More Than the Unsubscribe Rate: How Do You Know if Your Enewsletter is successful?
First published May 1, 2023. Revised September 7, 2023.
In all matters, people prefer to give permission, and they will drive up your unsubscribe rate if you annoy them. It can be tiring and sometimes uncomfortable to end up on an email list that you don't remember. We get enough marketing emails every day.
But as a business owner, when you're creating your marketing strategy, you might feel like if you just send out an email newsletter and share your recent blog post, you'll hit all the marketing checkboxes and will have so many customers.
It isn’t quite that easy.
Checking off items isn’t the same as following best practice, and doing it right might lead to results other than more customers (believe it or not!).
Ultimately, a rising tide lifts all boats, so it’s fair to imagine that any successful email campaign will lead to your big goal of financial success. But sales and donations are multistep processes, and some marketing channels lead more directly to intermediate goals.
One of those is enewsletters. People aren’t usually going to buy something from an enewsletter. Newsletter content, unlike other types of email content, focuses more on the "know, like, and trust."
It can build authority, trust, brand awareness, and a happy, engaged target audience.
But if you can’t track direct sales, how can you evaluate the success of your newsletter email marketing campaign? How do you know if something as vague as “brand awareness” is growing?
But as a business owner, when you're creating your marketing strategy, you might feel like if you just send out an email newsletter and share your recent blog post, you'll hit all the marketing checkboxes and will have so many customers.
It isn’t quite that easy.
Checking off items isn’t the same as following best practice, and doing it right might lead to results other than more customers (believe it or not!).
Ultimately, a rising tide lifts all boats, so it’s fair to imagine that any successful email campaign will lead to your big goal of financial success. But sales and donations are multistep processes, and some marketing channels lead more directly to intermediate goals.
One of those is enewsletters. People aren’t usually going to buy something from an enewsletter. Newsletter content, unlike other types of email content, focuses more on the "know, like, and trust."
It can build authority, trust, brand awareness, and a happy, engaged target audience.
But if you can’t track direct sales, how can you evaluate the success of your newsletter email marketing campaign? How do you know if something as vague as “brand awareness” is growing?
Strategy First: Establish Goals and Metrics Like the Unsubscribe Rate
First of all, before you can track accurately, you need to decide what your goal is. Once you’ve chosen a goal, then you can decide which metrics relate to that goal.
Authority or Brand Awareness? You might evaluate those based on the number of subscribers and if the email list is growing.
Trust? If people trust you, you could see an increase in click-through rates (CTR).
There are a few main statistics to be aware of in your email marketing.
Authority or Brand Awareness? You might evaluate those based on the number of subscribers and if the email list is growing.
Trust? If people trust you, you could see an increase in click-through rates (CTR).
There are a few main statistics to be aware of in your email marketing.
Stat #1: Email Unsubscribe Rate and Spam Reports
A simple indication of health is the size of your email list.
How many people subscribe each week? Is the number going up or down?
If the number is steady but not going up, consider investing in SEO to drive more potential email recipients to your website to sign up.
If unsubscription is on the rise, be aware of normal numbers. Nobody likes to see those unsubscribe numbers – or worse, a spam complaint. But there is an industry average for this.
According to GetResponse, the average unsubscribe rate for nonprofits, for example, is 0.11% and the spam rate is 0.01%.
If you don’t have a huge list, your email segmentation is good, and if you keep your subscribers happy, you might not see these responses often.
But if you’re seeing them a lot, that’s a red flag that your enewsletter isn’t performing the way you want it to.
What you’re saying isn’t meeting your list’s needs – and worse, it’s coming off as spam. Make sure the optin for the newsletter is clear (it's called permission marketing for a reason!), be attentive to email frequency, and don’t always try to sell.
How many people subscribe each week? Is the number going up or down?
If the number is steady but not going up, consider investing in SEO to drive more potential email recipients to your website to sign up.
If unsubscription is on the rise, be aware of normal numbers. Nobody likes to see those unsubscribe numbers – or worse, a spam complaint. But there is an industry average for this.
According to GetResponse, the average unsubscribe rate for nonprofits, for example, is 0.11% and the spam rate is 0.01%.
If you don’t have a huge list, your email segmentation is good, and if you keep your subscribers happy, you might not see these responses often.
But if you’re seeing them a lot, that’s a red flag that your enewsletter isn’t performing the way you want it to.
What you’re saying isn’t meeting your list’s needs – and worse, it’s coming off as spam. Make sure the optin for the newsletter is clear (it's called permission marketing for a reason!), be attentive to email frequency, and don’t always try to sell.
Stat #2: Open and Click-Through Rates
Let’s say you’ve at least got a steady or increasing subscription. Great!
But are people actually reading your content?
The next way to evaluate success is audience engagement, and key performance indicators (KPI) of that are open and click-through rates.
