How to write an email that is relevant and adapted to your audience? What mistakes should be avoided to improve the impact of your campaigns? Right away the answers!

Writing optimized emails is not enough to close sales. You need to measure the results of your efforts based on reliable indicators. You will be able to measure the achievement of your objectives and adjust your strategy without wasting time. Whatever your goals, you need to set metrics to track your progress. Let’s see in this article 8 emailing KPIs to know first.

1 – The click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on one or more links in an email.

This is an essential KPI to easily evaluate the performance of each email sent. You can even track its evolution over time, or compare performance over two different time periods. You can also use CTR to measure A/B test results to find ways to generate even more clicks. But the most interesting thing is that the click-through rate gives you a concrete view of the number of contacts that interact with your content. This then allows you to identify who among your contact list is most interested in your brand or the offer you offer.

To calculate it, use the following formula :

CTR = (Total clicks or unique clicks / Number of emails delivered) x 100

Example: 600 clicks / 12,000 emails delivered x 100 = 5% click-through rate

2 – The conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in an email and took the desired action.

When one of your contacts clicks on an email, the next step is to generate a conversion. This means that you need to prompt them to perform a specific action. This could be filling out a form, requesting a quote, downloading an ebook, or buying a product. There are different possibilities. For example, if you place a download link of a free ebook in your email, all contacts who download it will automatically be considered conversions. It all depends on the button or call-to-action (CTA) you put in your email. Similarly, the CTA used must meet the overall objective of the campaign.

To calculate this emailing KPI, use the following formula :

Conversion rate = (Total conversion / Total number of emails delivered) x 100

Example: 500 contacts who performed the desired action / 10,000 emails delivered x 100 = 5% conversion rate

3 – The deliverability rate

The deliverability rate is the ratio of emails reaching their recipients’ inboxes to the number of emails sent.

The deliverability rate is often based on bounces or error messages received in response to a campaign. The resulting errors can be temporary (soft bounces) or permanent (hard bounces). The higher the number of bounces, the lower the number of emails delivered.

If your email campaign gets a high deliverability rate, it may mean that your contact database is qualitative. However, this rate can be low when you use recently collected email addresses that have not been tested before delivery.

If you want to improve the deliverability rate of your email campaign, be sure to take stock of your email list. What’s the point of creating great campaigns if they’re not read by the people most likely to buy your products or services? With a base of more than 20 million B2B contacts that Magileads makes available to you, your messages get the visibility they deserve. Discover Magileads→

To calculate the deliverability rate, simply use the following formula :

Deliverability rate = (Total number of emails delivered / Total number of sends) x 100

Example: 9,900 emails delivered in total / 10,000 emails sent x 100 = 99% deliverability rate

4 – The opening rate

The emailing open rate is the number of emails opened compared to the total number of emails delivered.

This is an important KPI to measure the relevance and performance of your email campaign. If the rate is high, it means that the subject of the email inspires trust and arouses the interest of your recipients. It can also mean that you have a well-optimized contact base. If you use an outdated database, it can decrease performance.

To improve the open rate of your email campaigns, here’s what to do:

• Identify your recipients’ expectations and use them to pique their interest.
• Send emails at the right time, Tuesday and Thursday are the best days. You can also perform A/B testing to determine the best time to send.
• Prioritize the most engaged contacts or those who have already shown an interest in your business or offer.
• Check the recipient’s name and header before clicking the « send » button.
• Use a good hook in the subject line of your email.
• Take the time to segment your contact list.
• Do some copywriting.

To complete this list, read our article:

You will find below the formula to calculate the emailing open rate:

Open rate = (Number of emails opened / Number of emails delivered) x 100

Example: 100 emails opened / 500 emails arrived at destination x 100 = 20% open rate

5 – The bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of emails not delivered to their recipients out of the total number of emails sent during an email campaign.

Bounces indicate that the recipient’s email address is temporarily or permanently unavailable. This means that there are two types of bounces:

• Soft bounce: the recipient’s email address is temporarily unavailable.
• Hardbounce: the recipient’s email address is permanently unavailable.

The bounce rate takes into account these two categories of bounces. However, they must be distinguished, because hard bounces are much more problematic. This means that you need to update the contact or delete it definitely from your list. On the other hand, if the bounce rate is high, it means that many emails are not reaching their recipients. This would have a direct impact on campaign performance.

To calculate the bounce rate, use the following formula :

Bounce rate = (Number of emails not delivered / Number of emails sent) x 100

Example: 5 emails not delivered to recipients / 500 emails sent x 100 = 1% bounce rate.

6 – The growth rate of the contact list

This rate corresponds to the growth rate of the list of email addresses in your contact database.

Your contact list cannot be frozen, you need to update it regularly. There are businesses that close, email addresses deactivated by their owners or nicknames that change. That’s why you should always expand your list so that it doesn’t get outdated. You need to populate this list to expand your reach and expand your audience. According to global statistics, an emailing contact list is experiencing natural erosion. It is said that 22.5% of contacts expire each year. It is therefore imperative to maintain the growth of your list to optimize the performance of your emailings.

To calculate this rate, here is the formula to use:

List growth rate = (Number of new subscribers – Number of unsubscribes and spam reports / total number of contacts on the list) x 100

Example: (200 new subscribers – 100 unsubscribes and spam reports) / 800 email addresses on the list x 100 =

7 – Global ROI

ROI is the overall return on investment of your email campaigns. It is a rate obtained by dividing the total number of receipts by the total expenditures.

To track the performance of your email campaign, it is essential to quantify its overall ROI. It is a simple KPI, easy to understand and expresses a concrete result. A positive figure indicates a gain, a negative figure indicates a loss. In the second case, the total costs are greater than the expenses. If income equals expenses, it means a neutral balance sheet (no gain, no loss).

To calculate the overall ROI, use this formula :

ROI = [(Value of additional sales made – campaign cost) / campaign cost] x 100

Example: (€2,000 in sales – €200 invested in the campaign / €200 invested in the campaign) x 100 = 900% return on investment.

8 – The churn rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who have decided to unsubscribe from an email campaign or newsletter.

Unsubscribing is not always bad news, it can have good and bad.

The bright side:

• This rate clearly indicates that something is wrong with the content of your email. It allows you to detect areas for improvement.
• Unsubscribing makes it easier for you to identify unengaged users who need to be removed from your contact list. They finally do us a favor by unsubscribing.

The bad side:

This emailing KPI can have a significant impact on the deliverability rate of the campaign. If this rate is high, it simply means that the content is not interesting for the recipients, or that the contacts are not engaged enough. We send emails so that they reach their targets and these people perform the desired action. But not so that emails land in spam or be completely ignored by our recipients. That’s why we need to avoid having a high churn.

Here are some tips to avoid unsubscribing your contacts:

• Offer content adapted to your target;
• Adopt the tone and approach you use to the profile of your buyer persona;
• Clean your contact database by deleting inactive or off-target contacts;
• Reactivate inactive subscribers and engage them;

Discover the formula to calculate the churn rate:

Unsubscribe rate = (Total unsubscribe / Number of emails delivered) x 100

Example: Out of 500 emails delivered, 3 people clicked on the unsubscribe link. The churn rate is therefore ( 3 / 500 ) x 100 = 0.6%