Email Marketing for Beginners: Tests and Measurements (5)

It is often said that what is not measured cannot be improved. When applied to online marketing, this is an undeniable truth. We are lucky to be able to evaluate, with great accuracy, the impact of each change or decision we make.

Obviously, email marketing is no exception. In fact, it is probably one of the environments where key performance indicators (KPIs) for your eCommerce can be best analyzed.

We conclude this comprehensive Email Marketing for Beginners guide we have designed to make it more accessible and allow gradual growth.

The quickest and most direct answer is: to know if what you are doing is working. But, as you can imagine, there are some nuances.

It is important to understand email marketing as a process of continuous improvement. If we stick with what has worked once, if we settle for the results, we risk stagnation and missing out on much more interesting business opportunities.

This cycle of continuous improvement is based on six phases that must be executed progressively and in a continuous loop:

        1.- Defining objectives – This may seem clear, but if you do not know exactly what you want to achieve (preferably in numerical terms), measurement will not help you reach a goal that does not exist.

        2.- Planning – This is the time to carry out campaign segmentation, consider email types, define frequency, and design the right emails for each audience.

        3.- Execution – The most mechanical part begins. This happens when we use our email marketing tool to launch and schedule the emails.

        4.- Monitoring – Once the campaign is launched, it is time to analyze the numbers: how many emails were opened, how many clicks were made on links, how many people unsubscribed, and how many purchases resulted.

        5.- Analysis –Having the data, it is time to interpret what it tells us. For example, we can determine which subject line led to more email openings or which product sold best through the campaign.

        6.- Implementing improvements – We apply conclusions to concrete optimizations, such as design adjustments, copy changes, different segmentations, or testing different days and times for sending emails.

Of course, as we have mentioned, this is part of a cycle that repeats continuously. This way, we will gradually refine our strategy to the point where we become much more efficient, even in new campaigns, because we start from a higher level of knowledge.

We have already discussed methodology, so now it is time to focus on a fundamental aspect of email marketing analytics (and any strategy, really).

Let’s focus on KPIs, which, in case you do not remember, stands for Key Performance Indicators.

        1.- Open Rate (OR): The percentage of recipients who opened the email. This is the most basic indicator of success.

        2.- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measures the percentage of users who clicked on at least one of the links in the email. A high rate indicates, for example, that the call to action is effective.

        3.- Conversion Rate (CR): The percentage of users who make a purchase attributable to an email. This is a key metric for evaluating direct sales impact.

        4.- Revenue per Email (RPE): In financial terms, the amount of revenue generated by a specific email.

        5.- Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that were not delivered compared to the total sent. It is important to distinguish between “hard bounces” (invalid addresses) and “soft bounces” (temporary issues like a full inbox). A high bounce rate often indicates problems with email list quality.

        6.- Unsubscribe Rate (Churn Rate): The percentage of people who unsubscribed from the mailing list after receiving the email. A high rate may indicate irrelevant content or excessive email frequency.

        7.- List Growth Rate: Measures how much your subscriber base increases (or decreases) over time.

        8.- Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): The ratio of clicks and opening. This helps evaluate content quality once the email has been opened.

        9.- Recovered Abandoned Cart Rate: In eCommerce, many emails aim to recover incomplete purchases. This KPI measures the percentage of abandoned carts that turn into sales thanks to email follow-ups.

       10.- Return on Investment (ROI): The ultimate marketing KPI, as it directly measures profitability by comparing revenue generated by the campaign against its cost.

A lot of numbers, indeed. But this is why eCommerce platforms and tools exist. One of the key reasons I always recommend using them is their ability to provide easy-to-read data visualizations and reports.

When combined with automation, the system can regulate and optimize communications based on key indicators.

We are almost done, but we cannot overlook something closely tied to this cycle of continuous improvement: testing.

For example, A/B tests involve dividing the audience into different groups (Group A, Group B, and a control group). Then, different versions of the same email are sent out, all with the same goal, to determine which one performs better.

These types of multivariable tests are the best way to make decisions on specific aspects, such as:

One crucial recommendation for conducting an A/B test (or any kind of test in marketing): only test one variable at a time. Otherwise, you will never know exactly what influenced the final outcome.

It is also important to ensure two things that determine a test’s statistical relevance:

        1.- Having a large enough sample size

        2.- Letting the test run for a sufficient period of time. Analyzing just 10 emails or 10,000 emails over just 10 hours will not yield reliable conclusions.

Now, with this final thought, we conclude this guide. If you have followed all the posts, you should now have a much clearer and more comprehensive understanding of email marketing strategy.