Establish KPIs and measure the performance of your newsletter

Do you keep an eye on how your newsletter is performing? Like your other marketing activities, measuring your email marketing campaign’s performance is essential. You can measure this through a couple of relevant KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. Use the KPIs to create goals for your email campaign and compare the performances of your newsletters. 

Are you not sending newsletters? Read more about why it is a good idea to communicate to your customers through email here.

How many people receive your newsletter?

The first KPI that you should look into is the Delivery rate. This KPI tells you many people from your distribution list that have received your newsletter in their inbox. This KPI should always be relatively high, around 95% or more. If your Delivery Rate is lower than this, it would be a good idea to find out why. Do you have email addresses on your distribution list that don’t exist anymore? Or does your newsletter contain content that might be marked as spam? If your newsletter is marked as spam, it will never reach your audience’s inbox.

Most platforms for newsletters will calculate the Delivery Rate for you automatically, but you can also calculate it yourself with this simple equation: 

(Shipping quantity – Bounces) / Shipping quantity * 100 = delivery rate(in %)

How many people open it?

Next up is the Opening Rate. Keep an eye on this KPI and learn more about whether your audience opens your newsletter or not. We recommend an Opening rate of around 15-30%. If it is lower than this, it would be a good idea to re-evaluate the subject line in your newsletter. To catch your audience’s attention, it is crucial to keep your subject line short, simple, and clear. 

You can calculate your Opening Rate with a simple equation:

Openings / (Shipping quantity – Bounces) * 100 = Openings rate(in %)

Does your newsletter generate traffic to your webpage?

It is also interesting to measure your Click Rate. This KPI informs you about many people who click on a link in your newsletter. If you are unsatisfied with your Click Rate, re-consider if the content you share interests your audience. A low Click Rate can also result from too many links in your newsletter. Too many links might confuse your audience because it is unclear what you want them to click on. 

Here it is also interesting to look into what kind of content makes your audience click on a link to your website. Studying this will teach you more about what interests your readers and potential customers.

If your newsletter platform doesn’t calculate your Opening Rate automatically, you can figure it out with this simple equation: 

Clicks / Openings * 100 = Click-to-Open-Rate (in %)

What do you want to achieve with your newsletter?

Creating concrete goals for your email campaign is always a good idea. Examples of concrete plans could be that your readers download a whitepaper, register on your website, sign up for an event, or buy/reserve your product. Use the Conversion Rate to measure whether you achieve your goals or not. By linking your Google Analytics to your newsletter, you get insight into how many conversions you earn through your newsletter.

This is how you calculate your Conversion Rate:

Conversions / Clicks * 100 = Conversion Rate (in %)

You will know what interests your customers by measuring and comparing your KPIs over time. This way, you will learn what you should do more and what to do less. 

Other KPIs

Lastly, three more KPIs are interesting to keep an eye on. The first one is the Unsubscribe Rate. This KPI tells you how many people unsubscribed to your newsletter after publishing. If this number is higher than usual, you should re-consider the content you share. 

Next up is the Bounce Rate. The Bounce Rate tells you how many people from your distribution list couldn’t receive the newsletter in their inbox. If the Bounce Rate is more than 2%, it is time to clean up your contact list or re-consider whether the content you share can be perceived as spam. 

Finally, we have Reading Time. Keep an eye on the reading time and learn more about how long your readers stay on the landing page you link to in the newsletter. In this way, you will know if your customers find your content interesting and enriching or if they leave your web page immediately. You can find the reading time in Google Analytics. Choose the URL you are linking to in the newsletter, and then choose traffic generated from your newsletter.

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