Small Business, Big Mindset

The 3 Email Metrics That Actually Matter for Your Business Success

May 04, 2021 Muscle Creative Season 2 Episode 58
Small Business, Big Mindset
The 3 Email Metrics That Actually Matter for Your Business Success
Show Notes Transcript

There are so many metrics you can track when it comes to email performance.  Seriously, it can be a full-time job to meticulously analyze reports around the performance of your email marketing. Completely fine to track them all, but less than a handful need your consistent attention.

In this episode, learn:

  • The 3 email metrics that should command your attention each week
  • How to improve your email open rate
  • Action steps to stay out of the Spam folder
  • Click-through rates of top industries 
  • The real deal about your call-to-action and images
  • How to increase your conversion rates
  • The truth about subscribes and unsubscribes

PLUS: doors to the one-of-a-kind subscription, Email Ally, close this week (along with the incredibly low VIP pricing)! Cross 'emailing my list every week' off your list with this powerful tool. More info here. Here's to growing your audience and revenue!

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Welcome to the Small Business big mindset Podcast, where we dive into tactical strategies to grow your business. And to make an impact on this world. A huge part of success is keeping your mindset and vision on track. So this is a major part of our process. And this podcast, let's do this. Hey, Erin here, welcome to the small business, big mindset podcast. So before we jump into the this episode, which is all about the three email metrics that actually matter for your business success, I wanted to let you guys know about my brand new membership called email ally. It's currently only open for enrollment for my VIPs those that are subscribed to my email list, follow me on social media, or are a member of my facebook group, you are considered a VIP since you're listening to this podcast. So I keep hearing from small business owners Listen, I get an email, my email list is important. I should reach out to them consistently. But you know what? I do not have time I can barely take a shower. How the heck am I going to add on emailing my list consistently? Or? Look? Yeah, I get it. But what the heck am I supposed to say and what every week what? And then people are like, Listen, I hate writing. It's not my jam. Whenever I write I it feels really awkward and stiff. And it doesn't sound like me and I come across as salesy and weird, so email ally to the rescue. So every month, members get four customizable email. So that's enough for you to write your list every week, right, and they can even plug and play it to your audience and your industry. So if you could use the, the templates as is and just kind of fill it in, I mean, I go so far as to tell you include an image here, upload a giffy here, I get super specific with some parts of it, I'm having so much fun, I've already written the content for me. Or you can use it to inspire so maybe some of the templates are like I kind of get your brain going and expire inspires you to write something on top of it. So they get the the four customizable emails, 10 email subject lines, and I realized that yet again, that is more content that you than you need. But the email subject lines, so they're engineered to increase your your open rates, right. And yes, there's 10, and you only need four if you're doing weekly email. So you can put the ones that you don't use into like an email subject line bank, so that you have more to choose from moving forward. And again, it can be a springboard to inspire or you can use them as is. So all of this content equals increase in happy customers and revenue. And on top of that, every month, a video training is uploaded to your account. So I'll be teaching both the tried and true and the latest in online content creation and copywriting. On top of that, you'll get access to Q and A's master classes and accountability to hone your skills. So imagine having the simple tools to email your list consistently in essentially less time than it takes to order your groceries every month. It's like having a private email assistant and copywriting mentor at a fraction of the cost. So head over to Muscle creative.com slash email ally to get more info and to enroll. Because if you're listening to this podcast, in real time as it's been pushed live, than the doors are closing in the next couple of days. Okay, so let's head into this episode. There are so many metrics to track for your email, and you should track them all. However, you'll go crazy if you track them all. And like you're constantly looking and studying through performance of every single one. So I'm going to go over the three that should actually command your attention every week. Number one, your open rate. So your open rate as a percentage of people who open your email, right makes sense. So different industries have different open rates, right. So I almost hate to go over open rates, because they do vary so much between industries. But like for marketing, I think in early 2020, like 19.3% was the average open rate for that. And one thing you may not realize is that the open rate only counts the emails delivered, where the recipient allows the images to be downloaded. If they don't allow this they're not counted. So instead of what we do is I'll compare open rate metrics to previous weeks to make sure it's not declining because I was declining that signifies a problem. So I have the industry average and on my radar and let's say if it's something we haven't hit yet, then that's a goal. If I have hit it, then it's a goal to do even better. But what I really look at is our own email performance week over week. So that's kind of really as more of a trend line for the health of our email. But if you want to improve your email, open rate, obviously, the top thing you can do is your email subject headlines. So instead of coming up with like one email subject, and then going with it, make a long list of them, because what I have found is that usually the first few that you come up with are crap. They're not good. And so then you're going to come up with a bunch of them, and then narrow down a few. And then pick the one that resonates most with you and what you're doing. If you're further along, you could even do a B testing, right, so you can maybe come up with your final two choices and test them against each other, right. So if you're more advanced and test it, if you're just starting out, do not worry about that. Just get it down to a weekly cadence or whatever makes sense for you. And there's