Newsletters should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. Studies have shown that newsletters are vital for keeping engagement with your audience and customers.
If you’re not sure what to be taking a closer look at, consider these six newsletter metrics that could change how you communicate with your customers.
Newsletters are an essential tool that can provide a ton of information, and the results will give you an understanding of what your customers want or are thinking.
But, you know what’s even better about newsletters?
They can act as a lead nurturing tool to push your prospects down your pipeline.
Here are 6 metrics you should be looking at when building your newsletter.
1. Click Rate
Click rates to keep track of how many people engaged with your newsletter. This could be through clicking links or images. Put the number of links against the number of viewers of your newsletter.
Do you want to know which content interests more customers? Study the click rate and see what yields more clicks. In addition, click rates can give you an idea of the type of people who are attracted to your content, and you can even check the time of the day that they are most engaged.
2. Unsubscribes from your Newsletter
No one wants to hear that their potential customer has chosen to unsubscribe.
Annoying or hurtful as it may be, it might be due to unintentional reasons but worth a closer inspection.
Here’s the thing.
There could be several reasons why someone would unsubscribe.
You send just too many emails! It can be overwhelming to the customer to find their inbox full of notices or invitations that quickly fill their storage. Perhaps they sit on their chair in the morning thinking about whether the content is worth their time after sorting through all the titles!
Sucks right?
Customers might also have specific needs or wants that you’re not fulfilling.
And they would most likely entertain emails that are unrelated to what they are looking for.
Relevance is key.
And, understanding your customer is a crucial part of market research.
In addition, finding your niche may also help you streamline your content to specific topics that your audience is very passionate about and what they would like more of.
Communicating isn’t all just about well-written paragraphs.
Do they prefer videos? Infographics?
Have fun and explore what material better engages your client.
Customers can quickly become irritated. Instead, try sending them a newsletter like you would a close friend of yours. Understand the best time to send it so they can read it and ask them to engage with you through a response. The response could be an invitation to learn more information on your site or to subscribe to your new channel.
Remember that it is more beneficial for the customer to unsubscribe from your newsletters than for them to mark you as spam. Spam filters will consider you as such, and you are in danger of losing that line with your customer.
To counter this possibility, think about how you can build a marketing strategy that will allow customers to reengage with you. It never hurts to ask for feedback from a customer on why they unsubscribed.
3. Open Rate
So you worked on your email, sent it out to your email list, and hoped that the customer would be interested in what you have to say. How do you even know if they gave you an inch of consideration? You need to take a look at the Open Rate.
The open rate is the number of times your email was opened out of all you sent on your subscription list.
Remember your newsletter won’t work if they’re not opening it.
Consider the following ways to increase the probability of a customer opening your newsletter.
Is your content practical or applicable?
We live in a world where information is literally at our fingertips with the world wide web. However, people are looking for content that they can take and use to change their lifestyle or solve a problem.
Does your title spark their interest?
Email subscribers may have given you more information about themselves when they signed up with you. Perhaps you have information regarding their interest in weight loss when they asked for the free PDF journal.
When they signed up and asked for data, you may also have their first name. Using someone’s name is impactful. Remember, customers are people, and they feel more open when there is rapport and a connection. They don’t want to think that they are just another payday for you.
Use a short and catchy title to catch their attention. Try adding personalized names, quick data, or freebies related to the content. Titles could also include How To’s or Easy Steps.
4. Bounces
Your newsletter may risk bouncing back or not being delivered to your customer. It could happen for a variety of reasons. Remember that you will receive a high rating when newsletters are delivered.
Here are two tips to help maintain your strong reputation as a performing business that adds value to your customers.
First, clean up your email subscription list.
One of the reasons it may bounce back is that the email address no longer exists.
Inspect customers who have not engaged for an extended period and have them removed. Your newsletters may have reached their junk or spam folders, and we don’t want that to happen as it may affect your rating of deliverables.
