Email Campaign Report (How To Uncover Actionable Insights)

If you aren’t leveraging your email marketing reports, you may be missing out on a valuable resource.

Marketing is like science, so data becomes fundamental for growth.

If you understand email reports well and know what metrics you should look for, they can become your best ally in improving your marketing campaigns.

Join me as I share an introduction to email marketing reports, how to analyze them, and even how to write your email campaign reports.

What Is Email Marketing Campaign Summary?

This is a shorter version of an email marketing campaign report.

The email marketing campaign report would include many items like a description, objectives, return on investment, and more. The campaign summary can provide a snapshot of the campaign in just a few metrics.

Most email marketing software does this for you automatically. The idea is that you can see the name of the campaign, the date it was sent, and the most relevant metrics (like the open rate and the click-through rate).

For a campaign summary to be effective, you need to share it by taking a screenshot and copying/pasting it on your messaging app or email. That's it.

Email Campaign Report (What Is It?)

An email marketing campaign report shows specific KPIs to decision-makers in one place, so they can understand how the campaign performed compared to their standard, goal, or previous campaigns.

While the KPIs and format may vary slightly because each company or project will have a different focus or goal, there are a few metrics we should never underestimate (I will cover those in the next section).

The email campaign report is an extended version of the campaign summary. However, I would not recommend making it longer than one page (especially if this will be a PDF or print document).

You don't need to create a book-like report for each campaign; you likely won’t have the time and resources to execute this and it would be too lengthy for anyone to quickly review.

Sit down and determine the sweet spot where these two realities can intersect for your project:

• Include all of the relevant information you need to measure and compare.

• Simplify as much as possible.

If you do those things simultaneously, you will create a balanced report that is relevant and effective for everyone involved.

I recommend playing with other elements that could add value to your report and not just the KPIs alone (unless that makes sense for you). For example:

• Graphics or other supporting visuals

• Links or snapshots of previous campaigns

• A section for comments or interpretation

Also, consider the fact that creating a document or PDF is not the only way to create and share a report today.

You can create your email campaign report within your project management or team collaboration tool to use enhanced features like comments, tags, rich content, and more.

A few things need to happen before you can create your first report. You need to:

1. Send your campaign

2. Wait enough time for it to be “completed” or give relevant data

3. Analyze the data

4. Write the report

How Do You Analyze an Email Campaign?

Now that you know what an email campaign summary and report are, it’s time to learn how to analyze their data.

At this point, you have sent your emails, and the campaign results have already been settled.

To analyze the campaign, you must understand the essential KPIs for email marketing campaigns to focus on what moves the needle when improving or creating new campaigns.

There are several metrics that you could be tracking. However, avoid the temptation of tracking everything and paying attention to unessential information. These are the five metrics that should be integral to any campaign:

Open Rate

Open rate is the proportion of email recipients who opened your message. Here is an example:

Open rate = (Total opens / Total delivered) x 100

Suppose you send 500 emails; out of those 500, 100 emails are opened. Your open rate would be 20% [(100/500) x 100].

A good open rate tells you that the subject line and preheader text were attractive to your subscribers, so they felt motivated to open the email and engage with its content. Conversely, a low open rate could imply that the subject line lacked appeal or that the email failed to reach the intended audience's inbox.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate is the proportion of recipients who followed a link in your email. Here’s an example:

CTR = (Total clicks / Total opens) x 100

For example, let's say your email received 300 opens, and 75 recipients out of those 300 clicked on a link. In this case, your click-through rate (CTR) would be 25% [(75/300) x 100].

The design, placement, and wording of the email's CTA and the relevance of the content to the recipient play crucial roles in influencing an email's click-through rate (CTR). The higher the CTR, the higher indication of the trust and confidence your audience has in your brand or message.

