In today’s world, where customers have the shortest attention span ever, email engagement has become critical for companies to stay afloat and move towards their goals. The more interested and involved the target audience is, the more a brand may expect positive open rates, clicks, and conversions and improved trust, loyalty, and genuine connection.
However, ensuring high email engagement is easier said than done. It has become a true art that requires companies not only to perfect the essentials in their campaigns and communications but also to develop new ideas that drum and maintain interest in the brand and product. From catchy emoji-infused subject lines to impressive hero areas to gamified experiences, they strive to inform, engage, bring value, and get a competitive advantage with every outreach.
Apart from that, they do continuous email engagement metrics tracking to see how the target audience responds to email content, offers, and design. However, this is not just a mere reminder to keep an eye on how well email performs. It is the backbone of a thriving presence in the email channel that translates into the company’s growth, accountability, and continuous improvement. It is a managerial compass and strategic tool to empower and elevate every step taken in the email channel.
Let’s tackle this topic from the inside out. From discovering core types of measurements to the top 5 tools for email engagement metrics tracking, we have uncovered this crucial stage in the email marketing routine.
What Is Email Engagement Metrics?
Email engagement refers to several related concepts. First and foremost, it illustrates the degree of attention, interest, curiosity, and motivation your customers show when interacting with the brand in the email channel.
Second, email engagement indicates how much time and effort they will invest in the company’s digital newsletter. It hints about their persistence and resilience towards the brand and its products.
Third, email engagement reflects the relationship between the company and its clients.
All these concepts demonstrate different levels of affection, involvement, and interest in the brand and its products in email channels, which are measured according to certain criteria and actions, forming so-called email engagement metrics. The latter is the system of measurement of quantitative and qualitative assessment that helps companies evaluate, compare, and track the performance and efficacy of email campaigns and overall strategy.
The results of email engagement metrics tracking are pretty self-explanatory. If they are good, it means your subscribers are interested in your brand and are willing to spend their time and money on it. This is reflected through high open rates, click-through rates, leads, and eventual conversions.
If email engagement metrics are low, your subscribers are indifferent and uninterested in your brand. From leaving your email unopened to registering a complaint, this disengagement could be reflected through various clients’ actions, including inactivity.
The email engagement metrics cover numerous aspects of subscribers’ reactions to digital newsletters, email campaigns, and brands’ presence in the channel. The most popular are open rate, click-through rate, click-to-open rate, unique open rate, hard and soft bounce rates, unsubscribe rate, complaints rate, and spam rate.
Companies use professional email engagement metrics tracking software, from all-in-one ESP to standalone third-party services. Depending on the goal, they might combine them to get more precise qualitative and quantitative results.
Importance of Email Engagement Metrics Tracking
Email engagement metrics tracking is arguably one of the most powerful tools email marketers have in their arsenal. Assessing subscribers’ various levels of involvement provides companies with relevant and accurate insights into numerous tiny aspects of their activity in the channel, from segmentation to personalization to email design creation.
Let’s consider several crucial ways email engagement metrics tracking proves to be a valuable tool for your business.
It Measures the Efficacy of the Company’s Activity and Presence in the Email Channel.
First and foremost, continuous email engagement metrics tracking reflects the efficacy of email campaigns and overall email strategy. It provides a baseline of performance against which companies may surface their weaknesses and recognize areas for improvement.
Apart from providing relevant qualitative and quantitative data about every crucial detail of an email campaign, such as how many users have opened or read an email, tracking email metrics over time helps companies draw an overall picture of their current position in the market and progress in the email channel throughout their lifetime.
It Underlies Data-Backed Decisions.
Another crucial benefit of introducing an email engagement metrics tracking stage in your email routine is the opportunity to make data-backed decisions about the next email campaign and the overall email strategy.
As the main source of concrete data, it eliminates the guessing game and gives companies the necessary knowledge to take accurate steps next time. For example, companies may determine what cadency works best for their clients, what segmentation fails, what personalization approaches provide the best results, or what offers generate the most conversions during a certain period.
It Develops Strong Relationships with Customers.
As an email channel does not have a traditional system of demonstrating emotions, such as like buttons on social media, it is hard to understand clients’ true feelings toward the company, its products, communication, and relationships. Tracking multiple and diverse email engagement rates may provide companies with real data about their customers’ psychographics and behavioral aspects.
