Email remains a powerful marketing tool in the old economy sector. In this article, we will share top tips on how to elevate your email marketing with industry-specific benchmarks.
Before we dive in, here are some important email marketing metrics to keep in mind.
Email Marketing Metrics To Track
Open Rate
Open rates present the percentage of recipients who have opened your marketing email.
No matter how innovative your campaign is, it’s futile if your contacts don’t open them. So, open rate is one of the primary email marketing metrics you should concentrate on.
While open rates are not a direct indication of your email’s effectiveness, they do share insights into how well your subject line performs. Benchmarking this will help you understand areas of improvement and enhance the success of your campaign/s.
You can apply the following formula to calculate your email open rate:
Open rate = (number of opened emails/number of received emails) x 100
The formula considers received emails rather than the total emails sent. This keeps the result accurate by removing bounced emails from the data.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rates measure the percentage of recipients who have clicked on the links in your email. It calculates the ratio between sent emails and visits to your website through the attached links. Even if the recipient opens your email, clicking on the hyperlinks and CTAs can convert leads into sales pipeline and dictate the success of your campaign. By calculating your email CTR, you can examine these performance areas:
- Engagement through email content
- Overall interest or subscriber fatigue
- Link placement
- CTA quality
Statistically, your CTR is bound to be significantly lower than your email open rate. You can use the following formula to calculate this metric:
Email click-through rate = (number of recipients who clicked a link/number of received emails) x 100
You can track your email marketing link clicks in 2 ways:
- Unique link clicks: you can track CTR once for each user. The result will tell you what percent of recipients clicked through an email.
- All link clicks: for this method, you can count any click through an email, even when the same user clicks through links multiple times.
Click-to-Open Rate
This KPI measures the percentage of email openers who also clicked on your hyperlinks and CTAs. CTOR results in stronger data points as it takes both open rates and CTR into consideration and measures opens, actions, and conversions. The results are exhaustive and provide clearer insights into your CTA’s effectiveness, design, and quality of the copy.
Use this formula to calculate your email marketing CTOR:
Click-to-open rate = (number of recipients who clicked a link/number of recipients who opened the email) x 100
Unsubscribe Rate
Gaining email subscribers is not enough. For successful email marketing campaigns, you must take active measures to retain them. For that, benchmarking the unsubscribe rate will help you identify the reasons for disengagement and eliminate them to enhance effectiveness.
A high rate of email subscribers can indicate inaccurate email frequency, issues in content quality, the relevance of attached offers, or issues with lead segmentation.
You can use the following formula to calculate your email unsubscribe rate:
Unsubscribe rate = (number of recipients who unsubscribed/number of recipients) x 100
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate represents the percentage of email addresses where you could not deliver your campaign. Email providers and spam detectors track bounce rates for every marketing campaign and use that data to decide whether the account will accept your marketing emails.
Calculating bounce rates and benchmarking them helps you understand actions you should take to lower the numbers.
The formula used to calculate this metric is:
Email bounce rate = (number of bounced addresses/number of emails sent) x 100
Email Conversion Rate
This is the most important metric when determining the success of a campaign. This is because every measure you take amounts to if you could nudge prospects to take the desired action. The goal and type of conversion varies with every campaign, so, it is trickier to benchmark conversion rates against previous campaigns. You need to track relevant campaigns and compare the numbers accordingly.
Here is the email conversion rate formula you can use:
Email conversion rate = (number of recipients who took your desired action/number of emails sent) x 100
Key Benchmarks For 3 Different Industries
Like modern industries, old economy sectors are also opting for B2B sales CRM software. But before doing that, you must understand the relevant KPIs and standard benchmarks, whether you are a construction company or a manufacturing firm.
Manufacturing
According to reports, the manufacturing industry has the following email benchmarks in 2023:
- Open rate: 41.07%
- Click rate: 3.92%
- CTR: 9.55%
- Unsubscribe rate: 0.33%
- Bounce rate: 0.6%
To design effective emails for your manufacturing company, segment your email list accurately and personalize every email. As you are pitching to B2B companies, make sure the email content reflects a standard level of expertise.
For best results, consider choosing a customizable CRM platform to automate email marketing for your manufacturing business.
Construction
According to MailerLite, here are the 2023 email marketing benchmarks for the construction industry:
- Open rate: 33.85%
- Click rate:
- CTR: 14.54%
- Unsubscribe rate: 0.35%
- Bounce rate: 1.15%
To improve open rates and conversion, use branded email addresses and ensure your subject line is catchy. You can use a specialized CRM for construction to automate and streamline your email marketing efforts. To give you an idea of how to go about it, here is an example email for construction companies:
This email by Welkom is vibrant and on brand. It provides conclusive details and forges a bond with the subscribers.
Logistics and transport
This report states the logistics industry experiences an average open rate of about 19.32%, whereas the average unsubscribe rate stands at 0.13%.
Logistics and transportation company FedEx runs some stellar email marketing campaigns. The above example showcases persuasive content and highlights a strong CTA for relevant offers.
Best Practices For Email Marketing
Personalization and segmentation
No matter your industry, personalize your email marketing approach.
An email catering to the exact needs of a customer has more chances of conversion than a usual generic template. For that, you must accurately segment your email list into different categories. Separate your subscribers into different buyer personas.
Consider the following aspects while segmenting your email list:
- New subscribers
- Age and gender
- Location
- Preferences
- Interests
Properly segmented email lists will help you accurately target your leads and appeal to them more effectively.
Frequency and timing of emails
Sending too many marketing emails frequently can cause subscriber fatigue. To avoid that, strike a proper balance in your email marketing frequency that serves your purpose without overwhelming the recipient. There is no formula for the correct frequency of email marketing. It depends on your industry and target market. Examine the benchmark and evaluate your competitors to understand how many emails are too many. You can also conduct A/B tests to see what works best.
Optimizing subject lines and content
Your subject line pursues the recipient to open the email, and the content nudges them to act on it.
So, write catchy subject lines that deliver the central point of the email. Create content that addresses pain points and adds value.
Add visual elements
Don’t shy away from adding visual elements like emojis, photos, or bold CTA buttons to draw interest like Den.
Conclusion
Properly understanding relevant metrics and regular benchmarking can elevate your email marketing to a whole new level. Segment your email list properly, personalize the content, and ensure proper CTAs in the email.
Want to streamline the whole process? Pipeline is a customizable CRM that works wonders for email marketing. It’s easy to set up, offers the industry-best features, and helps you boost your ROI with integrations. Start your free 14-day trial today!
