Email has always been the top marketing communication channel, with 66% of professionals actively using it daily. It can tell a lot about what your audience likes and needs. That's why you need to use the data recipients are giving to further your strategies. 

The essential email metrics: what do you count?

You probably already know about common email metrics. Basically, there are three essential things to keep track of:
  1. Open rate (how many people opened your email)
  2. Click-through rate (how many people clicked links in an email), and
  3. Unsubscribes and bounce rate (emails that never got delivered).
There are also other things that many claim to be important to track but let's take a closer look at click-through rate particularly. Counting how many recipients clicked somewhere in your email is unquestionably important.

However, the thing that some marketers seem to neglect is what exactly people have clicked. Was it your logo linked to the home page, a call-to-action (CTA) button to sign up, or a social media icon?

Understanding exactly what was clicked, under what circumstances and with what intention is the first step towards gathering valuable data.

Every email counts

How do you differentiate regular emails that your employees send every day and cleverly crafted newsletters? The thing is, you shouldn't.

The beauty of email marketing is that you can natively promote your content no matter what kind of message is being sent. So, every email sent by you or your colleague is just as important as dedicated newsletters or transactional emails.

Gathering metrics for every kind of email is what makes data-driven marketing prosper. But you should be careful with what links you implement into emails.

Tracking performance with email signatures

You can add clever CTA buttons to your newsletters as much as you like. But people will get distracted and annoyed with these buttons when they receive a partnership offer or customer support message.

Email signature marketing is claimed to solve this problem. There are multiple occasions when you shouldn't add visual content to the email body. But as the email signature is always there, it can contain pretty much anything you need.

So, what does it have to do with data-driven marketing? You can clearly identify how many people are intentionally interested in your product. Take this email for example:


Disregarding what the message is about, the email signature contains 'Book a Demo' call-to-action. Tracking the number of clicks on that particular banner gives you a clear idea of how many recipients are interested in a demo.

Of course, this goes beyond simple demo requests. You can A / B test which social media page is more interesting for customers or whether they read your blog posts.

What do metrics really tell?

You can, of course, use different metrics for different validations. This implies having different signatures too. Here is what to track in each email:

Welcome emails
The first email your new customer or subscriber receives should be warm and useful at the same time. Make sure that your email signature contains all essential social media links.

It may also contain a CTA link to an initial blog post. This way, you will learn if people are interested in reading it at all.


Transactional emails
As for transactional emails, you shouldn't add any content promotion there. As it is an email receipt, making it as clear and clean as possible is important.

But you can add various account management-related links to an email signature. For instance, try something like knowledge base articles or customer support calls scheduling. This will help you learn if customers have trouble understanding your packages.

Newsletters
These emails are usually already filled with CTA buttons and links that promote content or products. You can still add different means to connect with the sender to an email signature.

Helping people reach out easily is not just about a good tone of voice. You can validate whether the recipients are interested enough in your proposals.


General emails
This is where things get really interesting. Of course, you can add any calls-to-action sending emails to your existing contacts. But when it comes to emailing somebody new, adding all those links might look a bit rude.

In addition, people will want to learn more about you before replying. So, you can add social icons, website links and a button or banner linked to some important content to your email signature. In this way, you will be able to see if your addressee checks any of those links, which indicates their interest and your need to follow up.

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