Continuous email engagement metrics tracking unveils the audience’s preferences, needs, demands, and expectations. It also demonstrates how well the company understands that. If the rates are high, the company delivers valuable content and reinforces its relationships with customers, making them follow their lead and enjoy these relationships.
Otherwise, they must rethink their email strategy and campaigns to meet subscribers’ expectations. Paired with wholly-grained segmentation, performance tracking may provide correct directions regarding what needs to be changed or improved to maximize the effect.
It Empowers Proactive Strategy.
Although email engagement metrics provide current data surfacing problems, issues, and weaknesses, they might reveal trends in customer preferences and expectations when done regularly. Continuous tracking of vital rates helps email marketers anticipate changes in customers’ behavior and demands and adjust their email campaigns and strategy beforehand.
For instance, a slow but gradual decline in open rate may indicate that a certain segment of subscribers is growing disengaged. Companies must figure out what might not work for them and initiate re-engagement campaigns before these clients become detached from the brand and communication.
It Saves the Company’s Resources and Time.
Finally, email engagement metrics tracking comes with one big tangible bonus. When done right, it helps companies save resources, time, and money and maximize the return on investment for their email strategy. Providing relevant data about performance and the current situation on the market allows companies to make the right decisions concerning their investments.
As email engagement metrics give relevant and accurate insights on what works and what does not, what areas require improvements, and what needs to be eliminated from the routine, the team may create a proper email marketing plan and understand what efforts and money they should invest. They might set new short-term goals and update their marketing plans to avoid wasted resources.
Importance of email marketing (visual snippet taken from Campaign Monitor infographic)
Types of Email Engagement Metrics
Email marketing has multiple factors to track and analyze; however, when it comes to engagement, only several rates might indicate what happens with the subscriber’s interest in the brand and communication. From the audience’s direct interaction with email to some indirect yet valuable insights that also demonstrate their behavior and expectations, here is the list of the most popular metrics:
- Open rate and unique open rate
- Click-through rate and click-to-open rate
- Conversion rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- List growth rate
- Forwarding or sharing rate
Let’s consider them closely.
Open Rate and Unique Open Rate
The open rate and its loyal sidekick, the unique open rate, are the first and most important indicators of subscribers’ engagement with the brand and communication.
The open rate shows how often subscribers open the same email once it has landed in their inbox. It includes repeat opens. So, besides indicating how well your subject line, preview text, and sending time work, it demonstrates how valuable and alluring content is.
To calculate the email open rate, companies should divide the number of open emails by the number of delivered emails (this excludes the number of bounced emails) and multiply the result by 100.
The unique open rate is the number of times subscribers have opened emails. It does not include repeat opens, counting only the first instance. The unique open rate demonstrates subscribers’ unique views and shows how many are engaged with the brand.
To calculate unique open rates, companies should count only the unique views of their emails and divide them by the number of emails delivered to inboxes multiplied by 100.
It is crucial to note that these metrics can be inaccurate for Apple users. Due to 2021 updates in Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), Apple clients may hide information about when, where, and how they open emails. On top of that, open rates might be distorted by the wide adoption of AI summaries for emails that provide mailbox users of Apple, Google, and Yahoo with a short recap of key details, ipso facto saving them from opening the actual email.
Therefore, looking beyond open rates and analyzing other factors is highly recommended to get the real picture.
Click-Through Rate and Click-to-Open Rate
Click-through rate is perhaps one of the most popular metrics among email marketers. It is featured in every report and analysis as a precursor of other critical aspects like conversions, revenue, and ROI. It is a quantitative measurement that indicates how many subscribers have clicked on a hyperlink, CTA, or image within a particular email.
The click-through rate aims to measure engagement and provide insights on how well email content, offer, link placement, CTA, email design, and media type perform within an email campaign. It also hints at overall interest or email fatigue.
The best part is that click-through rates can be combined with other metrics, such as unique link clicks and all link clicks, to provide companies with accurate results and insights for improvement.
To maximize this metric, email marketers also analyze the click-to-open rate. This is the number of people who open an email and click on a link, CTA, or image within that campaign.
