually unsubscribes is one you won’t have to remove from your list later.

That said, a higher-than-usual unsubscription rate can provide insights into what your recipients are responding to and what’s turning them off.

Mailchimp’s data shows average unsubscription rates are less than 0.50 percent across the board, with an overall average of 0.26 percent. Emails from the health and fitness industry and the photo and video industry are tied for the highest rate (0.40 percent), while daily deals and e-coupons claim the lowest (0.10 percent).

Depending on your industry, you may be able to drive down your unsubscription rate by creating more engaging content or including more enticing offers.

List Growth

The rate at which visitors and potential customers opt in to receive your emails is known as list growth, and may also be referred to as opt-in rate or signup rate. This email marketing metric is essential for gauging your audience’s interest in your content, products or services.

Email capture tool Sumo reports its own list growth rate at 1.95 percent—and it’s in good company. The research institute MarketingSherpa says email lists across all industries are growing by an average of 5.2 percent each month.

Your list growth will vary depending on your target audience. If you’re encouraging existing customers to sign up, list growth will likely be much higher than if you’re cold emailing people who have never heard of your organization before.

If your list growth isn’t where you want it to be, it may help to:

• add email capture tools like pop-ups or floating sign-up bars to the organization’s site;
• offer exclusive content, giveaways or original research in exchange for email sign-ups;
• add a CTA button to the organization’s Facebook page;
• link to the email sign-up landing page from the organization’s social media profiles; and
• add an opt-in button next to comment boxes and account creation forms.

Mine Email Marketing Metrics for Insight-Driven Results

In a world of machine learning-based marketing techniques and brand new ad formats (augmented reality, anyone?), email marketing campaigns might seem dull in comparison.

Nevertheless, tried and true email technology can be one of the most invaluable tools in your arsenal. By tracking the right email marketing metrics and paying attention to ever-evolving trends, you can master email marketing campaign optimization to get more clicks, conversions, and subscribers.

Image credits
Campaign Monitor / July 2019
Barilliance / July 2020

Ever since the publication of the first newspaper (and likely well before), people’s interest in consuming new, curated and exclusive information has been insatiable. Whether via Twitter or word-of-mouth, we still can’t seem to get enough of it.

This doesn’t just benefit media outlets, though. High-quality email newsletters are a news source loved by recipients and marketers alike. Learning how to write a newsletter for your audience allows you to leverage readers’ penchant for fresh news to increase engagement, as well as nurture leads and generate brand awareness.

Learn How to Write a Stellar Newsletter for Out of This World Results

Sure, newsletters are fantastic marketing tools in theory, but can they really drive results in practice? The short answer: Yes. The long answer: Yes, absolutely, without a doubt.

This is true whether you’re part of a B2B or B2C organization. In 2020, the Content Marketing Institute conducted a survey of B2B marketers and found:

• 81 percent had used email newsletters in the prior 12 months;
• 31 percent rated email newsletters as the most effective content type for nurturing leads; and
• 90 percent tracked email engagement to measure content marketing success.

Similarly, the counterpart survey of B2C marketers, also conducted in 2020, found:

• 74 percent had used email newsletters in the prior 12 months;
• 24 percent rated email newsletters as the most effective content type for nurturing leads;
• 16 percent rated them as the most effective content type for securing leads; and
• 75 percent tracked email engagement to measure content marketing success.

If you’re concerned email is becoming outdated or unpopular, rest assured the data says otherwise. As reported in the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) 2020 report on consumer email use in the U.K., 95 percent of consumers check their personal inbox at least once per day.

So, while it may be tempting to focus your SEO and marketing efforts solely on social media, site optimization and keyword research, it’s crucial to make email marketing a core part of your overarching marketing strategy.

In other words, if you don’t learn how to write a stellar newsletter your audience will actually enjoy reading, you’ll miss out on a valuable marketing opportunity to win over recipients, nurture leads and drive conversions.

