Running an Email Marketing campaign for ROI? Follow the 3 Major Goals & its KPIs.

To start with, let us understand the basic definition and meaning of the above used Jargons and what should be defined first in order to start with an Email Marketing Campaign.

What is a Goal?

The dictionary meaning of goal is – “The objective of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.”

But according to a marketer: “A Goal is the aim or the desired result/outcome of a marketing campaign.”

What is a KPI?

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a business metric, used to evaluate factors that are crucial to the success of an organisation. Also KPIs are something that are measurable. Usually businesses can have KPIs based on net profits or customer feedbacks to check customer loyalty, etc.

What is ROI?

Return on Investment (ROI), is pretty much self-defined. It means the percentage of profit gained upon the marketing campaign costs. In terms of Email Marketing, the ROI should always be positive.

What should be the Goals & KPIs for an ROI based Email Campaign?

1. Defining Subscribers with High Purchasing Power.

It is essential to define your high spending group, as this allows you to allocate lead score or segments & a different KPI metric to measure their performance. One can even understand their behaviour over emails, if you are able to segment these type of users.

What should be the ideal KPIs to measure for the above Goal?

1. Subscribers purchasing products worth higher than Rs. X amount
2. Value of items in Wishlists / Add to carts generated
3. Conversion Rate during day and night
4. Bounce rate during day and night

2. Defining subscribers with Low Purchasing Power.

Ideally, in a customer database in India, only 20-25 % of the users have a high purchasing power, rest rely on heavy discounts and sales promotions to buy products. The figure mentioned above can be slightly different compared to the global number and the way the site is made (e.g. Some Ecommerce sites only attract high income/ high purchase power customers). So, that leaves on how you target the not-so-loyal, discount hungry customer.

What should be the ideal KPIs to measure for the above Goal?

1. Subscribers purchasing products below worth of Rs. X amount
2. Rate of coupon / discount voucher used (Number of unique Coupons/discount vouchers upon unique customer X 100 = Unique Rate of discount voucher used)
3. Time spent on product page
4. Bounce Rate from the Products Page
5. Conversion Rate

3. Setting up a Target for number of sales through Email Marketing

This goal in itself can be used as a KPI but to measure the performance you can setup the below KPIs:
1. Defining Highest & Lowest Sale Days
2. Same Day Conversion
3. Conversion within 7 Days of opening and clicking email

Creating a Goal is a visionary task, the tactic of successful goal creation and then measuring it can improve the performance of your email marketing campaigns, drastically.