In tandem, these metrics help companies understand whether their emails and campaigns deliver true value and ignite the interest of their subscribers. With a thorough analysis, they might understand what exactly strikes the chord with their clients and meets their expectations.
Calculating both metrics is similar to measuring open rates. Companies should divide the number of people who clicked (or, in the case of CTOR, opened and clicked) by the number of successfully delivered emails. Then, multiply the result by 100.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rates are among the most important metrics for email marketing regarding the return on investment and efficacy of email campaigns and strategy. It demonstrates an actual interest of the subscriber and their level of involvement with the brand and communication, including their level of trust and loyalty. It also reflects the efficacy of segmentation, personalization, and other email marketing strategies adopted in a particular email campaign.
Like other metrics, the conversion rate is also a percentage. It indicates the number of subscribers completing a certain action after opening, scanning, or reading an email. This action might differ from campaign to campaign as it largely depends on the goal of the email marketing strategy. For instance, it could be visiting a selling page, downloading a freebie, or starting a free trial. As a rule, it is purchase-related or centered around generating more engagement with the brand.
Conversion rate correlates with revenue and return on investment metrics. Although they are not directly linked, as conversion does not necessarily lead to sales, they are still closely related.
To calculate the conversion rate, companies should divide the number of people interacting with a particular piece of content in an email (clicking, downloading, or visiting another page) by the total number of emails delivered to the inbox.
Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is an underdog of email marketing metrics. Nobody likes it; the bigger it grows, the more problems a company faces. To make matters worse, it is always present, as people get disengaged from brands and communication all the time, driven away by multiple reasons. Actually, an unsubscribe rate under 2% is considered to be the norm within the majority of industries.
However, when thoroughly analyzed and continuously tracked, it might provide crucial insights into subscribers’ engagement with the brand, quality of communication, and the efficacy of email campaigns and content.
More importantly, the unsubscribe rate is crucial in building accurate email marketing strategies. It tells a lot about the content your readers prefer to receive, areas for improvement, the health of your subscriber list, the efficacy of subscriber acquisition methods, and crucial elements of tactics such as segmentation, automation, and personalization.
For instance, if the unsubscribe rate increases with a particular subject line, content format, email design, or cadency, you might easily tweak the corresponding aspect to avoid drastic outcomes next time.
The unsubscribe rate is a percentage measure. It demonstrates how many readers the company has lost during a certain period. To calculate it, companies should divide the number of unsubscribed addresses by the total number of subscribers and multiply it by 100.
Forwarding or Sharing Rate
Staying in the shadows most of the time, the forwarding rate is rarely seen in official reports as it does not correlate with money-related metrics such as revenue or ROI. However, when it comes to assessing email engagement, it could be one of the most critical measures to track and evaluate.
Forwarding or sharing rate indicates the value and shareability of your email content. It shows how many recipients have found your email valuable or interesting enough to share with their contacts. It indicates true engagement with the content and brand. This knowledge helps companies understand whether they have hit the right chord and what content, offer, and email design resonate with the audience the best.
In addition, the sharing rate might also illustrate the level of trust, encouraging companies to maintain consistency in their ways or, vice versa, find other ways to engage.
Companies should divide the number of shares or forwards by the total number of emails delivered to inbox to calculate it. This is then multiplied by 100 to get a percentage.
List Growth Rate
Last but not least. The growth rate of email lists is a more technical metric than that of others. However, it plays a crucial role in understanding how well the target market is engaged with the brand in general. A positive tendency indicates that there is interest among the crowd. The company looks appealing to them, so it might capitalize on current strategies to increase brand awareness and total engagement with the brand name.
The interest of existing subscribers might also cause list growth, as they might share or recommend the brand to their family, friends, and colleagues. So, to some extent, it might also demonstrate existing clients’ engagement levels.
Companies should take several steps to calculate the list growth rate. First, they must take the total number of subscribers and subtract the number of unsubscribed users. Then, they must divide the number of new subscribers by the number of non-unsubscribed email addresses in a list. Finally, they must multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.
Open rates across industries (stats provided by Campaign Monitor)
Tools for Email Engagement Metrics Tracking
Email engagement metrics tracking comes with numerous benefits. It underlies the success of a company’s endeavors in the channel, assisting it in achieving its short—and long-term goals. It is highly recommended for every email marketing routine across niches. But how can it be done?
