Email Marketing: Key Performance Indicators to Watch

Email offers a cost-effective marketing solution for dental laboratories. Some dental labs even claim that it's 20x more cost effective than traditional advertising. But if you're looking to capitalize on this promotional method, you'll need to watch the following email marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).

Bounce Rate

Wouldn't it be great if every email you sent ended up in the recipient's inbox box? Assuming you have a decent number of subscribers, this typically won't happen. Some of your emails will reach the recipient, while others "bounce." The recipient's email server rejects these bounced emails, returning them to the sender. Conventional wisdom should tell you that a high bounce rate indicates a more serious underlying problem, such as poor delivery practices, irrelevant content, technical errors, etc.

There are two primary types of email bounces:

1. Hard bounce -- occurs when the email address is either invalid or doesn't exist.
2. Soft bounce -- occurs when the recipient's inbox was full, email server was down, or the message file size was too large.

Open Rate

Arguably, one of the most important email marketing KPIs to watch is open rate. Just because your email reaches the intended recipient doesn't necessarily mean that he or she will open it. If the recipient doesn't recognize your email, or if he or she isn't interested in your message, it can count against your campaign's open rate. For instance, if you send an email to 1,000 recipients, 75 of whom open it, your campaign's open rate is 75%.

Subscriber Growth Rate

Are you gaining or losing subscribers to your email newsletter? Monitoring your campaign's subscriber growth rate answers this question, allowing you to further optimize your emails and attract more subscribers.

To calculate your subscriber growth rate, take your total number of news subscribers, subtract it by your number of unsubscribes, and divide this number by the total number of email address in your list.

For instance, if you have 100 new subscribers, with 10 unsubscribes and 1,000 total email addresses in your list, your growth rate would be 9% (note: the actual total for the equation is 0.09; you need to multiply this number by 10).

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is another email marketing KPI to watch. This is the percentage of recipients who click on the promotional link in your email.

CTR is calculated by taking the total number of recipients and diving by your unique clicks originating from the email campaign. If 800 prospects received your email and 160 clicked the link, your CTR is 20%. Maintaining a high CTR is essential for a successful email marketing campaign.

Here are some tips to improve your email CTRs:

• Split test different call-to-action (CTA) placements in your emails to see what works and what doesn't.
• Use a responsive design, ensuring your emails load on both desktop and mobile devices.
• Segment your email list based on user demographic. Doing so allows you to personalize your messages for a higher CTRs.
• Keep it short. Long emails tend to suffer from low CTRs.
• Include social media sharing buttons. According to a study conducted by eConsultancy, this alone can increase email CTRs by as much as 30%.

Conversion Rate

Of course, you should also monitor your emails' conversion rate. Conversion rate, as you already know, the percentage of recipients who not only click your promotional link but also follow through by taking direct action. For some marketers, a conversion occurs when the recipient buys a product or service. For others, a conversion occurs when the recipient inputs his or her personal information.

These are just a few of the most important metrics to watch with your email marketing campaigns.

To learn more about email and other digital marketing strategies for small businesses, contact us today 1-888-715-9099 or info@dentallabsupport.com. DentalLabSupport.com offers Email Marketing Management solutions for Dental Labs of all shapes and sizes.