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The Bot Menace: Deciphering the Hidden Threat to Email Campaign Success
Introduction In the landscape of email marketing, the emergence of bot-clicks poses a nuanced challenge for senders, ranging from a minor inconvenience to a significant disruption. Bots navigate the links within emails, leaving behind a trail of clicks that directly impact metric reporting. But why do these bots exist, and what purpose do they serve…
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Why Open Rate isn’t a Good Key Performance Indicator for Subject Line Tests
“We’re testing a subject line, so we’ll use open rate as our KPI, since the subject line impacts the open rate. Whichever version gets the highest open rate will also likely have the highest conversion rate or revenue-per-email, right?” As an email marketing consultant and trainer, I hear this a lot. I get it. It…
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AI for the win? Maybe or Maybe Not. [Case Study]
![AI for the win? Maybe or Maybe Not. [Case Study]](https://oimetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/deepmind-9Y4ronQmPjk-unsplash-600.jpg)
What I learned from testing the latest trend… We have heard a lot about ChatGPT since the start of the year, and it has also become the latest craze in the email marketing world. I wanted to jump right into AI. However, before I use anything with clients, I always look deeply at the technology…
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Email Delivery: All About Deferral Events
Deferral events are a common occurrence in email delivery. A deferral event occurs when an email server temporarily refuses to accept an incoming email. It is not a bounce (hard or soft), which reflects the server refusing to deliver the message; rather, it reflects a “not right now” response. As a mail sender, you (or…
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That’s a wrap on metrics for 2022!
As 2022 came to a close and we welcomed 2023, it is essential to look back on our email marketing metrics and see what has changed and where we go from here. To fully grasp the most significant change in metrics we need to go to September 21, 2021, when open rates changed forever due…
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Building Subscriber Personas with Cluster Analysis
We often hear that we should send the right message to the right person at the right time in email marketing; but how do you find the “right person”? The answer is segmentation, but to really find the right person you have to go beyond just simple activity or purchase segmentation to more advanced techniques. …
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Case Study: A strategy for abandon clickers that increases email performance
I am often surprised that with the sophistication of email marketing today, there is so much data that essentially gets “left on the floor” when it can be used to drive significantly better email performance. While I spent most of my career with a large ESP and agency, today, I work with small businesses, and…
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Announcing the 2022 OI Masters of Email Marketing Metrics!
Congratulations to our 2022 Only Influencers Masters of Email Marketing Metrics!
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The power of the click
Clicks are one of the most valuable email marketing metrics — they are often also the most underutilized. Read this article to learn how to get more out of your click metrics.
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How to Calculate Lift/Loss From Your A/B Split Tests
Are you reporting out your results correctly? Here’s a quick primer on what’s best — and what’s not so good.
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Understanding the Difference Between Business and Diagnostic Metrics
Do you know when to rely on business metrics versus when your focus should be diagnostic metrics? Do you know the difference between business and diagnostic email metrics? If you answered ‘no’ to one or both of these questions, read on for the answers.
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Segment your Results; Gain Deeper Insights
Segmentation is one of the keys to email marketing success and most email marketers segment their lists when sending. Did you know you should also segment your results? Segmenting your results allows you to answer questions about your email program, leading to actionable insights for you and your marketing team.
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A Quick and Easy Roadmap for Using Analytics in Email Marketing
This post was originally published on the Only Influencers blog on August 27, 2020. Analytics done well can lead to better customer service and bigger bottom lines (for example, my client used analytics insights to increase sales 250%) — done poorly it can be a complete waste of time. This article provides a quick and…
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Case Study: Why Click-through Rate Isn’t a Good Key Performance Indicator
Think the email with the highest click-through rate usually brings in the most revenue? Think again. This case study proves that isn’t the case…
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Get on the Email Measurement Escalator
Email marketing is one of the key tools in the communications mix that is more involved than it looks but can deliver solid results quickly. Leading marketing teams perform well because they strive to constantly get better and are disciplined in their focus. The following article will help marketers “measure what matters”.
