In all my years doing content marketing, I have to say that monitoring and tracking my efforts has to be one of the more important aspects of the job, especially when it comes to email nurturing campaigns. There’s so much opportunity in this marketing technique if we know what to adjust and tweak to make our efforts more engaging and relevant. The best way we can do this is by tracking the impact of our nurturing campaigns.

The most common metrics to track for email nurturing campaigns are open rates and click through rates. Open rates tell us how many people opened our email, while click through rates are the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within your email. These are pretty much standard when it comes to tracking email nurturing metrics. So, what I wanted to focus on are the other elements that you should be tracking. For example:

1. Unsubscribe rate

Your unsubscribe rate tracks the number of email recipients who clicked on unsubscribe after they received your email. While there are numerous factors that could contribute to a recipient unsubscribing, it could be because your email isn’t relevant to their needs. It could also mean you’re not making it clear who the email is from and it comes off as spam. It can also be because you’re not emailing consistently or you’re emailing too much.

Try to run tests to find the right balance between frequency and quality to minimize that unsubscribe rate.

2. Complaint rate

Complaint rates track the number of email recipients who mark your email as spam once they receive it.

High complaint rates usually means one of two things–that your content is irrelevant to your target audience or that you’re sending too many emails.

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Again, addressing this is largely dependent on how well you know your audience. Try to get more insight by running surveys and tests so you can adjust your efforts accordingly.

3. Conversion rate

Your conversion rate is the number of email recipients who took positive action on your call to action. For example, if you wanted them to visit a site, click a link, sign up for a subscription, or purchase a product. It’s best if you track this monthly so you get more accurate and comprehensive data. Generally, a high conversion rate means the different factors that contribute to your email nurturing efforts—content, timing, design, frequency—all work together and is in fact effective.

4. Bounce rates 

Bounce rates track the total number of emails that bounced back to you and were therefore not delivered successfully to your recipients inbox.

There are two primary reasons for why this happens—one could be that you’re sending to a non-existent or defunct email address, or the email is full. Tracking this is critical because it may imply that while you get high sign up rates, they’re not fully engaged with the brand as they’re giving old or defunct emails.

These combined with your open and click through rates should give you a better idea on how you can adjust your email nurturing campaigns to maximize conversions. If you have more questions, be sure to get in touch with me at Leadspanda.