THE EMAIL GROWTH SHOW EPISODE 161

Today, we’re diving deep into analytics – a topic that might seem overwhelming at first, but trust me, it’s your best friend when it comes to refining your email strategy. If you’re tired of sending emails into what feels like a digital black hole, wondering whether they’re working or not, this episode is for you.

Analytics help you answer questions like:

• Are people opening your emails?
• Which links are your audience clicking?
• Why are subscribers leaving?

These insights allow you to tweak your approach, ensuring every email you send works toward growing, nurturing, and converting your audience. Plus, I’ll show you how to compare your numbers with industry benchmarks so you know exactly where you stand and what improvements to make.

Click play to listen to the episode in full below:

Understanding the Story Behind Your Email Analytics

Analytics don’t just give you numbers – they provide a dialogue between you and your subscribers. Each metric tells a story, whether it’s a strong connection or a red flag for adjustments.

The goal here isn’t just bigger numbers but better relationships with your subscribers. If your emails resonate, analytics will reflect that – and when they don’t, it’ll guide you to solutions.

Key Metrics: What They Are, What’s Standard, and How to Improve Each One

1. Open Rate

What it Measures: The percentage of subscribers who opened your email.

Industry Benchmark: 15 – 25%, with 30%+ considered outstanding.

How to Improve:

• Test Subject Lines: Run A/B tests with different subject lines to see what catches attention. Try emotional triggers, curiosity hooks, or urgency-driven language.
• Optimize Send Times: Experiment with different days and times to find when your audience is most likely to open emails. Morning or lunchtime tends to work well for business audiences.
• Segment for Personalization: Use first names or custom tags in your subject lines. Tailored messages have higher open rates than generic ones.
• Resend to Non-Openers: Wait 48 hours, tweak the subject line, and resend the email to those who didn’t open it the first time. This simple strategy can increase your overall open rate by 5-10%.

2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

What it Measures: The percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your email.

Industry Benchmark: 2-5%, with 6%+ considered excellent.

How to Improve:

• Reduce Distractions: If your goal is a click, keep the email content short and focused. Avoid unnecessary images or multiple CTAs that dilute the message.
• Make Your Call-to-Action (CTA) Clear: Use actionable language like “Download Now” or “Claim Your Spot” rather than vague phrases like “Click Here.”
• Position Your CTA Strategically: Place it near the top of the email and repeat it at least once toward the bottom.
• Use Buttons, Not Just Links: Buttons are visually engaging and tend to generate more clicks. Ensure they stand out with contrasting colors.

3. Unsubscribe Rate

What it Measures: The percentage of people who opted out of your list after receiving your email.

Industry Benchmark: Below 0.5%. If it goes above 1%, it’s time to investigate.

How to Improve:

• Set Expectations Early: Make sure your welcome sequence outlines what subscribers can expect and how often they’ll hear from you.
• Maintain List Relevance: Regularly prune inactive subscribers. Sending to engaged people improves metrics and reduces unsubscribes.
• Deliver Value Consistently: Stick to what you promised when they signed up. If they subscribed for tips but get mostly sales pitches, unsubscribes will rise.
• Use a Preference Center: Let subscribers choose how often they hear from you, giving them control rather than opting out entirely.

3. Bounce Rate

What it Measures: The percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered.

Industry Benchmark: Below 2%. High bounce rates can affect your sender reputation.

How to Improve:

• Authenticate Your Domain: Set up DKIM and SPF records to ensure your emails don’t get flagged as spam. This helps deliverability and reduces bounces.
• Keep Your List Clean: Use double opt-in to ensure subscribers provide valid email addresses.
• Monitor Hard vs. Soft Bounces: Hard bounces mean the email address is invalid and should be removed. Soft bounces may indicate temporary delivery issues—track these and remove subscribers after multiple failed attempts.

Applying Data to Improve Strategy: Practical Steps

Knowing the metrics is half the battle – acting on them is where the magic happens.

Here’s how you can use these metrics strategically:

Adjust Content Based on Trends: Pay attention to what resonates—behind-the-scenes content, personal stories, or educational emails—and lean into those themes in future campaigns.

Segment Your List: If certain emails perform well with only part of your audience, create segments based on those patterns. Tailored content gets better engagement.

Test Email Frequency: Analytics will show if you’re over-communicating or under-communicating. Start with a consistent schedule, then adjust based on engagement levels.