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Metrics for Tracking Offline Conversions from Your Email Campaigns
Open Clicks Conversions/Transactions… These are the metrics that email marketers look at to analyze performance and develop strategies. I have been in email for more than 20 years, and these were historically the metrics we utilized to determine the success of an email campaign. But what happens when those metrics aren’t important to determining the…
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Read Rate (deliverability)
Read rates are a metric that you typically see in deliverability monitoring programs such as Inbox Tracker by Sparkpost (formerly eDatasource) and Validity (formerly Return Path). This metric is similar to the open rate but with a crucial difference in how they are measured. A Read event is measured (or counted) when a subscriber marks…
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Engagement Time
Image courtesy of Email on Acid Email Engagement is sometimes referred to as Engagement Time or Read Time in certain tools and it measures the amount of time that an email is engaged with by the recipient. Similar to opens, this metric is measured using a tracking pixel; each second the email is open the…
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Render Rate
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Initiative which is included with iOS 15 and is expected sometime in the fall of 2021 will impact Open Rate, Click-to-Open Rate, Open Reach Rate, and Render Rate for users reading mail on Apple Mail. The information here may change and we will update it when we know more. To learn…
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Click Reach Rate
Click Reach Rates are between 0% and 100%; once you finish the equation, turn your answer to a percentage by multiplying by 100. Unlike Click-through Rate, which gauges performance on a single email message, Click Reach Rate shows you what unique percentage of your list clicked on at least one of a series of email…
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Open Reach Rate
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Initiative which is included with iOS 15 and is expected sometime in the fall of 2021 will impact Open Rate, Click-to-Open Rate, Open Reach Rate and Render Rate for users reading mail on Apple Mail. The information here may change and we will update it when we know more. To learn…
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Conversion Rate from Click
This metric takes a value of between 0 and 1, by dividing the number of conversions by clicks and is typically expressed as a percentage of 0 to 100%. Higher is better in the range of values, and all senders like a high conversion rate. This is the conversion rate at the bottom of…
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Conversion Rate from Sent
Conversion Rate from Sent is the conversion rate based upon “delivered” emails, with a value between 0 to 1 typically expressed as a percentage of 0% to 100%. Higher is better, and senders generally want their conversion rate to be as high as possible. However, the highest conversion rate is not always the best. Sometimes…
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Revenue per Email Sent (RPE)
Revenue-per-Email-Sent (RPE, often called “Revenue-per-email”) is measured as a currency value; it can be as low as $0 and there is no upper limit on how high it can be. It is more easily calculated than Return-on-Investment (ROI) or Return-on-Ad-Spend (ROAS), as the only data required is the revenue generated and the number of emails…
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Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) can be a positive or negative value (and becomes a percentage when multiplied by 100). This metric has been “borrowed” from the advertising industry. ROAS has a slightly different meaning when it comes to email marketing (for the advertising industry, the “marketing cost” above would be “advertising cost”). In general,…
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Deliverability or Inbox Placement Rate
Inbox Placement Rates (IPR) are between 0% to 100%; once you finish the equation, turn your answer to a percentage by multiplying by 100. Tips for interpreting Inbox Placement Rates: Inbox Placement Rates are meant to show the percentage (or fraction) of emails that were delivered to the inbox rather than the spam or junk…
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Spam Complaint Rate
Spam Complaint Rates are between 0% to 100%; once you finish the equation, turn your answer to a percentage by multiplying by 100. Actions contributing to your spam complaint rates occur when a recipient clicks on the “This is Spam” (TiS) button in their email client. If the Mailbox Provider (MBP) has a feedback loop…
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Unsubscribe Rate
Unsubscribe Rates are between 0% to 100%; once you finish the equation, turn your answer to a percentage by multiplying by 100. Tips for interpreting Unsubscribe Rates: Unsubscribe rates are meant to show the fraction (or percentage) of people that have taken an active measure to disengage with your email program by clicking on the…
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Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Initiative which is included with iOS 15 and is expected sometime in the fall of 2021 will impact Open Rate, Click-to-Open Rate, Open Reach Rate, and Render Rate for users reading mail on Apple Mail. The information here may change and we will update it when we know more. To learn…
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Click-through Rate (CTR)
Click-through Rates (CTR) are between 0% and 100%; once you finish the equation, turn your answer to a percentage by multiplying by 100. Unlike Open Rates, CTR is an absolute metric — if someone clicks, it is counted here; there is no way to click and not have it recorded. A higher CTR is usually…
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Open Rate
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Initiative which is included with iOS 15 and is expected sometime in the fall of 2021 will impact Open Rate, Click-to-Open Rate, Open Reach Rate and Render Rate for users reading mail on Apple Mail. The information here may change and we will update it when we know more. To learn…
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Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on Investment (ROI) can be a positive or negative value (and becomes a percentage when multiplied by 100). ROI is a metric used in a variety of industries to understand the results of an investment. Similar to Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), the HIGHER the ROI, the better. Unlike ROAS, ROI does represent the…
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Delivery Rate
Delivery Rates are between 0% to 100%; once you finish the equation, turn your answer to a percentage by multiplying by 100. Tips for interpreting Delivery Rates: Delivery rates are meant to show the percentage (or fraction) of emails that were delivered successfully to recipients. Delivery rates do not measure recipient engagement in any way.…