Say Goodbye to Open & Click Rates; It’s Time to Dig a Little Deeper on Your Email Marketing Metrics
Hanna Dayani, Thu Sep 09 2021, 9 min
So, you’re about to send your email campaign, and you have it all figured out. Your checklist is complete with the industry’s top recommendations, such as strategically placing the CTA button on the email above the fold, writing the perfect subject line, amongst other best practices.
Once your email (that you’ve probably worked super hard on) is ready to say “ Bon Voyage,” you’ll probably sit back and wait for those golden numbers to accrue. Namely, open rates and click rates collectively, and of course, your conversion numbers. But, there’s an in-between factor that most marketers cut out entirely, and in this area, this is where most of the actionable insights occur. What happens after your users get to your landing page? This is where user behavior gets interesting, and these are the insights you want to focus on.
Once your email (that you’ve probably worked super hard on) is ready to say “ Bon Voyage,” you’ll probably sit back and wait for those golden numbers to accrue. Namely, open rates and click rates collectively, and of course, your conversion numbers. But, there’s an in-between factor that most marketers cut out entirely, and in this area, this is where most of the actionable insights occur. What happens after your users get to your landing page? This is where user behavior gets interesting, and these are the insights you want to focus on.
Why Analyzing Open & Click Rates Is Not Enough
Sure, open rates provide you with a ballpark figure on who is interested in your content and/or promotions and click rates narrow down those high-intent customers even more. But these metrics don’t actually matter as much as you think they do and the fixation on these standard benchmarks will not give you the conversions you want; you don’t go to the grocery store with these metrics.
Warped Results
Those who solely rely on open and click rates to measure their email marketing performance may be surprised to know that these results are not even 100% accurate. When a user opens an email, it is not necessarily deemed as an “open”. Why? Well, an “open” is only accounted for once the image downloads and the tiny tracking pixel is then triggered. So, users who open and view the email on the preview pane are not guaranteed to be accounted for.
Apple iOS 15 Update
Another looming prospect that will contribute to skewed open rate results is Apple’s new iOS 15 update. The update features a free Mail Privacy Protection feature that will prevent third parties from tracking open rates and will conceal IP addresses. In other words, email marketers may not be able to detect when an Apple user opens an email, thereby making open rate monitoring that much harder.
So, What’s The Secret?
The secret to having a high-converting email marketing campaign is pinpointing where exactly you’re going wrong, and these insights are not attainable by simply looking at the superficial numbers; on the surface, it may look rosy, but you may actually be losing way more converting clients than expected. These are the top email marketing practices you should be doing so that you can precisely track a user's action after they've clicked on your email:
- Building the fundamentals of your campaign with UTM’s
- Choosing what conversions matter the most to you
- Discovering what your email visitors are doing with Oribi’s Visitor Journeys
- Customizing & analyzing your funnels
How to Increase Your Email Marketing Conversion Rates
Now that we’ve established that analyzing marketing campaigns isn’t about monitoring a full spreadsheet filled with open and click rates, let’s get into the deeper side of things. We’ll be looking at deep data with the help of Oribi. See exactly where the drop-offs occur and what you can do to optimize your funnel and steer your customers towards a conversion.
Adding UTM’s
UTM’s are simple codes attached to the end of your URL (landing page), which will help you generate and measure your email campaign’s efficacy in a simplified manner. Adding UTM’s to your emails is like laying the foundations for a new house. This is a fundamental practice that should come as second nature to marketers. To keep it simple, be sure to name the campaign variable with the respective campaign you are running. You’ll be able to discover which email brought in the most traffic or conversions.
How To Build UTM Tags
Building UTM’s literally takes less than 5 minutes, and you can do this easily using Oribi’s user-friendly UTM builder here.
TIP- Keep your UTM’s consistent. There are various parameters to fill, so it’s best to decide on specific and consistent tags that don’t always change. When you consistently label certain variables such as sources and mediums, you’ll be able to distinguish where your traffic came from: for example, FB (shortened from Facebook).
Create Specific Goals
What actions do YOU want your visitors to take once they get to your landing page? Whether it’s a conversion, sign up, etc, it’s best to track these goals through your email campaigns. With Oribi, even if you have different email types and actions, you can still track and group these events on one dashboard.
Say Hello To Your New Best Friend
Oribi’s Magic Events lets you seamlessly create an event using all your CTA buttons. Once you’ve identified your milestones and created events, the magic truly begins! You’ll be able to evaluate how users behave in parallel to your goals.
