How to measure and optimize the performance of your emails?

Email marketing KPIs

The 8 key performance indicators (KPI) of email marketing

Here are the main KPIs (performance indicators) to be implemented to measure the performance of email campaigns:

• Number of emails sent to your contacts
• Sales generated by the campaign
• Average shopping basket
• Opening rate
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Bounce rate
• Unsubscription rate

Definition of Kiliba performance indicators

There is no official definition of emailing rates and it is important to understand the calculation of each indicator in the email automation solutions on the market to set the right objective. At Kiliba, the indicators are calculated as follows:

1. Number of emails sent" indicator: all emails, including bounces
2. Open rate" indicator: (number of opens) / (number of emails sent)
3. Click rate" indicator: (number of emails that generated 1 or more clicks) / (number sent)
4. Conversion rate" indicator: (number of emails that generated 1 or more purchases) / (number sent)
5. Unsubscribe rate" indicator: (number of emails that generated 1 or more clicks) / (number sent)

What is an email bounce?

An email bounce is an email not received by your recipient due to a server error. There are "hard" bounces (non-existent mail, bad syntax) and "soft" bounces (server unavailable or mailbox full).

What is the average performance of emails and how can it be improved?

Email marketing performance varies depending on the nature of your store (B2B or B2C), your brand awareness, the data you have on your customer and your messages. Depending on your automation solution, the data can vary from simple to triple. It is therefore vital for an e-merchant to learn about the performance of a marketing automation tool before deciding to set the right goal. Here is a review of the main rates of email marketing and the levers you can use to improve performance, avoid spam and increase the responsiveness of your contacts.

The opening rate of emails is 17.8% (More than 50% on average at Kiliba, with peaks of 80% on certain hyper-personalized scenarios). To improve this rate, you can :

• change the subject of the email,
• personalize the subject of the email (with the first name of the recipient for example),
• blacklist risky recipients in your contact list (you also improve the deliverability of emails and avoid landing in spam),
• segment your base to send emails to recipients who will like to receive them.

The average click rate is 1.7%(7.2% on average at Kiliba). To optimize this rate, you need to:

• produce quality content to please your contacts,
• personalize the message as much as possible,
• a message template with a simple, modern and effective design,
• one or more call to action (buttons) at key reading points to encourage your recipients to go to your store.

How to track your email performance in Google Analytics?

Let's say it, Google Analytics has become the reference tool for tracking the performance of a website or an e-commerce site. Google Analytics allows you to track visits to your site, generate a performance report and trace the origin of each visit in real time. It is possible to configure your emails to identify each campaign in your Google Analytics reports.

In order to track the data in your messages, you need to add several parameters at the end of the URLs sending to your site in the email (for example, links to product images or CTA buttons):

• source : the name of your email provider(Kiliba for example)
• medium : email- campaign : the name of your campaign

In Google Analytics, you will find the acquisition source in Report - Acquisition - All Traffic - Source/Support.

To read on the same theme

How to set up a marketing automation software?

How to make a successful email campaign in 6 steps ?

What are the best triggers for marketing automation workflows?

The benefits of predictive marketing in e-commerce