Decide Whether a Newsletter Is Right for You

If you’re looking for effective ways to draw and convert customers, you’ve probably already considered whether a newsletter will work for your brand. Nevertheless, it’s a topic worth exploring further.

Think of the newsletters you receive in your inbox—what types of organizations are they from? What types of content do they contain? Perhaps they aim to:

• educate;
• summarize news stories;
• spotlight customers;
• round up entertaining videos; or
• highlight project updates.

Whatever the case, take the time to consider whether your brand could provide similarly engaging content.

If you represent a small clothing brand, for example, you might not have enough company news to highlight on a weekly or even monthly basis. However, you could still attract readers to your newsletter by writing about current fashion trends or sharing style inspiration.

By the same token, a non-profit organization might not have products to highlight, but it could gain newsletter subscribers by sharing stories about its latest activities or providing a preview of upcoming events.

If you can’t see how your brand could generate an interesting newsletter, there’s no need to fret— plenty of other email marketing strategies can help you connect with your audience.

What ultimately matters is the thought and preparation you put into your newsletter before the first word is even typed. If your approach is rushed, haphazard and motivated by wanting to have a newsletter for the sake of having a newsletter, your readers will be able to tell.

On the other hand, if you take the time to think about whether a newsletter is a good fit for you, find a niche and develop a measured approach, your audience will be all the more likely to pay attention.

Get to Know Your Audience

Thoroughly understanding your audience is one of the first requirements for a successful email newsletter.

To start, you’ll likely find it helpful to create buyer personas, i.e. semi-fictional archetypes of your current (and ideal) customers. These can be differentiated by things like age, geographic location, gender, income level and more.

First, segment your audience according to their common traits. You can gather this information from social media analytics, a customer relationship management (CRM) system or any other source of audience data you can access. Or, you can use email marketing software like Campaign Monitor, Campaigner or HubSpot to expedite the process.

Next, start crafting a buyer persona for each segment. You can get creative with photos, faux names and original layouts, or you can keep things simple by filling out a premade template (HubSpot offers several for free).

Remember, buyer personas aren’t limited to your existing audience, either—you also have the option to create personas for an entirely new target audience. In this case, you can benefit from conducting or reading market research on the market segment you’re after.

Cater to Your Audience

Once your personas are complete, you’ll be able to use them to inform the tone, themes and aesthetic of your newsletter. For instance, emojis might not do the trick with a more serious, business-focused audience, but could send your open rates skyrocketing with those looking for fun and entertainment.

Personalization can help you capture even more attention. Consumers around the world report responding favorably to personalized emails—62 percent in North America, 82 percent in Europe and 88 percent in Asia, according to Dynamic Yield’s 2017 email personalization survey.

Personalization comes in many forms. You can opt to personalize the email’s subject line, body text or both, and can choose from a variety of personalized elements such as:

• the recipient’s name;
• the recipient’s gender, age, location or other demographic factor; or
• products or services the recipient has already shown an interest in.

All types of personalization come with measurable benefits, but some are more effective than others:

• Personalized subject lines: After analyzing about 4 billion emails sent in the first half of 2019, GetResponse found personalized subject lines boost open rates by approximately 0.5 percentage points.
• Personalized email body content: Emails with personalized body content improved click-through rates by about 19 percent, as reported in the GetResponse study.
• Personalized product recommendations: Half of consumers ignore marketing emails because of irrelevant product recommendations, according to a 2018 Yes Marketing survey of over 1,000 respondents.

Implement Triggered Emails

Want to really up the personalization ante? Triggered emails might be right up your alley: As their name suggests, these emails are triggered by certain user actions. For example, customers may receive triggered emails after:

• signing up for a mailing list or text alerts;
• making a purchase;
• viewing a particular product or type of product;
• leaving items in their cart without checking out; or
• sending a support ticket.

Data gathered by BounceX in 2019 suggests triggered emails are markedly more effective than more traditional email blasts. Case in point: Triggered emails have about double the open rate and click rate as blast emails, and quadruple the conversion rate to boot.

