In today’s highly trackable, measurable and targeted marketing landscape, it seems there’s a metric for just about everything. This is great if you know what to keep an eye on, but not so great if you’re experiencing paralysis by analysis. In this blog, we look at which email analytics you need to understand and track, and how you can improve them – so you can confidently create an email marketing strategy that gets results for your accounting firm.
1. Keep a close eye on open rates
The most basic measure in email marketing analytics, open rates are the percentage of people who opened your email. But what does a good open rate look like? According to this article, around 15-25% is the average marketing email open rate. However, this varies widely by industry, and over time, you’ll get a feel for what a good open rate looks like for your firm.
It can be disheartening to have a marketing email that you’ve spent hours crafting only opened by a handful of your subscribers, so it’s important to dive deeper into the reasons why they didn’t click. This is generally down to one of three things:
- You don’t understand your audience – while your content may be well-written and look nice, it’s worthless if it’s not speaking to your client’s pain points or adding value. Make sure you’re clear on who you’re writing for and what pushes their buttons. Our blog ‘How to write for your ideal clients’ will help define this.
- Subject lines aren’t cutting through – subject lines hold a lot of weight in email marketing. The average office worker receives well over a hundred emails a day, so will make a split-second decision on whether to bin or open your email. And that’s largely driven by your subject line. You’re off to a great start if it’s compelling, speaks to the audience, is concise and avoids email host spam triggers. Over time and with experience, you’ll be able to spot trends and build a picture of what subject lines work particularly well for your clients.
- Emails are going out too often, or at the wrong time – the time of day you send marketing emails, and how often, can often impact open rates. Once again, this varies by industry and will come down to finding what works for your firm over time.
How to improve your open rates
Put the hard yards into your subject line and inject as many of these key ingredients as possible:
- Personalisation – can you address the recipients by name?
- Pique curiosity – make them really want to open your email, without being deceptive.
- Include numbers – where relevant, subject lines with numbers have up to a 57% better open rate than those without.
2. Not all clicks are created equal
A click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on one of the links in your email. While this is an effective and common metric used to judge the success of email marketing communications, relying solely on this measurement tool is only valid when you’ve specifically asked for people to act.
A call to action (CTA) in your email communications is an invitation to click – whether that’s to download an eBook, read more about a subject in your email or simply to get in touch with you. These are the clicks that are worth counting.
How to improve your click-through rates
Place the focus firmly on the CTAs in your email and consider:
- Limiting your links – too many buttons or links can become confusing. If you ask recipients to do just one thing when they read your email, you’ll have a much better chance of getting them to act.
- Placement is important – studies have shown that CTAs placed in the left region of an email are more effective than those placed on the right.
3. Are your actions converting?
Your audience is opening the email and clicking on the links, but are they converting?
Conversion rates are the percentage of people who perform the specific action you’ve asked of them after reading your email. What counts as a conversion will come down to your goals. For example, are you trying to acquire new business? If you’ve asked potential clients to fill in an online form for a free health check of their current cash flow, and they’ve done so – that’s a conversion. Conversion rates give you a clear, tangible and direct understanding of how your firm’s email marketing delivers on your goals.
How to improve your conversion rates
Segmenting your audience (dividing your subscribers into smaller groups based on similar characteristics) is a sure-fire way to improve your conversion rates. It allows you to tailor your content further so that it better aligns with the group of contacts you’re sending it to.
4. Check for unsubscribes
A small percentage of clients unsubscribing after you send an email is completely normal – however, large spikes are not. Unsubscribe rates are calculated by taking the total number of unsubscribes from a given email and dividing it by the total emails delivered. Generally, an unsubscribe rate below 0.5% is considered ok, but ideally, you’ll want to be more around the 0.1-0.2% mark. If you’re well above this, it’s usually an issue with your database – you’re probably sending communications to people who don’t genuinely want them. This can occur if your contacts haven’t proactively opted-in to get your emails or have opted-in just to receive a sign-up offer.
How to improve your unsubscribe rates
Remove the guesswork and simply ask people why they are unsubscribing. It’s usually because they’re not happy about something, so by finding out what it is, you can tweak and adapt accordingly. In some cases, you might also be able to win them back – sometimes, people have a change of heart based on a simple ‘we’re sorry to see you go’ message.
Education, experience and time
Understanding email analytics and industry averages are one thing, but it takes experience and time to create benchmarks of what success looks like to your firm. Set your email marketing campaigns up for success from the outset with BOMA. With easy-to-use and understandable campaign insights, and many of the most common email marketing mistakes removed by default, find out how BOMA can help your firm today.