Email deliverability is crucial for the success of your email marketing campaigns. You can create the best email campaigns in the world, but if they don’t make it to your subscribers’ inboxes, they won’t generate any results. In this chapter, we’ll explore the key metrics you need to understand to improve your email deliverability.
- Delivery Rate
Delivery rate is the percentage of emails that were successfully delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes. It’s important to note that delivery rate only measures if the email was accepted by the recipient’s email server, not whether it made it to their inbox or spam folder.
To calculate delivery rate, you divide the number of emails delivered by the total number of emails sent, then multiply by 100. For example, if you sent 10,000 emails and 9,000 were successfully delivered, your delivery rate would be 90%.
- Open Rate
Open rate is the percentage of subscribers who opened your email. This metric is important because it tells you how engaging your subject line and preheader are.
To calculate open rate, you divide the number of unique opens by the number of emails delivered, then multiply by 100. For example, if you sent 9,000 emails and 2,000 were opened, your open rate would be 22%.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in your email. This metric is important because it tells you how engaging your email content is.
To calculate CTR, you divide the number of clicks by the number of emails delivered, then multiply by 100. For example, if you sent 9,000 emails and 500 were clicked, your CTR would be 5.5%.
- Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of emails that were undeliverable. There are two types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces. Hard bounces are permanent delivery failures, while soft bounces are temporary delivery failures.
To calculate bounce rate, you divide the number of bounced emails by the total number of emails sent, then multiply by 100. For example, if you sent 10,000 emails and 500 bounced, your bounce rate would be 5%.
- Complaint Rate
Complaint rate is the percentage of subscribers who mark your email as spam. This metric is important because it tells you how engaging and relevant your email content is.
To calculate complaint rate, you divide the number of complaints by the number of emails delivered, then multiply by 100. For example, if you sent 9,000 emails and 10 were marked as spam, your complaint rate would be 0.1%.
In summary, understanding email deliverability metrics is crucial for the success of your email marketing campaigns. By monitoring delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, and complaint rate, you can identify issues and make necessary changes to improve your email deliverability.