Using Email Analytics for List Growth, Nurturing, and Increasing Sales

List Growth: Use analytics to track which lead magnets attract the most sign-ups. Collaborate on freebie swaps or participate in bundles, then monitor the quality of the new subscribers—are they engaging with your content?

Nurturing Subscribers: If you see a drop in engagement after the welcome sequence, experiment with more value-based emails. Try educational content, exclusive updates, or member-only perks to keep the relationship strong.

Sales Strategy: Analytics will highlight which emails lead to sales. If click-throughs are high but conversions are low, your email-to-offer alignment might need work—ensure your email message ties directly into the product’s value.

Remember, analytics aren’t just numbers – they’re insights waiting to be acted upon. When you align your email strategy with what the data tells you, you’ll see better engagement, stronger connections, and more sales.

And as always, keep learning, keep tweaking, and keep growing your email list with intention.

Until next time, happy emailing my loves!

And if you’re ready to really dive into these strategies and grow your email list faster, grab my free Your Next 1000 Subscribers – Ultimate Collaborations Guide. It’s packed with actionable steps to get started with collaborations right away – click here to grab it today!

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Full Transcript:

Kylie Kelly [00:00:00]:
The goal here isn’t just bigger numbers, but better relationships with your subscribers. If your emails resonate with your email list, your analytics are going to reflect that. And if they don’t, it’s going to show us that too. So knowing these analytics, knowing your data, knowing what to look for, knowing what to change is actually going to be the piece that guides you to finding better solutions. Are you a female business owner frustrated with battling the algorithm and looking for growth strategies that don’t involve awkwardly pointing or dancing online or throwing cash at paid ads? Welcome to The Email Growth Show. I’m your host, Kylie Kelly, visibility and email marketing strategist. I grew my email list from 0 to almost 10,000 subscribers in less than 2 years and the same is possible for you too. Are you ready to build your email list and start making more money in your online business? Let’s head into today’s episode.

Kylie Kelly [00:01:01]:
Hello and welcome back to the Email Growth Show. Today, we’re diving deep into analytics. A topic that might seem overwhelming at first, but trust me, it’s your best friend when it comes to refining your email strategy. If you’re someone tired of sending emails into what feels like a black hole, wondering whether they’re working or not, this episode is for you. Analytics help you answer questions like, are people actually opening my emails? Or, what links are my audience clicking? Or even, why are some of my subscribers leaving? These insights allow you to tweak your approach ensuring every single email you send works towards growing, nurturing and converting your audience. Plus, in this episode, I’ll share with you how to compare your numbers with with industry benchmark so you know exactly where you stand and what improvements to make. Let’s jump on in. Now, firstly, let me say, analytics don’t just give you numbers.

Kylie Kelly [00:02:05]:
They provide a dialogue between you and your subscribers. What do I mean? Each metric actually tells a story, whether it’s a strong connection or maybe a red flag for adjustments. The goal here isn’t just bigger numbers, but better relationships with your subscribers. If your emails resonate with your email list, your analytics are going to reflect that. And if they don’t, it’s going to show us that too. So knowing these analytics, knowing your data, knowing what to look for, knowing what to change is actually going to be the piece that guides you to finding better solutions. Okay. So let’s dive into what each key metric is, what the standard is, and how you can improve each one.

Kylie Kelly [00:02:51]:
The first one that I wanted to talk about is your open rate. So your open rate measures the percentage of subscribers who open your email. Now industry benchmarks across all niches, all businesses, is 15 to 25% with anything higher than 30% considered outstanding. Now, if you’re listening to this, that might be surprising because it seems quite low. Right? What I want you to remember is that these benchmarks are just that. They’re standards, so we can always aim to be better. Personally, I like my open rate to be as close to 50% as I can possibly get. And normally, it hangs around at the 45 to 55%.

Kylie Kelly [00:03:36]:
So how do you improve your open rate? You test your subject lines. There is a direct correlation with your subject line and your open rate. If you have a poor open rate, play with your subject lines. Run AB tests with different subject lines to see what catches attention. You can try emotional triggers. You can add more curiosity with hooks or even use urgency driven language. If you want help with this, there’s actually an episode on the podcast, episode 153, so a few episodes back, that talks all about how to increase your open rates through writing winning email subject lines. If you struggle with this, you’re going to wanna go and listen to that episode straight after this one.

Kylie Kelly [00:04:18]:
Next, you can optimize send times. You can experiment with different days and times to find what your audience is most likely to open. For audiences like mine, other business owners, generally, Monday through to Wednesday, morning to lunch time works really, really well. In saying that, don’t get stuck on this. I have sent emails at, like, 11 PM on a Saturday night and they’ve gotten good open rates too. So don’t get stuck on this. But you get to play with the different days and times that you send emails to see if that makes a difference for your people. The next one there is segment them for personalization.

