You spend lots of time and energy creating your email marketing campaigns. Between developing a strategy, writing the messages, and designing the content, tons of work goes into each campaign.
But after you hit send, how do you know whether your emails have any effect? Email tracking is the answer.
Anyone who uses email marketing can improve their campaigns with email tracking software. Learn how in this guide.
- What is email tracking?
- Benefits of email tracking
- How email tracking can introduce new opportunities for your business
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) in email tracking
- Effective use of tracked email data
- Email tracking tips and best practices
- Guide to email tracking software
- Integrations and platform support
- Avoiding common pitfalls
- Implementing email tracking for better results
What is email tracking?
Email tracking is the process of monitoring metrics about your email messages. It typically lets you know which recipients open your emails and when they do so. Some email tracking may also monitor more detailed information, such as when recipients click on links in the messages or share your messages with other people.
So, how can I track an email? You need to install additional email tracking tools to track email opens and monitor other message data. Email service providers like Gmail and Microsoft Outlook generally don’t offer email tracking features.
The tracking tools collect data about your email marketing campaigns and report it to you. Your job is to garner insights from that data and use them to optimize your campaigns going forward.
Benefits of email tracking
Tracking emails is one of the most powerful methods for improving your campaigns and hitting your marketing goals. Here are some of the benefits it offers:
Saving time
Trying to keep track of all your email conversations with customers manually is a huge drain on your time. As your email list grows, it might even become impossible. Email tracking can handle all that tedious work to save you time.
Say, for example, an email subscriber did not open your first message or follow-up. You could send them another message, but it probably wouldn’t do your business any good. Email tracking software would quickly let you know the recipient never opened the first two messages so you shouldn’t waste your time sending more.
On the flip side, email tracking will show you when it is worth reaching out to a customer again. You can see when customers engage with messages and click links to time your follow-ups perfectly. No more wasting time guessing whether you should or shouldn’t send messages to customers.
Gaining insights from email interactions
The better you understand your email campaigns, the better equipped you’ll be to improve them. Email tracking provides the data you need to dig deeper into your campaign performance and unlock valuable insights.
For example, if your campaign has unusually low open rates, the messages may have weak subject lines or be getting caught in spam filters. Without email tracking, you would have no way to know what the problem was.
Achieving a higher return on investment from your campaigns
Once you use those insights to optimize your campaigns, they’ll provide a higher return on investment. The average ROI on email marketing is $36 per dollar spent, but you can reach even higher figures with email tracking.
Use the data to better segment your audience and create more targeted campaigns. For instance, sort customers into groups based on their level of engagement. Then, tailor your marketing messages to each group to be more personal and effective.
How email tracking can introduce new opportunities for your business
Data-driven marketing has exploded in popularity in recent years. It offers unparalleled insights into marketing decisions and helps businesses unlock new opportunities.
Here are some ways you can use email tracking to benefit your brand:
Reward your most engaged subscribers
A brand’s most loyal and engaged subscribers deserve a reward for their dedication. After you identify these subscribers with your email tracking software, send a personalized message expressing your appreciation.
Reengage those who have lost interest
If one of your subscribers hasn’t engaged with your messages lately, you may be able to interest them again with a personalized re-engagement message. Email tracking helps you determine which customers aren’t currently engaging with your brand so you can reach out.
Reevaluate your sending schedule
You should try to send your messages when your audience is most likely to open and engage with them. But how do you know when that is? Based on the data you collect, you can deduce the best time to send your marketing emails.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) in email tracking
Different email trackers monitor different metrics, but these are the most important KPIs:
Email response time
Email response time measures how long it takes recipients to reply to your messages. Ideally, the average response time on your emails should be less than 24 hours to keep conversations rolling smoothly.
Long response times indicate your audience is not overly engaged with your messages. Some response delays are unavoidable, but you want to keep your averages as low as possible.
Open rate
The open rate measures the percentage of your recipients who open your messages. If you send a message to 100 people and 30 recipients open it, your open rate is 30%.
Email tracking software tells you when — and sometimes where — your recipients open your messages. Keep an eye on your open rates. A sudden drop in this metric is a big red flag that something’s wrong with your campaign.
Click-through rate
The click-through rate measures the percentage of recipients who click on links included in your emails. It will always be equal to or less than the open rate since recipients can only click on links if they open the email first.
A higher click-through rate shows more people are interested in and engaging with your message. Once customers click on these links, they’re one step further toward making a purchase from your business.
Additional metrics for email productivity
You should also monitor some additional email metrics, such as:
- Conversion rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Bounce rate
- List growth rate
- Spam complaints
Effective use of tracked email data
It’s not enough to simply receive tracked email data — you have to interpret it to extract insights.