When readers trust you, they engage with your content by reading it and take the desired actions when prompted by your calls to action. Be clear and concise when you want your audience to take action.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate refers to the percentage of recipients who have completed a specific action, such as purchasing or filling out a form. Here’s an example of how to calculate the conversion rate:

Conversion rate = (Total conversions / Total clicks) x 100

Suppose your email generated 80 clicks on a specific link, and 15 recipients completed a purchase. In this scenario, your conversion rate would be 18.75% [(15/80) x 100].

The conversion rate allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your email in driving desired actions, such as product purchases or new users signing up for a free trial.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate represents the percentage of emails that were undeliverable and returned. A significant bounce rate suggests that the email list may require cleaning or updating to improve deliverability and ensure successful communication with recipients. Here’s how to calculate the bounce rate:

Bounce rate = (Total bounces / Total sent) x 100

Divide the bounced emails by the total emails sent. Then, multiply the result by 100. For instance, if you send out 500 emails and receive 25 bounces, your bounce rate would be 5% [(25/500) x 100].

Bounces are classified into two types: hard bounces and soft bounces.

Hard bounces are encountered when an email cannot be delivered due to reasons like invalid or non-existent email addresses. It is crucial to promptly remove hard bounces from your email list to ensure that future emails are not sent to these addresses, maintaining the efficiency and deliverability of your campaigns.

Soft bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered temporarily due to an overflowing inbox or a server error. Unlike hard bounces, soft bounces have a chance of successful delivery in future email sends. Therefore, it is advisable to retry sending to soft bounces as they may become deliverable once the temporary issue is resolved.

Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your email list. Here’s how to calculate it:

Unsubscribe rate = (Total unsubscribes / Total delivered) x 100

If you send 500 emails and receive 5 unsubscribe requests, your unsubscribe rate would be 1% [(5/500) x 100].

Moving towards a healthy unsubscribe rate is always the best. You can do so by following these strategies:

• Segmenting your email list and targeting specific audience groups with your messaging

• Offering exclusive content, promotions, or information to your subscribers to add value to their experience

• Making sure your email content is relevant and engaging to your target audience

• Managing your email frequency and avoiding sending too many emails

• Allowing subscribers to unsubscribe by providing an unsubscribe link and making it simple for them to opt-out (This will also help you understand the aspects where you didn’t meet their expectations.)

Once you review this information, take the time to process it (even discuss it with some of your team members), and add other relevant elements to your raw data, it’s time to write or create the report.

How Do You Write an Email Campaign Report?

Imagine if beehiiv gave you a 10-page report for each email campaign you send. Would you read it?

One of your top priorities in creating your report must be to keep it succinct.

At the same time, it’s not advised that you create a new report from scratch each time.

This is not a blog post. You need to be efficient; your sole objective is to transmit the data and have your team take action and improve.

Follow the following steps to ensure success:

Create a System

The purpose of your system is to implement a workflow that streamlines your email campaign report creation process.

Minimize the need for your input as much as possible. Set specific times, reminders, and a step-by-step process to remove the dependency on your memory and the need to ask “What is next?” every time.

This system would need to include (at least) the following:

• Reminders for when a campaign is sent

• A set amount of time that needs to pass to consider the campaign completed

• Software to gather the information automatically

• A specific date to review the information gathered and add other elements

Create a Template

Your system wouldn’t be complete without optimizing the content part of your report.

I cannot get very specific here because every system and its tools will differ.

The general idea is to take what I mentioned in the previous sections and create a template document that makes it easy for you to generate this report each week.

The idea is to create a plug-and-play system that keeps updating your campaign reports simple.

By now, you should know how to read a campaign report. Use that skill to improve your campaigns and witness how data transforms your marketing.

Feel free to check out more email marketing guides by beehiiv here.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

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Why Trust Us?

Mateo Melgar is a family-first freelancer and digital entrepreneur from Mexico. He started monetizing the internet in 2016 (before “remote work” was cool) and never looked back. Mateo has reached hundreds of thousands of readers through his content marketing and newsletter initiatives with companies like Testimonial, NotionForms, Freelancer Fire, and beehiiv.