Consider what domain you are using in sending an email.
Free domains from Google may not get the customer’s attention and end up in junk or spam. Instead, invest in buying your domain.
Once you have a domain, set up a DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), giving senders authenticity and legitimacy. Customers will then be able to recognize you through your domain address and have less fear that it is an email from a third party carrying questionable content.
An additional benefit to keeping track of bounces is that you will be able to study whether you are cost-effective regarding your email marketing costs. It takes more than just an email address to be successful at delivering your emails.
With that in mind, why would you waste your time, effort, and money on technology to help with sending newsletters when customer emails are not working, or they are not engaged?
5. Sharing Rate
As we all have heard, “Sharing is caring.” You wrote beautiful life-changing content that had to be shared.
Wouldn’t it excite you to know that a customer shared your newsletter by forwarding it to a friend of theirs?
Of course, it would.
For more opportunities for your content to be shared, check that you have forwarding features in your email. Also, you may want to study strategies for building a forwarding campaign. There are now tools that allow customers to share your content on other platforms on social media.
But don’t get complacent.
Seriously.
It is not only enough that content is valuable, but consider how you can continually nourish your relationship with the customer in other ways. Invite customers to take a survey, attend virtual events, or register for webinars.
Provide information on your links for those forwarded content to reach out to you personally. Ongoing engagement keeps an open line for communication.
6. Conversion Rates
Perhaps you sent your newsletter with a call to action. It could be anything from signing up, taking a quick survey, or asking them to subscribe to the attached link. This is part of the conversion rates studied.
It should be easy enough for the customer to understand what it is you are asking them to do. The process of how they stay engaged, provide feedback, or perhaps buy a product should be written in simple steps.
You can improve conversion rates with a pop-up. Use an exit pop-up to ask the customer to be brought to another landing page or specific content. This simple tool will give a chance for the customer to further explore your content before deciding to leave altogether.
Study New Number of Subscribers
Building content is terrific, but in expanding and growing the business, it is equally important that you can advertise yourself for others to be aware of your service and brand.
So what are some ways that you can continually build an audience and gain new subscribers?
Build yourself as an authority in the industry. You can inspire others to learn more about you through testimonials. New and repeat customers can share their customer feedback on your page.
Provide case studies. Everyone enjoys reading a before and after story. The case study could highlight the journey of areas the customer struggled with but which you were able to assist in solving through your product.
Pretty soon, many more will share the value you can provide to them, and others will be subscribing to get their hands on “exclusive” advice from you through your newsletters. Why not also add an incentive just for subscribing to your newsletter?
Monitoring and Evaluating the Metrics
Remember what we always say?
If you don’t track, you can’t growth hack!
Any of these metrics or key performance indicators could give insight into what is working or not in your efforts to market to potential customers. Now that you are tracking these metrics, how often should you do it?
It is important to be tracking these metrics weekly. The information will show you areas that are doing well and what needs to be improved upon. You being on top of it will prevent the dangers of losing the audience within the month, and changes can be made quickly.
Monitoring and evaluating these metrics will also allow you to pause and think about what you value and prioritize. Am I being clear? What can I change to get leads? What is the trend?
While a newsletter is a tool, it is not primarily focused on driving sales. It allows a nurturing relationship wherein you can add value through information, show genuine interest in your customer, and capability to meet their need.
The world never sleeps online. Time is of the essence. Making crucial decisions to improve one’s marketing strategy may mean a difference to your business. You may be on your way to growing and expanding your client base or, sadly, losing it all together because you were not looking at enough factors that could affect your performance.
Takeaways with Newsletter Metrics
A newsletter is a great way to bring in traffic.
But, you can use it for more than that.
It helps nudge people through your pipeline gently nurturing them.
This is especially effective for B2B prospects that are in industries such as healthcare and education for buying decisions are made at the beginning of their fiscal year.
So, always check your metrics.
You can’t growth hack if you don’t track!