First, use the tracked email data to find any weaknesses in your campaigns. For instance, if your open rates or click-through rates are low, investigate why that is the case. High open rates with low click-through rates may indicate that your email content isn’t engaging or your call to action isn’t compelling enough.
Once you find potential flaws in your messages, make adjustments. Try different text for your call to action or make the button a different color. Implement a different design or rewrite your message in a different tone.
Monitor your email data again after making these adjustments. Specifically, look for changes in key metrics like bounce rates, open rates, and click-through rates. Keep adjusting your emails until your tracked email data shows your campaigns perform well.
Email tracking tips and best practices
Get the most out of your software by applying these best practices:
Maintaining relevance in your content
Readers respond best to engaging, relevant email content. If you send them dry and uninteresting emails, your campaign metrics will suffer.
Keep your email metrics as high as possible by only sending messages when you have something worthwhile to say. Write with your audience in mind, and ask yourself whether your content addresses their interests, concerns, and questions. If not, rewrite or scrap the message.
Email list management
Weak metrics are a sign you may need to work on managing your email list. For example, a high bounce rate probably means you have some inactive or inaccurate email addresses in your subscriber list.
Comb through your list regularly to remove any subscribers who no longer engage with your emails, either because they’re not interested or the email address is outdated. Consistent email list hygiene will eliminate dead weight on your email list that only brings down your campaign statistics.
Regularly monitoring and analyzing email tracking data
Email tracking data constantly changes, so you need to monitor it regularly. Checking the data once will only give you a tiny window into your campaign performance. The real insights come from analyzing the email data as it changes over time.
For example, a sudden increase in your bounce rate suggests that spam filters are flagging your messages. You may be on an email blacklist. The only way to notice changes like these is to check in on your email tracking statistics consistently.
Guide to email tracking software
You have lots of different options when it comes to email tracking software. Some of the best email tracking apps include:
- Constant Contact
- Mailmodo
- Streak
- Hubspot
- Mailtrack
- SalesHandy
Constant Contact tracks key metrics like email opens, clicks, and shares. The user-friendly results dashboard allows you to track your campaign’s results in real time.
You even get a click-tracking heat map that visually compares which links get the most clicks. Check performance reports wherever you are with the Constant Contact app.
Sign up for a free trial to see how Constant Contact’s email tracking software revolutionizes your campaigns.
Integrations and platform support
Once you select an email tracking app, it’s time to install it in your email platform. The process may look slightly different depending on the platform you use, such as Gmail or Outlook.
Make sure the software you choose integrates with your email service provider. Some software only works with specific providers. Streak, for example, is only an email tracker for Gmail, so you can’t use it to track emails on Outlook.
Integrating the tracking software with other tools like your customer relationship management (CRM) software may also be helpful. When you integrate your CRM with email tracking, you’ll have greater access to customer details — all in one place. You can incorporate details like a customer’s shopping history into your messages and track whether those personalized emails perform better.
Check compatibility before purchasing and installing tracking software. You’ll be disappointed later if you discover your tracking app isn’t compatible with your CRM or other apps.
Avoiding common pitfalls
Once you know how much email marketing can help your business, it’s normal to be chomping at the bit to get started. Just don’t jump into the deep end without understanding these common pitfalls and how to avoid them:
Email overload and fatigue
Sending too few emails to your customers will weaken your engagement rates. Unfortunately, sending too many emails can be even more detrimental to your marketing efforts.
No one wants to be bombarded with several company promotional emails daily. If you send too many emails, you risk overloading your audience and frustrating them. You need to find the Goldilocks email frequency that’s not too rare or too often — just the right amount of messages.
On the other side, writing and responding to an overload of emails can tire out your team. Balance the workload so they can operate at the highest level.
Privacy concerns and ethical practices
Some consumers have raised privacy concerns about email tracking software. If you don’t disclose the fact you use tracking tools, especially an email location tracker, some customers may view that as an invasion of privacy. The pixels these tools use to track email metrics are sometimes even called “spy pixels.”
Digital privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) address consumer concerns over data gathering. The GDPR specifically prohibits email tracking without consumer consent, though this is difficult to enforce.
Letting customers know that you use email tracking will go a long way toward building and preserving trust. While the insights from email tracking are valuable, you don’t want to risk betraying your customers’ trust in your business. Establish guidelines on the ethical use of email tracking in your business.
Implementing email tracking for better results
Email tracking software opens your eyes to a whole new world of data and insights about your email marketing campaigns. Without it, you’re flying blind.
Implement email tracking today to adapt to data-driven marketing and start optimizing your campaigns.