For the purpose of creating an exceptionally effective newsletter, you’ll primarily focus on emails triggered by newsletter sign ups. Since the 2020 DMA report found 65 percent of consumers like receiving brand emails containing discounts and offers, you might even consider including a discount in your triggered emails to new newsletter subscribers.

Choose Your Subject Line Carefully

Even if your newsletter is full of high-quality content and original insights, the wrong subject line can discourage recipients from opening it at all.

To ensure your subject lines draw readers in rather than push them away, try adopting some data-driven tactics:

Take Length into Account

Email clients of all types will only display a certain number of each subject line’s characters in a user’s inbox. So, your beautifully written subject line may end up getting cut off before your recipients can even read it.

Avoid this issue altogether by keeping your subject line’s length under control—according to data gathered by Marketo in 2018, the ideal length is seven words, or about 41 characters.

Use the Right Words

With only 41 characters to work with, word choice matters. CoSchedule recommends including several different word types in each subject line:

• Common words such as about, why and your should occupy 20–30 percent of your subject line.
• Uncommon words such as actually, beautiful and social should occupy 10–20 percent.
• Emotional words such as absolutely, valuable and wonderful should occupy 10–15 percent.
• Power words (i.e. words inciting action) such as make you, you need to know and what happened to should be included at least once.

To simplify the subject line writing process, try using CoSchedule’s free Headline Analyzer to test out your ideas.

It’s just as important to avoid certain words in your subject lines—refer to AutopilotHQ’s list of the top spam trigger words for a comprehensive list of the most common ones, or use Postmark’s free spam checker to see if your subject line or email body will be flagged as spam.

Don’t Forget Preview Text

Also referred to as preheader text, preview text is the text that shows up next to the subject line in a user’s inbox. This email from Duolingo serves as a perfect example:

Preview text is valuable because it acts as a second subject line, and therefore a second opportunity for you to entice recipients to open your newsletter. And yet, MailerLite found 90 percent of all campaigns sent through its service don’t use custom preview text as of 2020.

For you, this means custom preview text can help set your newsletter above the rest. To get started, check out Litmus’ simple instructions for using a few lines of HTML to create your own preview text. Or, check with the email marketing service you’re already using to see if a built-in option exists.

Optimize for Mobile

According to a 2019 report from Adestra, 62 percent of emails are opened on a mobile client. iPhones are particularly popular—people use them to open emails 35 percent of the time.

Knowing this, it’s easy to see why it’s essential to optimize your newsletters for mobile viewing. As explained by HubSpot, you can make your newsletters more mobile-friendly by:

• using a responsive email template;
• reducing image file sizes;
• increasing the size of links and buttons; and
• previewing your email on a mobile device.

To improve the user experience even further, also remember to:

• put your CTA or button in a prominent position to accommodate smaller screens;
• consider users will be using their fingers to scroll and space out your content accordingly; and
• keep your copy short and sweet to avoid overwhelming walls of text.

Create Thoughtful Content

As with any other type of content, it’s crucial to prioritize quality over frequency when learning how to write emails for your marketing campaigns.

To start, refer to your buyer personas and try to imagine the type of content they’d be glad to see in their inbox. The answer hinges on your particular brand and industry, but one core principle can help you produce content that gets results: Offer value, no matter what.

Depending on the nature of your organization, you can do so with a variety of content types:

• Educational information: People love to learn new things, especially when those things are concisely summarized. A newsletter can be the ideal place for this, whether you’re sharing fun facts about animals, teaching readers how to do something new or divulging the secrets of the property insurance industry.
• Lists: List articles (or listicles for short) have received more than their fair share of criticism, but they’re not without value. As explained in a 2014 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, people demonstrate “mental tendencies to use categories and to exaggerate the differences between them.” In other words, humans are drawn to lists—by using them in your newsletter, you may be able to capture readers’ attention.
• News stories: You don’t have to work for The New York Times to leverage your audience’s interest in current events. In fact, you don’t even need to use original news stories—you can simply offer your own take on trending news relevant to your industry (just remember to include a link to the original source).
• Visual elements: While we’re on the topic of human psychology, it’s worth mentioning humans are visual creatures. As a result, your newsletter can benefit from the inclusion of eye-catching images. Case in point: When IMPACT began using images in its email newsletters in 2019, it saw a 4–6 percent increase in click-through rates. To maximize results, remember to prioritize relevant, unique and original images—for instance, you could feature original graphics, photos from company events or photos taken by customers.
• Product highlights: By highlighting new, discounted or especially intriguing products, you can capture readers’ attention while simultaneously driving site traffic and boosting sales. For even more engagement, try featuring different products for each segment of your subscriber base.
• User stories: If you’ve heard positive or impactful stories from people about how they’ve used your product or service, your email newsletter can be the perfect place to share them. By doing so, you’ll be able to give subscribers more interesting content than a typical sales pitch and demonstrate the value of your offerings.

Find the Right Rhythm

Prolific emailers, take note—57 percent of consumers surveyed for the DMA report cited receiving too many emails as their reason for unsubscribing from branded emails.

Even when they don’t unsubscribe, recipients are more likely to ignore your email newsletters if they feel too frequent.

On the other hand, if you send too few emails then you run the risk of seeing your brand awareness wane. So, the key is to find a schedule for your email newsletters that keeps subscribers interested and aware without driving them to click the dreaded “unsubscribe” button.

While the best frequency for you can only be determined by analyzing your newsletter’s metrics, GetResponse’s research can help you get started. According to their data, newsletters sent just once per week get the highest open and click-through rates by far:

With that in mind, you would be wise to schedule your newsletters to be sent once per week and experiment with frequency from there.

Embrace A/B Testing

Part of learning how to write newsletters your audience will love is realizing one truth: No matter how fantastic you think your newsletter is, your readers always make the final call.

Just because your audience doesn’t like a newsletter as much as you’d hoped they would doesn’t mean your content is inherently flawed, either. A wide variety of factors can affect how readers respond to content, from the economy to politics to seasonal trends.

That’s why A/B testing your newsletters is so valuable: It can show you how real readers are responding to the content you create right now. This will enable you to tailor your content to suit your audience’s current preferences, whether you understand them or not.

A/B testing, also referred to as split testing, involves comparing two versions of something (in this case, an email newsletter) to see which one performs best. For example, you could test one variant of your newsletter (version A) with a clickable button at the top, and another (version B) with the same button at the bottom.

By analyzing which version led to the most opens and click-throughs, you’ll be able to adjust your newsletter strategy accordingly.

Design: Please create an original graphic similar to the one above, preferably incorporating branded colors.

To start A/B testing, you’ll first need to decide which element of your newsletter you want to test. For example, you could test the efficacy of different:

• subject lines;
• images or videos;
• layouts;
• calls to action;
• levels of personalization;
• rates of frequency;
• discounts or offers; or
• writing styles.

Then, determine which tool you’ll use to conduct your tests (while it’s possible to perform A/B testing by manually dividing your subscriber list into different testing groups, it can be very time-consuming and difficult to view clear results).

If you’re just starting to dip your toes in the world of A/B testing, you might prefer to use a no-cost, lightweight tool like the free version of MailerLite (if you have more than 1,000 subscribers, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan).

Other widely-used tools include HubSpot, Mailchimp, Campaigner and CampaignMonitor, all of which include built-in A/B testing capabilities.

Hot off the Press: Your Best Newsletter Yet

You don’t need to be a professional journalist to know how to write a newsletter that hits all the right beats. With a statistics-driven approach and an understanding of what your audience wants, you can enjoy higher open and click-through rates than ever before.

Just remember to listen to the data, strive to deliver value, prioritize the user experience and always mind your p’s and q’s—you’re sure to love the results.

Image credits
Screenshots by author / June 2020
Illustration created by iloveseo / June 2020