As with all digital marketing activities, if you can’t report on your success metrics and a return on investment – you shouldn’t be doing any marketing at all. The following are some basic metrics, every email marketer should be tracking and reporting on with every email campaign.

Clickthrough Rate

Clickthrough rate is a critical metric for all email marketers to be tracking, as it gives you direct insight into how many people on your list are engaging with your content and interested in learning more about your brand or your offer.

• What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in a given email
• How to Calculate It: (Total clicks OR unique clicks ÷ Number of delivered emails) X 100
• Example: 500 total clicks ÷ 10,000 delivered emails X 100 = 5% clickthrough rate

Conversion Rate

To measure conversion rate on your emails, you’ll need to integrate your email content and your Google analytics. You can do this by creating unique tracking URLs for your email links that identify the source of the click as coming from a specific email campaign; you can generate unique tracking URLs with the Google Campaign URL Builder tool.

• What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed the desired action, such as filling out a form or purchasing a product
• How to Calculate It: (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) X 100
• Example: 400 people who completed the desired action ÷ 10,000 total email delivered X 100 = 4% conversion rate

Hot Tip: It’s a great idea to create a unique URL for each element in your email, such as the top image banner, each call-to-action button. This way you can track which image and even article had the best click-through and conversion rate.

Bounce Rate

There are two kinds of bounces to track: “hard” bounces and “soft” bounces.

Soft bounces are the result of a temporary problem with a valid email address, such as a full inbox or a problem with the recipient’s server. The recipient’s server may hold these emails for delivery once the problem clears up, or you may try re-sending your email message to soft bounces.

Hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address, and these emails will never be successfully delivered and it’s a good idea to remove hard bounce addresses from your email list.

• What It Is: The percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox
• How to Calculate It: (Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) X 100
• Example: 75 bounced emails ÷ 10,000 total emails sent X 100 = 0.75% bounce rate

Email List Growth Rate

Aside from the call-to-action metrics (CTR, conversion rates), you’ll also want to be keeping tabs on your email list growth and loss. Ideally, you should be aiming to grow your list to extend your reach, expand your audience, and position yourself as an industry thought leader.

• What It Is: The rate at which your email list is growing
• How to Calculate It: (Number of new subscribers) minus (Number of unsubscribes) ÷ Total number of email addresses on your list]) X 100
• Example: (500 new subscribers – 100 unsubscribes) ÷ 10,000 email addresses on the list X 100 = 4% list growth rate

Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

The rate at which your email recipients forward or share your email with others may not seem all that significant, but it’s arguably one of the most important metrics you should be tracking.

Why? Because this is how you generate new contacts. Encourage your readers to pass along your email to a friend or colleague if they found the content useful, and start tracking how many new people you can add to your database this way.

• Keep an eye on your sharing rates to discover which types of articles and offers tend to get shared the most, and use that insight when you plan email campaigns in the future.
• What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network, and who clicked on a “forward to a friend” button
• How to Calculate It: (Number of clicks on a share and forward button ÷ Number of total delivered emails) X 100
• Example: 100 clicks on a share/forward button ÷ 10,000 total delivered emails X 100 = 1% email sharing/forwarding rate

Overall ROI – The simple version

The most basic way to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of an email marketing campaign is to take the sales growth directly made from that campaign (such as a purchase from your website), subtract the marketing costs, and then divide by the marketing cost.

This is a very simple way to calculate a high-level ROI but is not the only way – it’s a good idea to work with your finance manager on what approach is right for your business.

• What It Is ROI: The overall return on investment for your email campaigns. In other words, total revenue divided by total spend
• How to Calculate It: ($ figure of additional sales made minus $ figure invested in the campaign) ÷ $ figure invested in the campaign] X 100
• Example: ($1,000 in additional sales – $100 invested in the campaign / $100 invested in the campaign) X 100 = a 900% return on investment for the campaign