Warning that open rates are unreliable for the email marketer thanks to modern devices – Apple phones can tell trackers that emails are opened. So while it seems nice to have a high open rate, it can’t tell you much about whether people are reading. (But still, write that engaging subject line to boost open! It is the first step.)
Click-through rates, however, are a better indication of overall list engagement.
Your email service, be it Mailchimp or Constant Contact or Keap or whoever, should tell you the percentage of people who clicked on some link in your email, so be sure to include an external call to action (CTA).
Some marketing tracking services also provide the “click to open rate.”
The click-through rate gives you the percentage based on the total number of emails sent. The click to open rate calculates the percentage of people who clicked relative only to the number of people who opened to begin with.
If people are taking the time to engage with what’s in your email newsletter, you’re doing something right – and it’s one of the few definite ways to tell your audience is paying attention.
But are people actually reading your content?
The next way to evaluate success is audience engagement, and key performance indicators (KPI) of that are open and click-through rates.
Warning that open rates are unreliable for the email marketer thanks to modern devices – Apple phones can tell trackers that emails are opened. So while it seems nice to have a high open rate, it can’t tell you much about whether people are reading. (But still, write that engaging subject line to boost open! It is the first step.)
Click-through rates, however, are a better indication of overall list engagement.
Your email service, be it Mailchimp or Constant Contact or Keap or whoever, should tell you the percentage of people who clicked on some link in your email, so be sure to include an external call to action (CTA).
Some marketing tracking services also provide the “click to open rate.”
The click-through rate gives you the percentage based on the total number of emails sent. The click to open rate calculates the percentage of people who clicked relative only to the number of people who opened to begin with.
If people are taking the time to engage with what’s in your email newsletter, you’re doing something right – and it’s one of the few definite ways to tell your audience is paying attention.
Stat #3: Replies
At the end of the day, an email newsletter is a way to talk to someone. So one of the best ways to know if your enewsletter is hitting the mark is summed up in one question:
Is someone talking back?
You’ll likely need to either manually tally this statistic or set up integrations between your software, as your email system isn't able to track an email address to that extent, but if you’re trying to evaluate a goal of engagement, it’s one of the most important statistics.
Are people actually spending the time to reply to the email newsletter?
If so, continue the conversation. Pay close attention to their pain point. And use their feedback to create more content.
And congrats on making a good mailing list!
Is someone talking back?
You’ll likely need to either manually tally this statistic or set up integrations between your software, as your email system isn't able to track an email address to that extent, but if you’re trying to evaluate a goal of engagement, it’s one of the most important statistics.
Are people actually spending the time to reply to the email newsletter?
If so, continue the conversation. Pay close attention to their pain point. And use their feedback to create more content.
And congrats on making a good mailing list!
Stat #4: Conversion Rates
But we do ultimately want more clients. Is there a way to track the steps from people reading your enewsletter to making a sale?
That’s the conversion rate.
A sale, a donation, or other ultimate goal doesn’t happen – usually – in one step.
So we need an overall campaign monitor on each step. You may have a high click-through rate, but maybe people don’t take the step after that. In that case, your email’s doing well, but there might be something wrong with the landing page after.
The more you can track, the better your process will become.
The higher the conversion rate, the more all the pieces are in sync.
That’s the conversion rate.
A sale, a donation, or other ultimate goal doesn’t happen – usually – in one step.
So we need an overall campaign monitor on each step. You may have a high click-through rate, but maybe people don’t take the step after that. In that case, your email’s doing well, but there might be something wrong with the landing page after.
The more you can track, the better your process will become.
The higher the conversion rate, the more all the pieces are in sync.
Strategy Once More: Focus, Test, and Fine-Tune
So you’ve picked a goal.
And you’ve started to track the rates that will show whether your enewsletter is getting traction.
But unless you do something with this information, you’ll keep going in circles.
You can't always have control over issues like bounce rate or deliverability rate (although be sure to make sure your domain is healthy and connected properly to your email!).
But you can always have control over your email marketing strategy.
Track your statistics. Focus on one variable at a time. Test some alternatives to see what works best.
In fact, many email systems will let you use A/B testing to test different versions of content with to see what your email subscriber likes more.
And if you find you need help tracking all this data and making sense of what’s working – and why – reach out to discuss an audit of your target audience.
And you’ve started to track the rates that will show whether your enewsletter is getting traction.
But unless you do something with this information, you’ll keep going in circles.
You can't always have control over issues like bounce rate or deliverability rate (although be sure to make sure your domain is healthy and connected properly to your email!).
But you can always have control over your email marketing strategy.
Track your statistics. Focus on one variable at a time. Test some alternatives to see what works best.
In fact, many email systems will let you use A/B testing to test different versions of content with to see what your email subscriber likes more.
And if you find you need help tracking all this data and making sense of what’s working – and why – reach out to discuss an audit of your target audience.
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