You can’t make bricks without clay 🧱

Published: Thu, 06/20/24

Updated: Thu, 06/20/24

Stack of bricks with a bracket consisting of the 6 main email marketing KPIs: Web Hits, CTR, Open Rate, Bounce Rate, Complaint Rate, and Unsubscribe Rate

Hi there friend,

I didn’t start taking my sleep health seriously until embarrassingly recently; long gone are the indefatigable days of my young adulthood where I could thrive on just a few hours of sleep.

My near constant fatigue needed to be addressed, but how? The path forward became clear after doing some research–I needed data. I was immediately reminded of this great Sherlock Holmes quote:

Meme of Sherlock Holmes saying, "Data, data, data! I can't make bricks without clay."

So I found a great sleep tracking app that provided me with all sorts of data regarding my sleep–everything from my breathing rate and body movements to the time I spent in each sleep stage. I then used that data, coupled with science-backed advice, to make changes to my habits and sleep environment, and I started seeing marked improvements.

Data really is the clay we need to make our bricks. While few of us are using data to solve mysteries and crimes like Sherlock Holmes, we do use data to navigate and improve our daily lives, like how I used sleep data to improve my health. Without data, we're left guessing rather than constructing solid, evidence-based choices.

Do you send your marketing emails and never look back? Your email marketing is a trove of actionable data. When understood and analyzed, it can inform your strategy, taking your future email marketing from good to great.

So let's dive into the essential email marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and see how you can use them to enhance your campaigns.

6 KPIs to Keep a Close Eye on 👀

Open Rate: Measures the percentage of recipients who open your email. A low open rate may indicate issues with your subject line or timing.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): Indicates the percentage of recipients who clicked on links within your email. This helps gauge the relevance and effectiveness of your content.

Conversion Rate: Tracks the percentage of email recipients who completed a desired action (like making a purchase or signing up for a webinar). This shows how well your email content drives actions. In AWeber, you can track Web Hits, or how many pages on your website were visited by people who clicked through links in your messages.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered to the recipient’s inbox. High bounce rates can affect your sender reputation.

Unsubscribe Rate: Indicates the percentage of recipients who opt out of your email list after receiving an email. A high unsubscribe rate may suggest that your content isn’t meeting your audience’s expectations.

Complaint Rate: When a subscriber marks your email as spam. A consistently high complaint rate can have serious consequences on your deliverability.

You’ve Got the Data. Now What? 🧐

Optimize Subject Lines: If your open rates are low, experiment with different subject lines to see what resonates best with your audience. Need help with your subject lines? Be sure to try out our new Subject Line Assistant tool!

Enhance Content Relevance: Analyze your CTR to determine which types of content or links generate the most engagement. Use this insight to create more of what your audience loves.

Streamline Conversion Paths: Review your Web Hits and identify which pages of your website are visited the most. Are those pages geared towards conversion? Is there a clear CTA leading to sign ups or increased sales?

Clean Your Email List: Regularly update your email list to remove invalid addresses, which helps reduce your bounce rate.

Adjust Frequency: If your unsubscribe rate is high, reconsider the frequency of your emails and ensure you’re not overwhelming your subscribers.

Stay up-to-date with Best Practices: Seeing increased complaint rates? Email marketing best practices may have been updated, like earlier this year with the Gmail and Yahoo sender requirement updates. Follow email marketing thought-leaders who will keep you informed of changes to best practices and trends.

This Week’s Challenge 🥳

Audit Your Last Campaign!

Log in to your AWeber account and review the KPIs for your most recent email campaign. (Don’t have an account yet? Sign up for free so you can start tracking your email marketing performance!)
Identify one KPI you would like to improve.
Create a plan to address this KPI in your next campaign. No need to do anything too elaborate. Start with something simple, something you can quickly iterate on. For instance, if your CTR is low, consider A/B testing different call-to-action (CTA) buttons or link placements.
Implement your plan and compare the results to see the impact of your changes over the next few weeks.

What did you think of this email?

❤️❤️❤️ Loved it. Can't wait to get the next one.

💔 I didn't really care for it.

AWeber QuickStats 📈

Finding and interpreting the data from your email analytics may seem daunting. The good news? With AWeber's QuickStats, you can see at a glance how your newsletter is performing, and segment your list based on subscriber interaction, like who opened (or didn't open) your last email.

To find your "QuickStats" page, click "Broadcasts" under the "Messages" tab. From here, look for the heading "Sent," and click on the subject line of the broadcast you want to see the "QuickStats" page for.

Image of AWeber QuickStats accessed from the Message Index page

Bonus: one hour after you send a broadcast message, you will receive a QuickStats Notification. This allows you to see how your message is performing so far and provides you with a link to the QuickStats page for that broadcast.