Kylie Kelly [00:04:51]:
If you can segment your audience in line with what they’re interested in and what they’ve purchased before, You can then tailor your messages, and they will have higher open rates than more generic ones. So that’s something to think about as well. A bit more of an advanced strategy, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind. And then lastly, it’s something that I encourage you not to do often. But you can actually resend to non opens. So if it is an email that you want every single person to see, it is an important email. Right? I want you to wait 48 hours, tweak the subject line, and then resend the email to those that didn’t open it the first time. Now, this simple strategy can increase your overall open rate by like 5 or 10%, but I do wanna say do not do this for every single email.

Kylie Kelly [00:05:38]:
If you do, you have a greater chance of being marked as fair and your email is not being delivered at all in the future. Please only do this occasionally on emails that you want as many people as possible to see. But this is a strategy. This is a tactic that will increase those open rates and get more of your audience seeing that email. Just make sure you wait the 48 hours and you tweak the subject line as well. The next key metric I wanted to talk about is your click through rate. Now your click through rate measures the percentage of people that clicked the link in your email. Again, industry benchmark is about 2 to 5%, with 6% or higher being considered as excellent.

Kylie Kelly [00:06:20]:
So when you’re thinking about this one, the things to think about when you’re wanting to improve it is to make your calls to action super clear. Use actionable language like download now or claim your spot, rather than vague phrases like click here. This is gonna make your perfect people actually click on your call to action. Right? Actually take action. Then I want you to position your calls to action strategically as well. Place them near the top of the email and then repeat it again at least once towards the bottom. I would also really highly recommend using buttons in your emails and not just hyperlinked text. Buttons are visually engaging and tend to generate more clicks.

Kylie Kelly [00:07:01]:
Ensure that they stand out. Normally, I use, like, a black button with white text or something. Something that’s kind of really contrasting and it’s gonna stand out in the email as well. And the last point here with increasing your click through rate is to reduce distractions. If your goal is a click, keep the email content short and focused and to the point. Try to avoid unnecessary images or multiple calls to actions that dilute the message if it is a launch email. Right? If you are doing a weekly newsletter and you have multiple calls to actions, I believe that’s okay. I do that.

Kylie Kelly [00:07:36]:
I like options. That’s okay. But just make sure that you tick off the other points, that your calls to actions for those things are clear, that they are strategically placed in the email where it makes sense, that you have used, let’s say, a button on the most important, You’ve hyperlinked some text. You’ve done a bit of variety in that email with multiple calls to actions, but make sure that you’re keeping those things in mind when we’re thinking about how to improve that click through rate. Now the next one that I want to mention is one that probably triggers a lot of us and that is the unsubscribe rate. So the unsubscribe rate measures percentage of people who opt out of your list after receiving your email. Right? Now normally, the benchmark for this is between 0.5 percent to 1%. If you are in the middle of a traditional launch period and you’re sending a lot of emails, it might go a little bit higher.

Kylie Kelly [00:08:30]:
Right? Or if you have just been in a collaboration and perhaps they haven’t all been ideal clients that have come over to your list, we’re going to expect that that unsubscribe rate will be higher than usual. However, just keep in mind when you were sending out your weekly emails, we’re looking at an unsubscribe rate between 0.5 percent and 1%. Right? Something to keep in mind. Now how to improve it? So if you do notice it going above that 1% and then you’re not selling everything, and you haven’t been in a collaboration, it’s just business as usual, this is some things to keep in mind. So I want you to make sure you have a welcome sequence, that you’re setting the expectations on what these subscribers can expect when they join your list. Your welcome sequence will outline how often that they’ll hear from you. So they’re expecting that email to come in. I also want you to make sure that you’re regularly cleaning your list.

Kylie Kelly [00:09:21]:
Right? You’re removing inactive subscribers at least once in every 90 days, so that you can maintain that clean, engaged email list. And you’ll notice that that really improves, obviously, how many people are leaving because you’ve cleaned off the ones that would have left anyway. So this is gonna also really, really help your key metrics by keeping your email list as clean and as engaged as possible. Make sure you’re delivering value consistently. Again, stick to what you promised when you sent them that welcome sequence after they signed up. If they subscribe for tips, then they get mostly sales pitches. They’re gonna leave. Right? I mean, I would too.