This task is delegated to professional software in today’s automated, digitalized, and AI-powered World. It has all the necessary tools to track, analyze, and report results in a digestible form, allowing non-tech-savvy teams to refine this stage.
Professional software comes in different shapes and sizes, meeting the different needs of businesses. Here are the most popular and reliable tools for tracking email engagement metrics. But before we proceed, let’s consider how the actual tracking occurs.
How Does Email Engagement Metrics Tracking Happen?
Surprisingly, the email engagement metrics tracking process is pretty simple, although it provides a lot of helpful information. It entails these simple steps:
Step 1 – The professional tracking software adds a tiny 1x 1px square piece of the image to the digital newsletter. It could be placed in the email header, footer, or body area. It is so tiny that recipients cannot see it. However, it is enough for the software to track its status. Alternatively, it might track links through special programs by adding specific code to the HTML tag description.
Step 2—The Email Service Provider or any other tool the company uses for email outreach delivers emails to the corresponding contact addresses on the subscription list.
Step 3 – When the email is opened and the tracking pixel is loaded, it gets “displayed.” As the professional software hosts this image, it gets a notification from the receiving server that it requires this image for display. This means that the email was opened.
In the case of tracking links stored in a cloud-based content repository, clicking on them triggers a redirect or assigns a campaign ID. This gives email marketers useful information about what and when users click on links.
Email Marketing Software with Email Tracking Features
We will start with a small yet professional email engagement metrics tracking platform designed specifically for those who need to connect with Google Mailbox clients and monitor their communication – Email Meter, email analytics for Gmail, and Microsoft 365.
As Google occupies the leading position in providing mailbox services for people worldwide, chances are you have one or two subscribers with Gmail accounts. There is no better way to track the performance of email campaigns sent to them than to use an Email Meter.
Created specifically for Gmail and Microsoft 365, it knows the ins and outs of the system, providing teams with a productive environment to gain visibility and relevant insights from email activity. It tracks crucial email engagement metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, engagement time, deliverability metrics, and other factors like response time or Service Level Agreements.
It offers free and paid plans, so you can try it without investing much money.
Polymail
Those who track mostly Apple subscribers and do not need advanced platforms that might intimidate with its high-tech functionality and feature-packed interface might consider Polymail. It is a simple application initially designed to track email engagement metrics in the Apple environment.
Although it does not have the capabilities of popular ESP, it provides all the necessary tools to track critical factors of email campaigns and individual newsletters, such as opens and click-through rates and download attachments.
The good news is that the platform also works with Gmail, so if you want to extend your tracking to another popular mailbox provider, you might do it without changing the platform or adding a new tool to your arsenal.
Plus, it has a free trial and a budget-friendly plan for solopreneurs.
Mailpost
Mailpost.io is a comprehensive email marketing platform designed to simplify and elevate email campaigns for businesses of all sizes. It provides a seamless and user-friendly experience for creating, sending, and analyzing emails, helping marketers reach their audiences effectively and drive measurable results.
Key Highlights of Mailpost.io:
- Email Campaign Creation: Easily design engaging email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor, pre-built templates, and customization options. Whether you’re crafting newsletters, promotions, or transactional emails, Mailpost.io ensures your emails look professional and responsive on all devices.
- Audience Segmentation & Personalization: Target specific customer segments with personalized messaging to increase engagement and conversions. Use customer behaviors, preferences, or demographics to craft tailored email experiences.
- Email Automation: Streamline communication with automated workflows for drip campaigns, onboarding sequences, event triggers, or abandoned cart reminders. Save time while nurturing leads and improving customer retention.
- Performance Tracking & Insights: Gain actionable insights with detailed analytics, including open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and unsubscribe trends. Measure performance to refine strategies and maximize ROI.
- Deliverability Optimization: Mailpost.io emphasizes inbox placement, ensuring your emails avoid spam filters. It supports domain verification, sender reputation monitoring, and warm-up tools to improve deliverability.
- Integrations: Connect seamlessly with popular CRMs, eCommerce platforms, and other marketing tools to synchronize your data and workflows.
Why Choose Mailpost.io?
