You did it! You’ve set up your email marketing, created a welcome series, and are working on your first training series too. So what’s next? Learn how to evaluate your marketing success so you can make future plans in order to get the most out of your emails.
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Goal: Use Your Data to Plan Future Emails
Learning what works and what doesn’t is an important step in your email marketing. I like to evaluate my conversion rate, open rate, click through rate, and unsubscribes. Understanding my subscriber behavior can help me craft better emails in the future.
Four Email Marketing Stats to Track
Conversion rate— In order to grow your email marketing, you need subscribers to join you. Carefully evaluate your opt-in forms and landing pages. Look at the placement of your forms, the call to action words you use, etc. Set a goal for your target rate of growth. Compare new subscriber counts from week to week, especially before/after making a change to any of your opt-in forms.
Open rate— Your emails only work if people read them. Your readers are more likely to open an email with a clear and an engaging subject line. They should recognize that the email if coming from you. It’s okay to include occasional teaser subjects too. Providing consistent quality content also improves your regular open rate. If you’re providing value, they are going to want to open each one.
Click through rate— Your email provider most likely shows if links were followed from your email. You can also choose to use link trackers (like bit.ly). If you’re not getting clicks, chances are that you’re either not writing a strong enough call to action or that the content and/or offer isn’t all that interesting to your readers. Use that to craft better emails or offers in the future. Keep going back to your target audience and the problems you can solve for them.
Unsubscribes— There’s a fine line here between taking these personally and using them to improve. Don’t cry over every unsubscribe, but pay attention to when it happens. Look for spikes in unsubscribes at a particular message. Is the topic different from what you usually share so it confused or lost your readers? Did you try to sell your readers too hard on a product too soon? When you notice trends, rework those messages.
Plan Content for the Future
The biggest thing with email marketing is consistent content. If you only send your subscribers one email a year, they most likely won’t remember who you are. Starting a new email marketing system from scratch can be overwhelming with all the content you need to create. I recommend scheduling dedicated time to work on your email list.
I prefer to batch content. I will set aside time to write 3-5 emails or blog posts at a time. Then I have those ready to drip out. Other content creators work on one at a time. For example, if they send out a weekly email every Friday they may sit down to write that email every Wednesday. Find a system that works for you and then stick to it.
Bonus Tip
As you become more advanced with your email marketing, consider setting up different opt-in funnels. This will help you target specific groups of your target audience with special funnels designed just for them.
While I primarily design for WordPress, I also offer Blogger and SquareSpace services. If I want to market WordPress-only options, it may be helpful to have a list that is only WordPress users.
As another example, if you’re a food pro you could have one opt-in form/landing page for different types of diets. Sign me up for the dessert list, please!
MailerLite, ConvertKit, and LeadPages can all help you collect and sort leads.
Homework
- set goals for your number of weekly or monthly subscribers
- pick one other metric to initially track; open rate or click through rate are good places to start
- schedule a time to write your next 3 emails
Pin for Later
What’s Next
Congrats on making it through our entire email marketing training series! If you missed any of the previous posts or want a refresher, here’s the complete list
- Step 1 Choose a Provider
- Step 2 Lead Magnets
- Step 3 Thank You Page + Tripwire Offer
- Step 4 Welcome Email
- Step 5 Continuous Content
- Step 6 Serve Your Customers
