Email metrics won’t tell you much if you can’t even define them. For one thing, they vary by industry, the time of year, time of day and other variables. But they can be tracked and improved.

For example, the open rate can be boosted with such basic tactics as writing engaging subject lines, A/B testing, optimizing the preview text and segmenting your email list.  

Then there’s the unsubscribe rate — one metric marketers would like to see go down. Of course, the best way to achieve this is by offering relevant and engaging content.  

Bounce rates are another category where marketers would like to see a decline. First, inactives should be deleted from the list, and a double opt-in should be used.

How many are you tracking? And do you know what they signal?

• Bounce rate — the percentage of emails that never made it into the inbox.Hard bounces are those that didn’t make it through the spam filter, soft bounces because the inbox was full or there is a file that is too large  
• Click-through rate — the number of clicks out of the total number of emails delivered
• Conversion rate — the percentage of recipients who have taken an action, whether buying or clicking on the “Read More” button 
• Deliverability rate — the percentage of emails that made it into the subscribers’ inbox 
• List growth rate — how quickly your list is growing over a certain period 
• Open rate — the percentage of unique opens out of delivered emails
• Revenue per subscriber — the recent generated from a single subscriber 
• Spam complaint rate — the number of recipients who complained that emails were spam out of those delivered
• Unsubscribe rate — the percentage of people who opt out of your subscriber list in a given period

Pipedrive concludes: “Being data-driven isn’t helpful if your email marketing strategy is dictated by irrelevant metrics. The same can be said for your overall digital marketing strategy.”