How to Interpret
Email Metrics Reports
For Better Campaign
Optimization

Understanding and analyzing email campaign metrics is essential for anyone looking to optimize their email performance.

Throughout this blog, we'll go through the key metrics that spark your email campaign's success. Whether you are just starting your email marketing journey, or you're a seasoned marketer, we are here to equip you with the knowledge to unleash the power of data-driven success.

Click-Through Rate

What is a Click-Through Rate?

We'll begin our email data journey with engagement rates, starting with click-through rate.

Click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage of email openers who clicked on a link. The formula for calculating the click-through rate is as following:

= Unique Clicks / Unique Opens × 100

Unique clicks count the number of times a link was clicked by an individual email subscriber, while the total clicks count include every time a subscriber clicked on a link. If a subscriber clicked on a single link multiple times (let's say 5 times), that would be 1 unique click, and 5 total clicks in email analytics.

The same logic goes for unique and total opens as well. If a subscriber opened an email 5 times, it will be counted as 1 unique open, and 5 total opens.

The click-through rate serves an indicator of how engaging your email content is, where every click holds the potential to transform a subscriber into a loyal customer. Furthermore, it also shows the effectiveness of call-to-actions you have. A higher CTR suggests that your emails are resonating with your audience and driving them to take action.

Difference Between Click-Through Rate and Click Rate?

Click Rate and Click-Through Rate (CTR), are metrics that are commonly used in email marketing to measure the performance of email campaigns and automations. Although they are similar, they represent slightly different aspects of email engagement.

Click Rate can be expressed as “click-to-delivered rate”, as it measures the percentage of unique clicks relative to the number of delivered emails.

The formula for calculating the Click Rate is as following:

= Unique Clicks / Successful Deliveries × 100

Note that we are using successful deliveries in our calculations, meaning that we are not including bounced emails (both hard and soft bounces).

Click-Through Rate, or “click-to-open rate”, on the other hand, measures the percentage of unique clicks relative to the number of opened emails.

In summary, click rate uses the number of delivered emails, while click-through rate uses the number of opened emails. Both metrics provide valuable engagement insights, and help optimize campaigns for better results, in order to drive conversions.

How Can You Improve Your Click-Through Rate?

There are several ways to improve Click-Through Rates, based on data-driven insights and creating effective email marketing strategies. Here are a few listed below.

Analyzing User Behavior – by using click heatmaps and tracking click metrics through various web analytics tools. These tools provide clear insights on which elements are high-performing, while also addressing the potential barriers to clicks.

A/B Testing – is a must for anyone who wants to improve click rates, as it provides data-backed decisions for various email elements like CTAs and headlines, as well as making emails more personalized.

Use the Right Audience – are you sending to your engaged subscribers? Is the content you're sending relevant and time-sensitive? Once you've got the subject line right and your subscribers open their emails, it's important to provide interesting, useful or engaging content. This will help in your subscriber's decision to take the next step and click the link or CTA button in your email.

Analyze Best Performing Campaigns – by using email analytics you're able to analyze both summarized campaign performance per month, and per campaign. In this way, it's easy to find best performing campaigns over time. Analyzing which ones had good engagement metrics helps set strategies for future campaigns.

Email Open Rate

What is an Open Rate?

Open Rate measures the percentage of email recipients who opened an email. The formula for calculating the open rate is as follows:

= Unique Opens / Successful Deliveries × 100

Same as for click rate calculation, we are using successful deliveries in our calculations, meaning that we are not including bounced emails (both hard and soft bounces).

In addition to click-related metrics, open rate plays a vital role in measuring the success of an email campaign. It reveals how many subscribers opened your emails, indicating the effectiveness of your subject lines and pre-header text in capturing attention. A low open rate may suggest that your subject lines need improvement or that you need to segment your audience more effectively.

In addition to click-related metrics, open rate plays a vital role in measuring the success of an email campaign. It reveals how many subscribers opened your emails, indicating the effectiveness of your subject lines and pre-header text in capturing attention. A low open rate may suggest that your subject lines need improvement or that you need to segment your audience more effectively.