Top 10 Email Marketing Metrics For Ecommerce

op 10 Email Marketing Metrics for Ecommerce
NOVEM BER 18, 2018 • CAROLYN NYE
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Key email metrics have changed over the years. Many subscribers now receive and
respond to email on their smartphones. It has altered multiple aspects of email
marketing — content, subject lines, pre-headers, and more.
As soon as an email is deployed, recipients start to open and click. Within a few days,
there’s much data to look at to determine what worked, what didn’t, and what to try next.
In this post, I’ll rank the top 10 email metrics for ecommerce merchants.
Top 10 Email Marketing Metrics for Ecommerce

1. Open rate. The open rate still serves as the principal metric for email marketing. An
“open” occurs when a recipient receives the email and a 1×1 pixel image is downloaded
with the body. The open rate can be misleading. Not all individuals that open an email
will download images. Moreover, the image download may not be captured if it is lower
in the content. Thus reported open rates are likely lower than the actual.
Despite this, the open rate is a reliable indicator of how many people viewed an email
message. It helps marketers understand whether subscribers are engaged. It also
indicates the effectiveness of the subject line, preheader, and from line to collectively
prompt the recipient to open.
In my experience, average open rates vary dramatically by industry and brand. The
single biggest factor is the makeup of the audience. For example, a 10 percent open
rate from 500,000 total subscribers might be impressive. Conversely, a 10 percent open
rate from individuals who have purchased in the last three months is likely not
impressive — it often exceeds 20 percent.
The key is to understand realistic benchmarks for different segments of your file and
types of message. A transactional shipping notification, for example, may see open
rates of 75 percent or higher, much greater than for promotional messages. Create
benchmarks for your open rates by audience or type of email. From there, test the
subject line, preheader, and from line to improve.
2. Click-to-open rate. There are different methods to calculate a click-through rate. The
first option is to divide the number of people clicking by the number of emails delivered.
The second is to divide the number of people clicking by the number of people who
open.
This second approach is the ‘”click-to-open” rate. It’s the better metric when determining
the effectiveness of an email. It tells us whether:
 The creative content is engaging,

 The call-to-action is effective,
 The email is easy to understand and respond to.
In other words, the click-to-open rate could identify areas of the email that need work.
3. Mobile open rate. Open rates for mobile devices and desktop devices depend on the
day and time. Desktop users often open emails during business hours. Mobile recipients
may have higher open rates on evenings and weekends. Establish benchmarks for
each device and then test different send times. If subscribers are interacting and
converting well from their smartphones, optimize sending times to capture more of
those users. For some brands, mobile devices account for 75 percent of all email
opens.
4. Mobile click rate. Click rates on mobile devices are typically lower than from
desktops. The two major factors are the ease of clicking from the mobile phone and
whether the subscriber is interested in the offer. Maximizing mobile clicks should be a
priority for most brands.
5. Open and click rates by domain. This metric is important to know how each of the
major domains — Gmail, Yahoo, AOL — are performing in your file. Most email service
providers report the breakdown of the top domains and the open and click rates for
each. It allows you to see potential deliverability problems. For example, if the average
open rate for your entire list is 10 percent, but Gmail addresses open at just 3 percent,
there is likely a blocking or filtering issue from Gmail.
On average, just 1.93 percent of subscribers with Gmail addresses opened the emails from this
company. That is much lower than for subscribers using addresses from Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, and
Comcast.
6. Unsubscribe rate. Maintaining benchmarks for individuals who unsubscribe could

help to understand why. Are the unsubscribes caused by increased frequency, or poor
messaging, or ineffective offers? For spikes in unsubscribes, analyze what was different
for a particular campaign to cause the increase. The goal is to keep unsubscribes as
low as possible while allowing truly uninterested recipients to leave without issue.
7. Conversion rate. One objective of ecommerce email marketing is to get shoppers to
your site. But the ultimate goal is for those subscribers to purchase products. Typically
the conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions — sales, usually
— by the number of emails either delivered, opened, or clicked.
Attributing conversions to an email can be complex. The rise of multichannel shopping
and diverse purchase paths tend to muddy the calculation. For example, say a
subscriber first learned of a product via your email campaign. She then read a
recommendation of it from a Facebook friend. Then she saw the product on a Google
search. Then she went to your website and made the purchase. Which of those three
channels produced the sale?
Regardless, try to benchmark the conversion rate directly from recipients clicking on
your email and purchasing an item. Then optimize it by continual testing and tweaking.
8. Bounce rate. There are two types of bounces: hard and soft. Soft bounces may be
temporary, such as when an email is returned because the inbox was full. Hard
bounces occur when an email is returned from an address that does not exist.
Every email typically has a small percentage of bounces. After all, consumers routinely
change email addresses. Your email service provider should automatically remove hard
bounces from your file to improve and protect the deliverability of your entire list.
Analyzing bounce rates is especially important for infrequent senders and for new
addresses. The first deployment to a new email list may have a higher than normal
bounce rate. But it should normalize over time. Healthy lists have bounce rates less
than 1 percent.
9. Revenue per email or click. This metric divides the revenue from an email by either
the number of opens or clicks. It provides insight into how optimized that email was in
generating revenue. The higher the revenue per open or click, the more effective was
the email and its offer. The metric can also highlight optimal sending times.
10. Revenue per subscriber. Revenue per subscriber is helpful to understand the
overall profitability of your email program. The metric is calculated by dividing all
revenue for a period (usually one year) by the average number of subscribers. It
represents the rough amount of revenue from each subscriber, which helps determine
the break-even amount to acquire new subscribers. Thus revenue per subscriber can
be a valuable tool when establishing marketing budgets.

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op 10 Email Marketing Metrics for Ecommerce

NOVEM BER 18, 2018 • CAROLYN NYE

Top 10 Email Marketing Metrics for Ecommerce

 The creative content is engaging,

6. Unsubscribe rate. Maintaining benchmarks for individuals who unsubscribe could

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