How to measure commitment from your newsletters

Most Email Marketing platforms today have quite detailed statistics, where you can measure how your newsletter performs. What factors are important to keep an eye on? How do you know if the quality of the subscribers on your lists is actually of a good or poor quality?

Below is a list of the things that you should keep an eye on, that show commitment related to your newsletters, and that will give you a good overview of the quality of the subscribers on your lists:

Open Rate

Open Rate is a very important figure, because it is here where the journey from the newsletter to the final conversion begins. The Open Rate – that is, how many people really open the email – is shown in percentage.

Use split test functionality in your Email Marketing platform to learn about people’s behaviour, and what triggers people to want to open your email.

Let us assume that you have 1000 contacts on your email list, where 100 contacts open your email, which means that you have an Open Rate on 10%. It is important to constantly test how the recipients on your email list respond to your headlines, so that you get a basic and necessary knowledge about what type of information usually makes people want to open your email. Use split test functionality in your Email Marketing platform to learn about people’s behaviour, and what triggers people to want to open your email.

Click-To-Open Rate

Another metric that helps show commitment is Click-To-Open Rate, that is generally a mix of Open Rate and Click-Through Rate. Click-To-Open Rate shows how many of the contacts have opened the newsletter and have clicked in the campaign. It is of course in your interest that this number is as high as possible.

Click-Through Rate

Another important factor to measure commitment is Click-Through Rate. Click-Through Rate as Open Rate, is always shown in percentage and it shows how many people have clicked further from the newsletter via one of your links. As for Click-To-Open Rate, it is naturally of your interest of getting as high rate as possible.

As a starting point, everything must be as clickable as possible. People should not look for the opportunity to click further.

Make sure also here to test what your recipients usually respond best to. Is it the regular text links, the big CTA (Call To Action) buttons, pictures or something entirely fourth? As a starting point, everything must be as clickable as possible. People should not look for the opportunity to click further.

Total sales or other macro conversion

The best way to measure whether your newsletter has had the desired effect is to look at the directly derived conversions – or what has otherwise been the goal of your newsletter. For example, it could also be registrations for an event, download of a new sales catalog or something else. Remember, it is also important to relate to the assisted conversions the newsletter brings. You can read more about which measuring points can be important to you in our article “Do you measure the full effect of your newsletter?“.

Sharing newsletter and social sharing

Will your newsletter be forwarded to other email addresses from your newsletter recipients? Or do you see higher engagement on your social media after the release of the newsletter? This is also an expression of people’s success in newsletter engagement.

In the following section, there are a number of factors that do NOT show commitment, including:

Number of subscribers to the newsletter

As a starting point, you are naturally interested in having as many subscriptions as possible for the newsletter list, but if the subscribers do not engage when you send emails, the size as such is irrelevant. It is important that you look at the quality and not the quantity of those who sign up.

Growth in number of subscriptions

Quite expected, many focus on whether there will be more registrations for the newsletter list. Of course, it is positive to see that the number of registrations grows and at what rate it grows, but if you get the wrong ones to sign up for your list, these numbers are irrelevant. It can e.g. be that you have chosen to buy email contacts from 3rd party (which we always advise against), or it may be that you have lured with a gift if a person signs up for the newsletter. This often entails a lot of registrations, but at the same time, it attracts some people who do not subsequently engage with your content.

Number of unsubscribes

If people unsubscribe from the newsletter, that will, of course, clearly be a sign of lack of commitment. It is important to constantly work in order to prevent people from unsubscribing from the newsletter.

Most skilled Email Marketing people focus a lot on ensuring the best possible engagement instead of focusing on how fast they can boost their email lists as well as with what rate they will do it. In addition to using the obvious metrics to analyze data, Marketing Automation and personalization are being used in order to make content as personal as possible. You can read more about Marketing Automation best practices here.