TIP- Uncover the effectiveness of each email by comparing the percentage of visitors that performed each event. These metrics are easily accessible by choosing a UTM (remember how important those are) related to a specific email you want to track.
Visitor Journeys
Get to know your visitors on a more granular level. Your visitors are not just a number; they behave in a certain way, and if your landing page is not making them convert, you need to dig deep and get to the core of the issue. You’d be surprised to discover how some users behave on your page; instead of clicking on that sparkly CTA button, they may miss it altogether and end up on your FAQ page because your landing page was not clear enough. Perhaps adding a CTA on the actual FAQ page would help, or better yet, adding more detailed information on the landing page itself could prevent potential converting visitors from getting distracted.
Are Your Email Subscribers Converting?
In a nutshell, it’s essential to see how your subscribers behave. These metrics are easily attainable by using the Visitor Journeys section on Oribi. Investigate each visitor’s behavior by filtering who comes from emails. You’ll unravel a world of wondrous insights such as the time spent on your page, what they clicked on, and most importantly the events they performed (yay for Magic Events!).
TIP- See if your email goal and your subscribers’ behavior align. Are they taking the actions you want them to take? Are they smoothly going through your funnel?
Using Funnels To Catch The Drop-Offs
Open and click rates won’t shed as much light on your email campaign’s success as funnels will. Funnels help in tracking the steps that result in a conversion. Users that come from social media will have different behavioral attributes to those who come from your email campaigns. That’s why creating funnels is truly crucial in recognizing how email visitors flow within your email funnel as opposed to other channels, such as social or paid funnels. Like this, you’ll be able to see who your high-intent visitors are. On the flip side, you’ll be able to see where most of those pesky drop-offs occur. You know, those users who kind of show the intent of engaging, but in the end, their whole journey runs out of steam with an abrupt drop-off?
It Only Takes A Second To Create
With Oribi, you can localize all your funnels in one place, and better yet, create them in a few, easy clicks. Identify the key milestones you want your users to pass until they convert, mark these milestones, and create a funnel by selecting your event types. Why is this important? Because you get to see which funnels perform better, and how you can steer a non-converting audience into a better funnel that’s already proven by Oribi Analytics to work best.
TIP- Compare your email funnel to funnels from other sources such as social and paid ads. See what funnel outperforms the rest and how you can incorporate your email subscribers to that specific funnel.
More Bite-Sized Tips
Wait…. If you’re looking for the most amazing and top-converting email marketing campaign then we’ve got more juice for you! Here’s a quick list of more best practices to consider.
Welcome Emails Convert Well - If Done Right!
Increase the conversion rate of your welcome emails, easily. Remember, at this stage of the game, when a user subscribes to be part of your mailing list, their intent is at an all-time high. Take advantage of this by creating the perfect welcome email that will drive the actions and conversions you dream of.
How?
This involves a lot of testing, but once you analyze the metrics of what actions your new users perform from the get-go, you’ll have a clearer idea of what works and what is simply a waste of time. It’s simple to measure, too—simply head on over to the UTM section on your Oribi dashboard and unravel all the insights you need to optimize your next welcome email.
Too Salesy?
Sometimes your CTA’s may be too sales-oriented, and this could scare your users away. They may be needing more content before they convert. Also, another thing to consider is whether you are using clear CTA’s.
Change It Up
All these questions do have answers, and the best way to find out what's the winning CTA is by simply sending various emails. Consider content vs sales, and see where the wave may take you. Seriously, the results may actually surprise you, but at least you’ll have a good understanding of the best direction to take.
Mobile VS Desktop
Emails appearing on mobile look way different than desktop. Did you know that 1 in 5 emails are not actually optimized on mobile devices? Remember that depending on your audience, the chances are that mobile opens are far more likely than desktop opens.
Test, Test, Test!
Running a simple test to see how your email looks on a mobile device is unquestionable. Preview your email on various mobile devices and make sure the CTA is clear enough. Send test emails and make sure your landing page is optimized, too.
The Bottom Line - Assess For Success
While many marketers take the mundane way of analyzing their metrics, it’s clear to see that there are more pieces to the puzzle than meets the eye. Constantly checking, analyzing, testing, and optimizing is the quintessential recipe for a successful email marketing campaign.
With Oribi, you make data work for YOU. Enjoy a 7-day free trial and discover how easy it is to boost your campaigns for optimal conversions. Get started here!
