Email marketing success comes down to number crunching. Open, click-through and the all important conversion rates determine how successful a marketing strategy is and provide the core of the data used for analytics to determine new initiatives. However, there are other metrics that are equally important and can have an important effect on the success of email list marketing.

Sharing or forwarding
Email is a shareable medium. While not the focus of email like it is with social marketing strategies, it is important for businesses to know how consumers are sharing their marketing messages in order to examine brand recognition and overall success. Just because a consumer doesn’t click through on an email doesn’t mean they didn’t send it to a friend that isn’t in the list management who did click through. Additionally, the integration of social and email marketing solutions can provide users with a way to share email content with their social network, increasing the reach of that single email.

Bounce rates
According to Resource Nation, bounce rates are also important, as they can determine the digital reputation of the company with email clients and ISPs. Bounce rate is the number of emails that never reach a consumer due to inaccurate information or inactive accounts. A high bounce rate could cause the ISP or client to start recognizing the sending address as spam. By keeping lists as up-to-date as possible and investing in high-quality suppression list management solutions, a business can address this issue effectively and focus on keeping its bounce rate low.

Compliance
Often, marketing success can be made or broken by compliance. If a business is often sending emails that aren’t compliant with CAN-SPAM or other regulations, it could eventually face fines or other legal action. Minimizing compliance risk requires an investment in high-quality consumer privacy management solutions and an understanding of the laws regarding email compliance.

According to Resource Nation, following email metrics is the best way to ensure success and will allow analytics to be more accurate. By understanding what metrics and legal needs are the most important, a business will be able to avoid many different risks and focus on providing relevant, engaging emails to the consumer. The goal with analytics and metrics should always be to weed out mistakes and maximize conversion rates, and the right software solutions will help accomplish this efficiently.