different types of subject lines, there are some that give the element of surprise, some that educate, I go over the five main qualities of super clickable subject lines in my tutorial. So if you go to Muscle Creative, comm slash subject lines, it's five bucks and follow crazy value to increase your revenue. And by having more people actually opening your emails to consume the incredible content you have inside. So I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And then I think you're going to want to do too, is take advantage of the preview text. So that's the supporting text to entice your reader. So a lot of times, you'll see the subject line and you'll see the preview text below it. And so you can use both of those to kind of entice your reader to open it up. And then I'll say a little bit about spam folder. So obviously, if your email goes into spam, people aren't going to see it most likely in order to open it. So opt in monster was saying that globally, email has an inbox placement rate of about 83%. That means roughly one in six emails get sent to spam or are blocked from your subscribers inbox all together. That may not seem that bad, but it is one in six, that's pretty high. And every time your emails go to spam, that's money you're leaving on the table, right, because nobody's seeing the content or your offer that you put your blood sweat and tears into. So you're gonna want to avoid all caps and your subject line or some of the kind of more spammy words of like free deal guarantee, risk free special promotion. Or if your subject line is misleading, they'll automatically go to spam. And make sure your information is accurate. Your from information, I should say. So usually, it's like your name or your company name or combination of the two. And make sure to have a physical address. So you're actually legally required to have this, we obviously don't want our home address going out in all our emails. So we have a private mailbox with an actual street address for our business. Or you can also rent a peel box. And when including links in your email, avoid putting too many links, just use a few. Like we only have a couple of links and ours a lot of links that kind of like alerts the spam people to think your email is spam. And then you know, test it to identify what time of day and what day of the week is best. Your email service provider probably has that information according to your subscribers. Or you can do a Google search or even do a poll like if you have a Facebook group, ask them when they usually check their their mail, and ensure the content you're creating correlates to your audience. Okay, because low engagement rates can also signify spam. And obviously, never email people that haven't given you the permission to do so they must have voluntarily subscribed to your email list for you to contact them. I have a freebie that gives you a year's worth of email subject lines, go to Muscle Creative, comm slash email subject. So it's a year's worth of email subject lines, it's going to amp up your open rates and therefore accelerate your sales. So go over there, check that out. I'll also put a link to that in the show notes. Okay, the next one, the second one is click through. So the click through rate is the percentage of people who opened your email, right, so not only they open their email, but they actually took action, they click the link. So MailChimp has data that says the average open rate across all industries is 21.8%. And the average click through rate is 2.78%. And you should know that readers that open their email on their desktop are three times more likely to click on your links, then compared to mobile, the challenge is that more than 60% of emails are actually open on a mobile device. So you're like great. If they open on the computer, they're going to click through more, but they're most likely on their mobile. So you want to make sure obviously, that your emails are optimized for mobile. So you can hopefully see that increased engagement. emails that are optimized for mobile generate 15% higher click through rates compared to emails that are not so that's important to take into consideration. So every Tuesday we send out an email about our latest podcast episode and I include two to three links to that podcast episode. So that's typically You know, you don't want to have a ton of links because of spam. But also because if people have too many options, they're not going to go to do and they're not going to click on anything. So the click through rate can also tell you if your audience is engaged, and they actually care about what you have to offer. And if you're using the right messaging that entices them to click, so that's why the relevant content is so, so important. So typically click through rate, like 2%, it sounds low, but that's typically the goal. So there's a few click through rates I can go through here, health and fitness is usually a 2.57% ecommerce 2.32% education and training 2.63% Entertainment and events 2.33% in marketing and advertising is a little bit lower 1.92%. So compared to open rates, which will hover around the 20% range, to have like a 2%, click through you're like, gosh, that's slow, but it is what it is. And so like I said before, make sure you only have one call to action per email, we usually have a PS at the bottom. So I'll talk I'll talk about the podcast episode. And then at the end, I'll have a PS, which either maybe another link to the same podcast episode or something related. Because there's skimmers right there, people that hit hit the email, and they kind of read the top and then skim all the way down to the bottom, and then they'll see the the PS. So you'll tend to get a lot of engagement on your PS if you have that at the bottom. And you can, you know, if you have a consistent content, like a podcast or a blog, or if you're promoting a webinar, just pick one of those to feature in your emails. And there are some exceptions, like if they have a bonus podcast episode, and, you know, maybe you want to include that in the PS and do that. But the PS, it really is super powerful. And I'll do a separate podcast episode on that, you're going to want to make sure that your email that's consistent with your brand and your website as well. So that will help with your click through. So like I mentioned before, your brand colors logo, you know, kind of add to that credibility. And then you're going to want to test between text links as your call to action or buttons, right. So we want to increase your click through rates, which when does your audience you know, kind of go forward? Better? Do they click on More text links? Or are they more