Measure your e-mailing performance

Are you planning to implement an email marketing strategy, or has your company already experimented with this communications solution? To succeed, you need to set up a performance report for your emailing campaign. One of the essential steps is to calculate KPIs, which are key performance indicators that enable you to analyze the impact of your emailing in detail. Find out more about the main KPIs, how they are defined and how to calculate them, so you can measure your performance successfully.

1/ E-mail open rate

The first essential KPI is the opening percentage of your emailing campaigns.

What is the open rate?

It's the best-known KPI, because it tells you the number of users who have subscribed to your newsletter and opened your e-mail. So, if the open rate is high, it's a good sign that you're succeeding in piquing your subscribers' curiosity thanks to the e-mail's subject line.

Calculating e-mail open rates

To find out the opening percentage of your e-mails, perform this simple calculation: number of e-mail opens / number of e-mails sent x 100.

2/ The click rate of an email

Another widely used KPI for tracking the performance of an emailing strategy is click-through percentage.

What is the click-through rate KPI?

The click-through rate focuses on the number of subscribers who have clicked or not on the links present in the e-mail sent. Thanks to this calculation, you'll know whether your emailing campaign is performing well and encouraging Internet users to visit your site. If this rate is high, your e-mail has aroused the curiosity of newsletter subscribers.

How to calculate the click-through rate

The calculation is also simple: divide the number of clicks on a link in the e-mail by the total number of e-mails sent. Then multiply this result by 100 to obtain the click-through percentage.

3/ Reactivity rate

The reactivity percentage is less well known, but just as important.

Defining the reactivity rate of your e-mailing

This calculation considers the percentage of clicks relative to the links present in the e-mail, while also taking into account the open rate. This KPI therefore uses the calculation of two rates in one for more precise results.

How to calculate the reactivity percentage?

Divide the number of clicks on an e-mail link by the number of e-mail opens, then multiply this result by 100.

4/ E-mail bounce rate

One of the most important KPIs for measuring the performance of your strategy is the bounce rate.

What is the bounce rate in email marketing?

The bounce rate is a measure of whether your e-mails have been received by your subscribers. Consequently, this figure should be low. A high bounce rate means that many recipients are not receiving your e-mails.

There are two types of bounce rate: soft bounce rate: in the case of a temporarily unavailable e-mail address hard bounce rate: if the address no longer exists, or never existed in the first place.

Whatever the cause of the problem, your e-mail was not received by the recipient.

Calculating the bounce percentage

You need to calculate the number of undelivered e-mails / number of e-mails sent and multiply the result by 100. A rate higher than 6% is generally the source of major problems. We recommend staying below 3%.

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5/ Complaints rate

This KPI is less well known, even though it's one of the main indicators used by operators to decide whether you've reached your inbox or your spam folder.

What is the complaint rate?

This KPI refers specifically to the spam complaint rate. These calculations are essential to know the percentage of e-mails that have been reported as spam by recipients. Your e-mails may be reported as spam if the recipient has never given permission to send an e-mail, or if your marketing pressure is too strong.

How do I calculate the complaint rate?

The percentage of complaints must be low, because if it's high, it means that the emailing campaign is having a negative impact on recipients. The “classic” formula for determining this result is the number of emails reported as spam / number of emails sent in total x 100. But this formula can never be applied as it stands, because some operators don't report spam. Routers like Oxemis therefore make an approximation by calculating complaint rates per operator.

Be aware that the more your e-mails are reported as spam, the greater the risk that your company will immediately land in the spam folds of other recipients, which greatly limits the impact of your e-mail campaign. A recommended “maximum” complaint rate is below 0.3%!

6/ Unsubscribe rates for emailing

The unsubscribe rate is a crucial indicator that operators scrutinize closely.

What is it?

The unsubscribe indicator analyzes the importance of unsubscribes caused by subscribers to your newsletter. Recipients may decide to unsubscribe via the last e-mail they receive from you.

There are several possible reasons for unsubscribing: - your e-mails are not interesting - you send too many e-mails - the recipient is simply no longer interested in your products or services.

This calculation is essential to determine the relevance of your campaign and measure its impact.

How do you calculate it?

Here's the formula you need to know: (Number of unsubscribes / number of e-mails sent) x 100. Your aim is to reduce the number of unsubscribes to your newsletter as much as possible.

7/ Open and click distribution

In addition to the KPIs we've just mentioned, there are other key figures that will give you the best possible idea of your emailing performance.

Distribution of openings

You need to take an interest in the distribution of email opens according to the time of day. In concrete terms, by taking an interest in these statistics, you'll know exactly when your recipients open their e-mails during the day.

With this knowledge, you can target the time of day when you send your e-mails to increase the chances of them being opened. For example, you may notice a peak in opening rates in the morning, before 7 a.m. or sometimes around midday. This way, you can quickly adjust the time of day you send your e-mails to fit these time slots.

Distribution of clicks by location

The links in your newsletter are placed according to the recipients and their habits. You need to consider click-through statistics by location to increase the chances of a link being clicked.

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