Kylie Kelly [00:09:59]:
So make sure you’re delivering value consistently and you are delivering on that promise. And then the other thing to think about here as well, if you are going into a launch period, you might wanna consider allowing them to opt out of the launch emails but not leave your list entirely. This is generally done with a little sentence above your email or below your email that simply says something like, hey, first name. If you don’t wanna get any more of these launch emails, if now is not the right time for you, please just click here and I’ll make sure that you don’t get any more of those emails hitting your inbox. And they click that link, and it might add a tag or add them to a segment or whatever your email service provider does. But it means that once they’ve been identified, you can exclude them from the following launch emails that you’re sending. So that way, they’re not having to actually unsubscribe from your list. They’re just opting out of the launch, as an example.

Kylie Kelly [00:10:50]:
So definitely consider this as well if you’re worried about unsubscribers during a period like a traditional launch. Okay. And the last one is something that doesn’t get spoken about enough, but I wanted to mention the bounce rate. So your bounce rate measures the percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered. The bounce. Right? The reason this is important is that we want this to be below 2%. If you have a high bounce rate, it can affect your sender reputation, which without getting into the weeds of it, it can affect whether or not you actually get delivered to people’s inboxes or you end up in the spam folder. So your sender reputation is really important.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:28]:
I also want you to monitor whether you’re getting hard or soft bounces. So a hard bounce means that the email address is invalid. It doesn’t exist, and it should be removed. Soft bounces might be a little bit different. They could indicate just temporary delivery issues. It could be that their inbox is full. It could be that something else has just gone a little bit weird, but it might go through in the future. I want you to track these and make sure that you are removing hard bounces.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:54]:
The soft bounces, generally, your email service provider will reattempt, and that’ll be up to them as to how much. Then it will be marked as a hard bounce once it doesn’t go through. So just be looking depending on the email service provider that you use. Just be looking to see when people do get tagged as bouncing, as it being a hard bounce that you do remove them. And lastly, just make sure that you have your domain and all the settings set up. So a little while ago, there was a little bit of a change where when you when you create a new email address from scratch, you have to authenticate your domain, which simply means that you have to tell the Internet gods that you are legit. And you do that by adding a little bit of code onto your domain host. Now, if this sounds like another language, that’s okay.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:43]:
It does for most of us. But what you’ll need to do is just make sure you follow the steps that your email service provider has given you when you created that new email address, and you should be fine. There is an amazing tool called MX toolbox where you can actually go to that tool. It’s just a web address. Put in your email address, and it will check and make sure that everything is good on your end. I’ll include that in the show notes in case you are not sure, in case you’re like, oh my god, I don’t even know if I did that. I don’t know if my domain is authenticated. I don’t even know what this means.

Kylie Kelly [00:13:15]:
If that’s you, don’t stress. I will put the link to the MX toolbox in the show notes. So we know the metrics now. We know what these industry benchmarks are. We know how to improve them a little bit. I do wanna say that knowing these metrics is half the battle. Acting on them is where the magic really happens. So here’s how you can use these metrics strategically.

Kylie Kelly [00:13:37]:
Number 1, I want you to segment your list. So if there are certain emails that perform well with only part of your audience, create segments based on those patterns. Remember what I said earlier, tailored content, personalized content will get better engagement. You can segment them in terms of what they’ve purchased before, in terms of where they’ve come from, in terms of their interest, or even maybe it is how established they are in their business. Maybe it is what their interests are, what their hobbies are. If you think about what data, what information would help me to be able to send them better content, that’s what you need to segment them for. Now, I don’t want you to go crazy with this because it’s easy to then add a kajillion tags or a kajillion segments, and then our email service provider just looks fucking confusing. Right? So think about what information you actually need to do this well.

Kylie Kelly [00:14:29]:
As an example, for me, I have a lot of different products that I’ve created or that I’m creating for businesses that are at different parts of their journey. Right? I have a different product for somebody that’s just getting started in email marketing when compared to somebody that’s already established and just want to grow their list. So if I was to send an email out to my list and said, hey, I just wanna know where you’re at so I can send you better content. Can you please click one of these buttons to let me know where you’re sitting? So the first button might say like, holy shit, I don’t even have an email list. The second button might say, oh, I’ve got an email list but I need to grow it. The 3rd button might say, I’ve grown it, but how do I sell to them? Right? So by clicking on those buttons, I could then segment them so I knew what part of business they were and what product I have that might solve a problem that they’re experiencing. Do you see how you can use it to your advantage? So that kind of data, really important. If I send an email out that said, what’s your favorite color? Pink, purple, or orange? Pretty pointless information.