Mailpost.io is built with businesses in mind—offering robust tools to scale email marketing efforts, increase engagement, and improve ROI. Its intuitive interface empowers beginners to get started quickly, while its advanced features cater to experienced marketers seeking higher performance.
With a focus on automation, personalization, and email deliverability, Mailpost.io positions itself as an all-in-one platform for driving successful email campaigns.
Hubspot
Let’s get to the big guns. Hubspot is undoubtedly one of the most popular and reliable tools in the world of email marketing. It comes with an extensive email engagement metrics tracking functionality. It has many valuable features that allow businesses across niches to accomplish numerous tasks related to growing their business, raising sales, improving productivity, and reinforcing their market position.
The platform might look intimidating and overwhelming with its huge potential at first sight, but it is certainly an ultimate stop for those seeking all-in-one solutions. It comes with marketing, sales, customer service, and content solutions covering the needs of startups, small businesses, and well-established organizations.
When monitoring and analyzing email performance, it has everything you might need. It reviews and analyzes email trends, drills down delivery rates, and, most importantly, tacks and analyzes engagement for individual sent emails. This includes open rate, click rate, click-through rate, deliverability results, HTML click map, top clicked links, top engaged contacts, time spent on email, and engagement over time.
In addition, Hubspot integrates with Shopify. So, if you use this platform to run your online business, you may also gain relevant insights from it, like analyzing influenced revenue from abandoned cart emails.
As for pricing, Hubspot starts at $15 per month with a free plan for small businesses that generate less than 2,000 emails per calendar month.
Active Campaign
Another big name on our list could be your ultimate stop for juggling multiple tasks from one place to ensure your company’s growth. Again, the platform might be a bit too much for startups, but it is a great investment in the future if you plan to scale your business.
Active Campaign is a professional multi-feature CRM platform ideal for email marketing, automation segmentation, and personalization. In addition to its AI-powered suit for conducting email campaigns and implementing email strategies, it prioritizes email engagement metrics tracking as it streamlines decision-making.
Therefore, you might find a set of all critical instruments to get valuable and, most importantly, relevant insights on email campaign performance. This includes open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, bounce rates, devices used, email replies, and email forwards.
As for pricing, like in the case of Hubspot, companies may start as low as $15 per month.
Campaign Monitor
As the name has it, Campaign Monitor is another leading professional software in the email marketing world that knows a thing or two about monitoring campaigns. It excels at effective email engagement metrics tracking with its core designed specifically for this purpose.
Oriented mostly at small and midsized businesses, it offers well-rounded email campaign monitoring, analytics, and reporting at every pricing tier. It will not intimidate you with its feature-heavy interface, as it has clean navigation to eliminate all distractions on the team’s path to growing their business in the email channel.
Clients may easily access critical email campaign engagement factors such as open rates, bounces, link clicks, unsubscribes, and social shares. Many are registered nearly immediately and displayed through various visualization tools, helping non-tech-savvy users consume the data efficiently.
Unlike others, Campaign Monitor pricing varies. It depends on the size of the contacts list and sending volume. You can easily figure out your monthly fee beforehand. On top of that, they offer the Lite plan for startups with no more than 500 subscribers or no more than 2,500 emails sent monthly. It is the cheapest tier, charging $11 per month.
Best Practices for Improving Email Engagement
Test and Validate Email Beforehand
Email testing and validation are arguably some of the most vital steps in an email campaign’s success, as reflected in positive email engagement metrics tracking. Checking all critical details of the campaign and newsletter, including content, design, offer, and technical side, before sending it to the contact list helps companies increase their chances of getting into the inbox and ensure their message is delivered as intended.
This strategic move benefits both sides. On the one hand, users get an accurate message from their brand uninterruptedly; on the other hand, companies amplify their email marketing efforts and protect the sender’s score and reputation, which is vital for continuous communication in the channel.
The good news is that companies may test and validate their email through professional software, so they do not need to waste their precious time manually checking and double-checking content, grammar, and other tiny yet critical details. Consider Unspam as one of the most popular tools for that.
Unspam is an advanced email spam checker and deliverability test to avoid spam filters, optimize delivery, increase the sender’s score, and ensure the correctness of brand message and accuracy of email design display across popular mailbox providers, devices, and operating systems.
