If you’re doing email marketing – or any marketing for that matter – you should keep track of how things are going.
KPIs (key performance indicators) help you to measure your success in achieving your desired outcome. Without them, you’re floundering. It’s a bit like playing bingo without a scorecard – you might be getting the numbers, but you won’t remember them all.
When you start tracking the right things, you can start to find areas to improve in and discover the things that are working for you already.
These are the KPIs I recommend tracking and why they’re so important for your email marketing.
What Are KPIs?
In case you’ve not come across the term before, KPI means ‘key performance indicator’. It’s a measure that you use to see how well your campaign is doing.
Every aspect of marketing should have KPIs, but too much information can be confusing. So what should you track and why?
Every piece of marketing you put out has a goal – or at least it should! KPIs let you know whether you’re getting close to reaching that goal. When it comes to email marketing, this is especially important, as you’ll be able to fully understand how your mailing list is reacting to each campaign.
Ultimately, by keeping tabs on several important aspects of your marketing, you’ll find out what to change, what to keep doing and what you’re already achieving.
1# The Number Sent
The basis of your indicators is measuring them against some initial number. In email marketing, that’s going to be the number of emails you’ve sent. From this, you’ll be able to judge your successes and struggles.
For example, if you send an email to your mailing list and your goal is to get link clicks within that email, you need a point of reference. By tracking the number of emails you sent (let’s say it’s 1000), you can determine your success level by the number of corresponding link clicks. You know you need to change things up if you received just 3 link clicks out of those 1000 emails sent.
On the other hand, if you received 100-200 link clicks, you’re doing something right!
How can you determine exactly what you’re doing right? That’s where our other KPIs come into play.
2# Leads
You might have heard the term ‘leads’ thrown around in marketing to mean a few things, but in email marketing, there’s one clear definition. Leads are the people that respond to your newsletter in any way.
A lead has initiated contact in some way, indicating an interest in what you’re offering. This might be through clicking a link, replying to your email or requesting more information.
These people are the indicators that you’re doing something that’s working. Keeping tabs on this number helps you to see the effectiveness of your email in the grand scheme of things.
3# The Number Of Sales
This one is pretty self-explanatory. While a lead is someone potentially interested, a sale is a successful transaction.
This is the number of direct sales your campaign or newsletter brought in. By tracking the number of sales you’ve made through your email marketing, you can accurately replicate the methods and content that led to those sales.
To put this into practice, you might notice that when you used more video in your newsletter, your sales number was higher than when you used only text. This is valuable information!
4# Conversion Rates
Your conversion rate is how many readers become customers. So if you emailed 100 subscribers and 10 went on to buy something from you, your conversion rate for that email is 10% (which would be incredible, by the way, as 1% – 5% is about the average).
The rate helps give context to the figures. 10 sales is brilliant if the list is 100, but if the list is 1000 strong, then your conversion rate works out much lower.
Simply put, your conversion rate helps you see how your newsletters are faring in the bigger picture.
5# Checkout Value & Lifetime Value
These numbers play a key role in understanding your customer and the investment you make in customer retention.
Checkout value is the value of a single sale of your customer. Some businesses have one-time customers, while others have repeat business, which can make a difference in the value. Lifetime value takes this into account and looks at the value of your customer over their lifetime with you. An example is;
A business coach sells 1-to-1 sessions, and their client will book repeat sessions on an ongoing basis – in this example, let’s say it’s monthly. Their checkout value is the payment for each session. If they continue to use the service for 2 years, there will be x 24 sessions paid for, which is their lifetime value.
The lifetime value helps you create a marketing strategy that uses metrics to allocate spending to getting and keeping a customer.
6# Revenue
This KPI relates to your income as a whole. When monitoring your revenue figures, you can notice key changes. By using the power of your other KPIs, you can compare trends and figure out if you need to implement some changes to get back to a higher revenue or keep doing what you’re doing to maintain an increase in revenue.
With this indicator, you can track how your business is growing over time, providing crucial information to your future self.
7# ROI
ROI is ‘return on investment’, and this looks at the value of each marketing aspect. It is the sum that shows whether your newsletter was worth the time and investment to do.
If you spent more creating, designing, sending and following up your newsletter than it brought in, then the return on that investment was poor. If, however, you found you made a profit, then you know it’s worth repeating in future.
Elevate Your Email Marketing By Tracking KPIs
Knowing these KPIs isn’t just about seeing how well things went; it’s about seeing how they’re doing as you go so you can adapt and evolve your approach to get better outcomes.
Tiny changes made at different points in the process can lead to longer-term clients, which will have a huge impact overall. If you’d like to see how far you can take your email marketing, get in touch with me to discuss how you can reach your audience – and make an impact.
