Email Deliverability: Checkpoints to ensure a proper email campaign
I write from experience as I pen this. In one of my previous contracts, the client had no marketing strategy in place and was in a perpetual state of being identified as ‘spam’ by most email providers. They had purchased a list of leads from a data channel and those leads had their emails already assigned. The data channel received a slew of information by its means and the client was ecstatic because now they could take charge and start their efforts to email as many people as they had emails.
Email marketing is a scary thing. MANY companies without the proper knowledge have a “send it and forget it” attitude only to be confused when their clientele never receives a message about their product. It’s quite possible that when approaching email marketing, many don’t treat it with the respect it deserves and therefore reap the consequences of having their IP shadow-banned and their marketing stunted by hard bounces.
To figure out what needs to be improved, it is important to take the role of a scientist and truly analyze the results of the email marketing campaign. The key is to have a proper email strategy in place BEFORE shooting out thousands of emails and then keeping track of metrics via KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
The nature of your business determines the ‘right’ KPIs to track. A successful campaign may vary whether you sell to executives or the common man. As the age of the internet evolves, merchants have adapted to a Digital First Consumer and that adds an extra nuance on top of this complicated process. Several providers change their mail privacy protections frequently and it is difficult to track email open rates for some.
Now that we have established that email marketing is to be properly respected, fret not because there are always fundamental KPIs that almost everyone can use for their strategies. When understood they will aid any campaign and assist the marketer to be successful in their effort.
The Key Performance Indicators everyone should be using:
Delivery Rate
Delivery rate is the % of delivered emails. {(Number of emails sent) — (Number of Bounces)} / (Number of Sends).
Did your audience receive the email you sent?
This is the first question and a baseline to review for EACH campaign. You could be selling an immortality potion but if your audience never receives your message in the first place they can’t benefit from your product.
Click Through Rate
If the email makes it to its intended target, and that target opens it, each unique click (of a link) contributes to its CTR. This is a great metric to gauge that a potential client is interested in your message and products. This pairs well with our next metric.
Web traffic/conversions
If you’re sending an email for a marketing campaign, it is to be assumed you have a website. Web traffic/conversions are a solid goal to shoot for during any campaign. Unfortunately, it isn’t always tracked, and typically it’s because it takes a bit of work to set up. You have to set up two separate data-siloes: one for email and one for your web page.
There is a concept called an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM for short).
UTM parameters are tags that you can add to the end of your URLs to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. By adding UTM parameters to your email links, you can harmonize emails and campaigns in your email automation tool with the web pages in your web analytics tool. Here is a brief example:
https://www.example.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring_sale&utm_content=top_link&utm_term=saleutm_source: Identifies the source of the traffic. For example,newsletterfor your email newsletter.utm_medium: Identifies the medium used. For example,email.utm_campaign: Identifies the specific campaign. For example,spring_sale.utm_content: Differentiates content or links within the same campaign. For example,top_link.utm_term: Identifies paid search keywords (less commonly used in email campaigns).
It looks complicated but it really isn’t, and doing so is worth the effort. Certain metrics can indicate the percentage of recipients who clicked through the email, and therefore accomplished the intended purpose by converting to an online visit and therefore now have a better opportunity to purchase your product.
After viewing the traffic and conversion metrics, it would be prudent to then measure the ROI (return on investment) and further tune the campaign and goals.
Clicks by URL
Now that we’ve established UTM it’s easier to see how it matters, with clicks. Of course, you want people to click links through the email but it is just as important to see exactly what someone clicks. You may have a high CTR but what if that is because everyone is clicking to unsubscribe? That is good information to discern from the data.
Event lag
If a potential client is clicking the links in your email, that is objectively a good thing (except an unsubscription). Event lag helps with determining if your subject lines and content are potentially being read and absorbed. If you know that a potential lead took 40 seconds to click on the first link, it could be a good thing because perhaps the material in the email was compelling.
Bounce rate and type
What exactly is a bounce when it relates to emails? If an email isn’t reaching your potential customers’ inboxes, you should try to understand why this is occurring. Viewing the specific bounce types will help:
- Hard bounces are caused by an unknown domain, user, or syntax error.
- Soft bounces result from a full or temporarily inactive mailbox or temporary DNS failure.
- Technical. Think server, data format, or a network error (either yours or theirs).
- Blocked. A blocking results from a complaint, your addition (by them) to a blocklist, NSFW content, a specific URL block, or an authentication error.
Unsubscription and complaints
If bounces scare you they shouldn’t. Certainly, pay attention to them hard bounces are indicative that you need to be careful, and soft bounces are more-or-less out of your control.
What should scare you are complaints and perhaps even unsubscribes. The rate of complaints is the percentage of complaints per email delivery. A complaint is logged when a subscriber intentionally flagged the email as spam, which is unfortunate.
If a user unsubscribes it is still unfortunate but arguably less so. Though your goal would be to avoid both, you can learn a lot about if a user unsubscribes or complains. If your unsubscribes aren’t too high that is a good thing but it is realistic to expect some churn.
Churn can occur if your target audience no longer uses or needs your product or service. For example: You sell specifically to parents of toddlers. Once that toddler grows a bit, the parents probably don’t need that product or service.
Pay attention to these metrics, they may indicate frustration with the content of the email, rate of email, or even the subject line.
As we’ve seen there are a lot of metrics to pay attention to. Assuming the performance of these metrics is paid attention to an capitalized upon, there are a few more things to consider.
Analyze the campaign performance by each email within a campaign.
When you place your email in a form on a website, you typically won’t receive just one single email (unless you unsubscribe), but many. That is because a great marketing strategy it to have a campaign series with many emails about a similar topic. Emails aren’t an ad-hoc one-and-done type of endeavor but can start a customer on a journey that they engage with your business as a consumer.
Whatever the case, it is imperative for the email marketer to look at campaigns as an organic whole, treat the art with dignity, and view everything as a complete picture. Using these KPIs and creating other metrics specific to the goals of your business will help you track the performance of any campaign you decide to release.
Naturally, this would lead to a growth of subscribers. I circle back to my introduction when I said that this isn’t my first rodeo with the subject. I am no marketer but as a web developer, it is advantageous for me to be acquainted with these concepts. I want to reiterate the word subscriber. You DO NOT want to blindly email individuals who don’t know about you or your brand, especially in bulk. That is a recipe for disaster.
Growing an email list can be a long process but if you fill it with people that have already shown interest, perhaps through a web form, then your campaigns will stick. Therefore you have to go with the idea that this list is something to be nurtured.
If you follow these metrics over time and hone in on the craft then your list will inevitably grow with more potential customers. As your subscribers grow so will the business and the brand. View the growth PER CAMPAIGN. Take notes and iterate. This will give you indications of what to improve on in the future.
Other than the growth of a list, what is also worth paying attention to is activity. Are the subscribers engaging with the material? How good is a large list but no one buys or responds to the email? The most important thing is how many people are engaging with the content. That will lead to sales.
My parting recommendation in regards to email campaigning is to return on your promises. As you collect emails and decide what to campaign upon during your initial deliberations remember to email something of value. That is the prime thing for the relationship between you and the client. If the client finds the emails they subscribed to valuable, then you will gain more conversions/sales.
In conclusion, respect the craft. Start slow and pay attention. Gather these KPIs and iterate upon slight discrepancies. I didn’t mention it in this article but using A/B Tests are a great way to test slight variations in content and subject matter.
Keep at it and see how that campaign improves next time.