Among its main capabilities, it does the following:
- Surf through popular blocklist providers to check if the company’s domain name, email address, or IP address is not featured there.
- Inspect the technical side of a digital newsletter to see whether SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and the List-Unsubscribe Header and domain suffix are correct.
- Go through the content and subject lines to assess them against the best practices and surface faux pas like broken links.
- Preview email design on multiple devices.
- Generate a heat map.
- Identify any possible barriers to ensuring a high level of accessibility.
Despite being feature-rich, it comes with a super-intuitive interface and budget-friendly pricing. You can try it for free to assess the potential hidden inside.
Engagement and Email Deliverability
It is naive to believe that email engagement metrics tracking involves monitoring only those factors we highlighted earlier (open rates, CTR, conversions, unsubscribes, email forwards). The deal is that these metrics are not isolated. They do not exist in a vacuum. As anything, they correlate with other critical performance aspects of email campaigns and newsletters. Some are precursors of crucial marketing KPIs, whereas others are descendants. Let’s consider email deliverability as one of the most important aspects of email marketing, particularly in the context of email engagement.
Email deliverability is the ability of an email message to reach the recipient’s inbox folder. It describes this process through metrics such as hard and soft bounces, sender reputation, unsubscribe rate, spam and complaints, inbox placement, and delivery rate.
If email deliverability is low, it might mean many bad things for the campaign. But first and foremost, it indicates that your messages do not reach the destination, aka the subscriber’s inbox, landing in the spam folder or being rejected by ISPs immediately. This leads to poor email engagement metrics and loss of trust and loyalty.
Therefore, tracking and analyzing email deliverability indicators is crucial as they underlie a solid foundation for high email engagement metrics. It is here where Unspam might once again help companies improve this aspect of email campaigns. As it thoroughly analyzes the critical details of email content and design, it provides relevant insights on increasing the likelihood of email reaching subscribers’ inboxes and surfaces areas for improvement and possible issues with blocklists and ISPs.
Adopt “White” Practices for Subscription List Growth
Email engagement starts with a subscription list, to be more precise, its quality. If your contacts are initially interested in your brand, you might expect their devotion and involvement during your communication. Otherwise, you might see a decline in open rates and conversions and an increase in such drastic metrics as spam rates or complaints.
The “white” practices for subscription list growth imply double opt-in acquisition. This means new subscribers are asked to confirm their email and intent to join the company’s mailing list by clicking the link sent to their mailboxes.
As a rule, companies use this communication not only to confirm an intent but also to welcome newcomers on board and provide them with control over email preferences by including a direct link to the preferences center, where contacts may adjust their email environment settings.
Other “white” practices suggest non-pushy strategies for acquiring subscribers. This means companies should avoid sales techniques or poor lead magnets in their landing pages or social media campaigns.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that growing a subscription list through “white” practices is not enough to ensure great results during email engagement metrics tracking. Maintaining the quality of a mailing list constantly is crucial, as people get disengaged for many good reasons, including those caused by the company and its activity in the email channel. Therefore, it is highly recommended to introduce these approaches in your email marketing routine as well:
- Clean up email list regularly. Delete invalid and unsubscribed contacts immediately.
- Determine the right email cadence and keep it steady, especially during peak sales seasons.
- Do wholly-grained segmentation. Always group separately those who get disengaged.
- Track and analyze bounces.
- Use real-time verification software.
- Make it easy to change email preferences and unsubscribe from the mailing list.
- Follow GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act regulations.
Conclusion
Email engagement metrics tracking is crucial in achieving success in the email channel. It provides teams with relevant and accurate information about the performance of every email campaign’s detail. It gives insights into how well the target audience perceives a communication through such factors as open rates, click-through rates, conversions, unsubscribe rates, list growth rates, forwarding rates, and other measurements specific to the company’s niche and product.
The key to success lies in consistent optimization: personalize your emails, test different elements, maintain a clean email list, and always prioritize delivering value to your audience.
This process is not easy or smooth, as monitoring email performance is getting trickier with stringent privacy policies from mailbox providers and AI-powered email recaps that demonstrate key data from the email without opening and interacting with it. Email marketers are highly advised to refine their email marketing routines, take data-backed decisions, follow the best practices, and capitalize on professional software.
