Email Marketing Analytics: Tracking Conversions and ROI

With people constantly using their smartphones to browse the web and check their incoming messages, email advertising stands out as an easy yet highly effective marketing strategy for businesses looking to connect with their customers and grow their brands. However, to get the most out of your emails, you must keep track of whether your efforts are working by analyzing your email marketing analytics. 

If something like your conversion rate is low and you’re investing more than you’re making in revenue, you need to adjust your plan. Tracking your conversions and return on investment (ROI) is crucial for successful email marketing. 

With that being said, let’s break down what you need to know about understanding these metrics and how you can use them to create the ideal email marketing strategy for your brand.

Creating the Perfect Measurement Plan

Before you start tracking email campaigns, you’ll need to put a plan into motion to ensure you get the useful data you need to make the best decisions for your brand. You’ll want to do the following:

Consider Timing

Set an email marketing tracker schedule so you can compare numbers accurately. By being consistent, whether that means on a weekly or monthly basis, you can identify any patterns or inconsistencies. That makes it easier to determine whether something isn’t working so you can start adjusting your email campaigns.

Outline Your Goals

You need something to compare your metrics to, so before you start tracking your conversions and ROI, talk with your team about your ideal numbers and ensure you’re on the same page. Be specific but realistic. 

Encourage Feedback

Try analyzing your audience’s behavior. And when in doubt, don’t be afraid to ask for their opinions. Send surveys and try learning as much about them as possible. The better you understand your audience’s interests and pain points, the better you can accurately market to them.

Tracking Email Marketing Conversions

Whether you want your audience to download a resource, buy a product, or read your latest blog post, you’ll want each email to have a clear goal. Your conversion rate will be the percentage of subscribers who take the desired action of your campaign. 

How to Track Conversions

If you’re wondering how to calculate email conversion rates, we’ve got you covered. Simply divide the number of conversions by the number of delivered emails, then multiply the result by 100. 

For example, let’s say that you sent out 100 emails, but five bounced, so only 95 were delivered. Then, out of those 95 emails, 30 subscribers completed the action the email encouraged. Therefore, according to the formula, your conversion rate would be around 32%. 

The Importance of Calculating Conversions

Your conversion rate can give you insight into your ROI or your return on investment. In other words, it tells you whether your email campaign was successful or not.

How Do You Know if Your Conversion Rate’s Good?

You may think you need a high conversion rate to consider your emails successful, but that’s not the case. A good conversion rate across all industries only falls between 2% and 5%, which means in the example above, your brand would have hit it out of the park!

Of course, a crazy number like that isn’t realistic, but there are ways you can boost your conversion rate with every campaign. Let’s break down how you can improve your conversion rate and your ROI in turn. 

Email Marketing Attribution and ROI

Email attribution refers to the process of measuring revenue outcomes as a direct result of email marketing. It can give you an understanding of which of your email campaigns are driving the most conversions and how your email-specific ROI compares to your other marketing avenues. 

There are various ways to calculate email marketing attribution, such as:

• First-click/touch models
• Last-click/touch models
• Linear tracking
• Positional tracking
• Time-delay tracking

Alongside these methods, there are many resources available to help calculate your email attribution.

How to Boost Conversions

Once you track your email marketing analytics, you’ll want to determine how to move forward, taking your numbers and turning them into results for your business. 

Here are some tips for boosting your conversion rate:

Have a Dedicated Landing Page

Where you guide your readers depends on the goal of each email campaign, but every email you send should lead subscribers to a relevant landing page. For example, if you’re emailing someone because they put an item in their cart but never made a purchase, you’ll want the accompanying landing page to send the recipient right back to their cart so they can complete their transaction.

Be Creative With Your Subject Lines

If you want people to read your emails, you need to draw them in with a compelling subject line. Good subject lines are short and direct yet punchy. Avoid spammy words like “winner,” but consider using emojis to catch your audience’s eye. People receive dozens of emails daily, so you want to ensure yours stand out in all the right ways. 

Use Visuals to Captivate Your Audience

A strong email campaign should be exciting to read. Blocks of texts with little imagery can be tiresome to read through and may cause subscribers to bounce. Incorporating high-quality photos, graphics, or even GIFs can add extra flair to your emails, encouraging interest and boosting conversions.

Have a Strong CTA

Though it may seem obvious, incorporating a strong call-to-action (CTA) is extremely important. It should be direct and tell the reader exactly what you want them to do. You can customize your CTA based on your subscribers’ location, demographics, and interests.

Create a Sense of Urgency

If you’re promoting a sale, try using urgent language to convince your customers to take action quickly. For example, include a clock in your emails that counts down to the end of a sale.

Scarcity can also boost conversions. Let’s use that same sale as an example. You can offer an additional discount code for the first 100 customers who purchase. Terms like “Online Only” or “Sale ends tomorrow!” can also convince your audience to convert faster.

Get Personal

Make your customers feel special by personalizing your emails to meet their unique needs. An easy way to do so is by putting your readers’ names in the subject line. As you collect customer data over the years, you can begin to target them based on factors like their location and interests. The more personal you get, the more you can build relationships with your customers, turning them into loyal fans. 

Be Consistent

Create an email-sending schedule and stick to it. If subscribers notice you’re inconsistent, they may lose interest and unsubscribe. But if you overdo it, subscribers may get annoyed or feel like you’re spamming them.

The trick is to find the balance between these two extremes. One way to determine how many emails to send within a given week or month is to request customer feedback.

Optimize for Mobile

In our digital age, most people check their emails via their smartphones. That’s why it’s more crucial than ever to optimize your email campaigns for mobile. Ensure your text is easy to read on mobile devices and that your messages are properly formatted.

Test Your Campaigns

You can use a tactic known as split testing to help determine the effectiveness of your email efforts. It offers an easy way to compare different elements of your email campaigns, from the graphics you use to the wording of your CTAs. If you find that one variation converts better than the other, you can trust that particular element is working. 

Track Email Campaigns With Google Analytics

One great resource for tracking and analyzing your conversions is Google Analytics. It can help you measure email open rates and email frequency, as well as:

• Email click-through rates
• Link clicks
• Real-time conversions
• Bounce rate

All of these metrics can help you create better email campaigns that lead to more conversions and more satisfied customers.

Write Effective Emails and Excel in Your Marketing

Tracking your email marketing analytics is crucial to crafting emails that draw in more customers and boost your business’s revenue. Create a detailed email marketing and testing plan, calculate your conversion rate, and experiment with different strategies to see what will enhance it the most. It may take some trial and error, but the results will be well worth it.

Don’t be afraid to use the email campaign trackers around you. It could significantly impact your email marketing conversion rates, ROI, and your sales. If you need help tracking your email marketing analytics, a knowledgeable agency like Galactic Fed may just become your brand’s new best friend.