Kylie Kelly [00:15:29]:
Right? So make sure you’re thinking about the information that’s actually really going to help you and your business and help you send emails that feel like they’re tailored for your subscriber. The next one here is testing email frequency. So the data in the analytics is gonna show if you’re over communicating or, more likely, under communicating. So start with a consistent schedule. So I normally recommend at least once a week. Right? Start with once a week and then adjust based on your engagement levels. Play with the days of the week that you send. Play with the times of the day that you send.

Kylie Kelly [00:16:03]:
Right? Play with once a week. Maybe it’s twice a week. Maybe it’s biweekly. Look at your engagement. Look at your data. Look at your analytics and use that information to make a decision on what feels good for you. Now I’m not saying be scared to send an email and send it once a month and say it was data that you used to make that decision. That is not what we’re doing here.

Kylie Kelly [00:16:23]:
We’ve got our big girl panties on. We are CEOs and we are doing email marketing to grow our business and we are committed to making it work. So So don’t do that. Instead, I want you to look at the data, look at what your schedule is, look at when you normally send emails, and have a play, and see if you can get better results. And then lastly, I want you to think about adjusting content based on trends. So pay attention to what resonates with your people. Behind the scenes content, personal stories, educational emails, what do they resonate with, what do they love to receive, what are they engaging with, what are they clicking on, what are they replying to. Lean into those themes in future campaigns.

Kylie Kelly [00:17:04]:
Right? We wanna make sure that we’re taking notice of what’s doing really well so we can do more of it. Okay. So before we wrap this one up, I just wanted to talk a little bit about how this data, how these analytics can actually help you grow your list, nurture your list, and for your sales strategy. So what do I mean? So when it comes to list growth, I want you to use these analytics to track which lead magnets, which freebies attract the most sign ups. Make sure you’re paying attention. Right? Collaborate on freebie swaps or partner in bundles, and then monitor the quality of the new subscribers that are coming into your world. Are they engaging with your content? Are they engaging with your welcome sequence? Are they clicking on things? Do you get any replies? Are they the right people? Or do we need to tweak this list growth strategy? When it comes to nurturing subscribers, I want you to pay really close attention to what happens after the welcome sequence. Do you see a drop in engagement? If you do, experiment with more value based emails.

Kylie Kelly [00:18:09]:
Try educational content. Try exclusive updates or email only perks to keep this relationship strong. Again, pay attention. And the last one was the sales strategy. So data and analytics is gonna highlight which emails actually lead to sales. If your click through rates are high but conversions are low, then maybe your email to offer alignment needs some work. Ensure your email message ties directly into the value of your product or offer. So think about that.

Kylie Kelly [00:18:41]:
Think about what currently your open rate, your click through rate, your unsubscribe rate, and your bounce rate is. Go and have a look. Press pause if you’re not driving. Go and have a look at your email service provider right now and see where they are sitting. Right? And then I want you to think how you can apply data to improve your strategy. Can you segment your list? Can you play and test email frequency? Can you adjust content based on what’s resonating with your audience? Right? What lead magnets are getting the most sign ups? How are they engaging with your content after they sign up? How are they engaging after the welcome sequence? Are you sending content that they are loving, that they are resonating with? And are your emails leading to sales? Right? We need to be paying attention to this data, to this analytics, to see what story is it telling. How can we improve what we are doing with what we already have with the audience that we have on our email list? So please, as we wrap this up, remember, analytics aren’t just numbers. They’re actual insights waiting to be acted upon.

Kylie Kelly [00:19:48]:
When you can align your email strategy with what the data is telling you, you’re going to see better engagement, stronger connections, and so many more sales. I really hope you found that helpful. I wanna say a huge thank you for tuning in today. If you loved this episode, please leave me a review or share it with a friend that might need to know about this too. And as always, please keep learning, keep tweaking, and keep growing your damn email list with intention. Until next time, my loves. Happy emailing, and I will talk to you again soon. Bye for now.

Kylie Kelly [00:20:22]:
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Email Growth Show. I hope you found valuable insights into the next steps you can take to grow your email list and boost your business without relying on social media or paid ads. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show and share it with others. Your feedback helps me reach more female entrepreneurs just like you who are ready to say goodbye to social media and leverage email marketing to grow their business and make a bigger impact. Thank you so much for listening and I’ll see you in the next episode.