For sustainable successful e-mail marketing and satisfied customers, constant monitoring of success is absolutely crucial. Firms usually monitor the most common key figures, but you can only improve performance if you also understand these values. The Net Promoter Score^® and the best time to send the order are for example some of the figures that receive far too little attention. In this article, Soraya Segni from Newsletter2Go explains what the KPIs of email marketing are all about and what you can do to ensure relevant mailings and satisfied customers.

What is the goal of a Newsletter?

E-Mail marketing is one of the most effective methods in online marketing as you can reach high successes with a relatively low effort. Besides increasing revenues and improving customer communication, e-mail marketing aims for the following goals: Making customers satisfied and retaining them in the long term. It is necessary to have a concrete objective in order to make success measurable and being able to optimize constantly.

The most common Newsletter KPIs

The most common newsletter KPIs allow us to draw important conclusions about the optimization potential of current and future e-mail campaigns. If you're just starting out with email marketing, the multitude of KPIs can be confusing. In the following, we have briefly summarized which KPIs are really useful:

• The Delivery Rate It indicates how many recipients on the mailing list actually received the e-mail. It is calculated by subtracting the total number of recipients from the total number of recipients to whom the newsletter could not be delivered.
• The Bounce Rate: It measures failed deliveries caused by incorrect e-mail addresses or full mailboxes for example. You can make a distinction between hard bounces and soft bounces. While e-mail addresses are only temporarily unavailable in a soft bounce, they are permanently unavailable in hard bounces and should be removed from the recipient list.
• The Click Rate: How many recipients have clicked on a link? You can determine the rates for single clicks and multiple clicks. The most common rate in e-mail marketing is the single click rate.
  Tip: Tip: Always consider the click rate in relation to your newsletter target and your industry: A higher click rate can be expected for an exciting sales campaign than for a generic information mailing. Basically you can say: A click rate between 3 percent and 6 percent is absolutely average!
• The Opening Rate: This rate reflects the number of recipients who opened the mailing. The distinction between unique and repeated openings can be made here as well.

Tip: Again, you should not expect too high numbers. Good opening rates are already between 20 percent and 25 percent, depending on the industry.

What is relevant for successful Newsletters and satisfied Customers beyond the standard Key Figures?

The standard KPIs of e-mail marketing alone are not sufficient to accurately determine the success of a campaign and thus assess customer satisfaction. In particular, the time of dispatch, for example, is a decisive factor for high opening and click rates and is therefore directly related to the newsletter key figures. It is important to create a logical connection between the online activity of the recipients and the time the newsletter is opened. Ideally, you reach out to the recipients when they have time to deal with your mailing.

In the B2C sector, it is assumed that the recipients are most active in the morning and evening hours, while in the B2B context recipients are likely to open the newsletter in between. Comparing this to the working hours of the respective target group you can recognize a logical connection. Newsletter2Go has conducted a study on the optimal timing for sending out newsletters. For this purpose, we evaluated about 230,000 newsletters from various industries. The best opening and click rates were achieved in the evening. Further information about the optimal delivery times as well as comprehensive industry-specific statistics can be found in our Delivery Time White Paper in German.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is another key figure that can be used for the optimization of e-mail and newsletter campaigns. With the NPS you can determine the loyalty of a customer to your company by means of surveys. The survey consists of a question that is rated on a scale from 0 to 10. The Net Promoter Score is then calculated from the percentage difference between satisfied and dissatisfied customers.

The NPS can easily be integrated into e-mail marketing. For example, NPS surveys can be embedded in the newsletter. Since the questions can be formulated individually you can assess different areas of interest. The findings can then be used for content optimization and personalization of the newsletter. According to a Statista Study, personalized newsletter content results in a five percent higher opening rate.

The NPS is therefore another piece of the puzzle for extended customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and customer retention.

Conclusion: Sustainably Optimized E-Mail Marketing for maximum Newsletter Success

Your own success goes far beyond the usual newsletter KPIs. The basic key figures provide a general overview of the current performance of a newsletter campaign. However, factors such as the time of dispatch and the NPS have an influence on the results and form the basis for more personalized content. The more the newsletter content and timing is adapted to the needs of the recipients, the more effective the campaign will be.

Note: Key figures provide a good foundation. However, the best results for your personal case will always be achieved through targeted testing on a regular basis.

About the Author: Soraya Segni regularly writes articles about email marketing at Newsletter2Go. Since her bachelor's degree in business communications, she has been working in content marketing and has been supporting the team at Newsletter2Go since 2019 as Junior Content Manager.