There are better newsletter metrics than open rate
Dan Oshinsky, Revue,While open rates matter, The New Yorker’s Dan Oshinsky outlines six other newsletter metrics that matter:
- Monthly list growth: Measure your acquisition efforts by keeping track of how much your lists are growing each month.
- Click-to-open rate: “If your product is designed to drive people to your site, this will help you measure whether or not your readers are finding content that they want to engage more deeply with.”
- Percentage of readers who open 50% of newsletters per month : The actual percentage is up to you, but determine a bar for what you think a habitual reader does monthly.
- Engaged minutes per newsletter : You can do this via Chartbeat or Parse.ly, and it helps you understand how your newsletter is driving loyalty to your site.
- Mobile open rates: Oshinsky reminds us that most newsletter reads are on mobile. If your newsletter is being read on desktop more, you might need to redesign.
- Clicks/1000: The ratio of clicks you get for every 1,000 newsletters sent.
You can read more on why Oshinsky pays attention to these six metrics at Revue.