button clickers, so you're not going to know until you test that out. And same thing with images, maybe test with new images, or maybe test a few of them. So MailChimp did a study that found that text only no images, campaigns do better than campaigns that include between one and 10 images. But they also said that if your email includes more than 10 images, that's a lot, then click through rates are even higher than text only campaign. So it really does depend upon your audience and what they kind of resonate with. So I would test that out. The third and final one is conversion. So the conversion is percentage of people who click through take action on your offer or request. So according to cut, store, ecommerce pulse and email emails counted for 19.8% of all transaction, just behind paid search at 19.9% and organic traffic at 21.8%. So in order for people to go, you have them as an email subscriber and you want to make them a customer. You've got to nurture them and kind of bring them along this journey with every email that you send. So examples of conversions could be they bought your product, or they signed up for your webinar, or let's say, right, so if they're converting, then it's, it's great because it's helping you gauge how interested or audience is, right. So if they're not signing up for your webinar, then you're like, Hey, what's going, what's going on, let's look at the funnel and see where they're dropping off. So obviously, conversions equal more money. So you want to get those up there. And you want to balance it out. So don't have every email be like promote, promote selling, selling, selling, you want to, you really want to I know it sounds cheesy, like add value, but it's true. So the more that you share free knowledge and tips, the more that when it comes to the point where you do have something that you actually want them to do register your for your webinar, buy a product, the more they're going to feel comfortable. And they're going to let their guard down, right, because you've already built up that relationship and the know like and trust factor. And so I teach that if your students in my online business, onramp chorus, you have, you know, I teach this, as well as in my new membership that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast episode, email ally, I really kind of hone in on ways that you connect can connect with your audience. If it's a cold audience, then you're going to want to send people to a webinar to really, really add a lot of value and give them a lot of free training and information, teach them something rather than linking directly to a sales page, right because the webinar that's there, you're educating Then you're informing them, maybe you're inspiring them, they're learning from you, they're getting to know you, then that can help increase your conversions as well. conversion rates can vary, okay, kind of all over the place. So I think like internet marketing is that's 7% conversion. Education is around 6%. But I don't know, I kind of like what Amy Porterfield says, and I agree, I don't look really at industry standards, just check track what yours looks like. And then track performance over time, kind of similar to tracking your email performance week over week, you can look at industry standards, but honestly, you want to look at your own performance and how it's doing. So you're going to want to make sure obviously, I've said this before, that your emails are mobile friendly. And so to to increase those conversions, you want to know your audience, personalize your emails. So like I said, like all my emails started out with like, hey, first name, shorter subject lines, short, punchy, to the point, break up the text in your emails for more whitespace. So it's not just a block of text coming at them, make sure your links are easy to see, and easy to read. And then, you know, make sure that your file sizes of your images are smaller, right, because you don't want your email to take a million years to load. And so that will all that will help you especially as you're showing up as consistently as is realistic for you. And so on our verbal mentions, I already went over the three but honorable mention that I will go over really quickly is subscribe and unsubscribe. So obviously, these are the people who either subscribe to your email or unsubscribe after getting an email from you. So if you're obsessing about unsubscribes, you'll forever be obsessing about them, because you're always going to get them. And you know, I know that it's hard, you know, to see people leave, but they probably weren't a good fit, they probably you know, they weren't ever going to consume your content or you know, or be jazzed about your offer. So they probably weren't your ideal customer avatar anyway. And the more your list grows, the more you're going to pay on your email service provider. So you don't want people that aren't right for you on your list, because then you're paying for them, right. So I would say check in every month or every quarter, just to make sure that your unsubscribe rate doesn't drastically change, right? Because obviously, if all of a sudden you have this like huge percentage of unsubscribes, something's going on there. But point 2.3% or industry averages there. But again, just keep tabs on your own performance. So if it's pretty even keeled, and you're doing okay, so another thing I will say, too, if you're not consistent with your emails, and when you do start emailing them, you're going to get some unsubscribes because people are going to be like, Who the heck is this person? I don't think I've ever gotten an email from them. I don't think I ever subscribed to them. So I'm going to unsubscribe. So that's another reason why it's great to be consistent. So there you have it, the three email metrics that you actually should keep track of most likely on a weekly basis if that's the cadence that you're using. There's so many email metrics out there, but those are the three achor I recommend that you track I hope this was helpful. If you have questions email me at hello at Muscle Creative calm and I'll talk to you later. Thanks for tuning in to the Small Business big mindset podcast. To keep the fun going. Check out our Facebook group start and scale an online business For even more free trainings and resources from fellow entrepreneurs. If you haven't already, head on over to Muscle Creative calm and click subscribe and join our email list for weekly updates. And if you've enjoyed this podcast episode, check us out on your favorite podcast platform to follow us and give us a review. As always be authentic, bring an insane amount of value and keep crushing it