Now that you’ve put in the effort to start to build your email list, you want to know how all this hard work is paying off. You particularly want to know how successful you are at creating and nurturing your relationships with potential clients and customers.

One way to track progress when you build your email list from scratch is in the numbers. But there are other ways to see how your content is being received. We’ll look at those in this module.

Step 1: Take Stock

Time to check how you’re doing with the task of list-building.

The first step is to check the numbers against your goals from Module 1. Are you meeting your goal(s) with your email list? If not, what has gotten in the way?

Second, you need to reflect on how you’re feeling. Are you feeling excited about the list growth? Are you wondering what to do next?

Think about the answers to the following questions.  

During this process:

• What have I learned about email marketing?
• What has surprised me?
• What has disappointed me?
• What else have I learned about my subscribers?
• How do I feel about the list building process?

Step 2: Know Your Metrics and Get to Know Your Customers

To start, you’ll need to analyze where your traffic is coming from. You can do this through key metrics that should be provided by your email marketing platform.

Important metrics to know:

• Open rate. Your open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open your email. If this number is low, it could indicate that people are deleting your email upon receipt. An easy way to fix this is to make sure your subject line reflects the content that you’re sending. A more involved fix is to make sure you’ve been extra clear about what subscribers should expect from you and also to make sure that your content is of incredible value.
• Click-through. This refers to when subscribers click a link in your email. This could be a link to a blog post, a video, or a product you’ve decided to spotlight. Click-through rate is a crucial metric because getting subscribers to click is your main goal. If people aren’t clicking through, it’s likely that you need to rewrite your copy so that it’s targeted and specific.
• Unsubscribe performance. This is how many people are unsubscribing from your list. If this number is high, it’s imperative that you figure out when people are unsubscribing. If they’re leaving after a specific email from your autoresponder, then you need to rewrite it. If they’re leaving after they download your free offer, either your free offer isn’t what they expected or you aren’t following up with continued value.
• Historical trends. Use these trends to see how your emails are performing over time. You can compare how an email sent at the same time a year ago performed.
• Mobile vs. Desktop. This tells you whether subscribers are viewing your content on their mobile device or desktop computer. If you notice that a high percentage of users are viewing via mobile, it’s a good idea to double check that your emails are optimized for mobile.

If you’re not getting enough information from your metrics, you can design a survey to find out more from the people on your list. You can use Survey Monkey or Google Forms to create surveys for free.

Conclusion

In order to have a thriving email list, you must pay attention to the metrics that show you how your list is performing.

Don’t take the feedback you receive personally, but do take it into account. Reply to any questions you get asked to further the relationship with your subscribers.

Your email list is a work in progress, so it’s okay if you learn and make adjustments as you go. In the next module, we’ll cover planning future content.