There is a saying by Peter Drucker that “what gets measured, gets improved” — or in other words, what is tracked grows.
This is true for any goal you aim to achieve. If you want to write a book, you can track the number of words you write each day. If you want to lose weight, you can track your weight each day, week, and month.
If you want a profitable business that is driven by email, there are specific things you can track to ensure the company is growing and profitable.
This article will discuss specific metrics to track to ensure the list is increasing and reaching the revenue goals.
Whenever I work with a list, I ask for or create these reports if they are not available. I’ve used them to manage every list I’ve been involved with. They have always served me and my clients well.
Tracking these metrics lets you know the health of your list and business. And measuring your progress will help you achieve your goals and improve performance for greater success.
Daily Reports
These reports give me the daily metrics I want to consistently track.
Revenue Goal and Break-Even Analysis
In my article on planning your email calendar, I discussed how to determine your revenue goal and break-even point. This is one of the reports I use to help ensure I reach my revenue goals.
Essentially, you determine your break-even point by calculating your fixed and variable expenses. Once you know your total projected expenses, then calculate how much you need to earn each day to break even.
Often, I add a 20% to 30% profit margin to this number and then calculate how much I need to earn each day to reach this goal.
Email List Size Report
This report tracks how many new subscribers are added to the list each day and how many people unsubscribe.
This is important for several reasons.
- It tracks the list growth each day, week, month, and ultimately for the year.
- It helps you compare list growth year-to-year.
- It tracks unsubscribes.
This report helps you determine if something is wrong with either building the list or with the number of people who unsubscribe.
For instance, let’s say you’re doing a promotion to another list, and you notice not many people subscribed that day. You’ll investigate why there were few new subscribers. Maybe the landing page was down, or there was some other problem. This report helps you determine and fix any issues. This can save time and money if other promotions are going to other lists in the near future.
Tracking unsubscribes is important because it helps you become aware of other problems. For instance, maybe on a particular day, you have 10x more unsubscribes than normal. Again, you can figure out why and fix the problem.
I also use this report to calculate the number of new subscribers compared to the unsubscribes for my monthly list growth. Also, it helps track how many more new subscribers I need to reach my weekly and monthly goals.
Marketing Report
The marketing report helps track your promotions to other lists.
Essentially, it helps determine whether a promotion was successful.
It lets you compare the results of each promotion.
It tracks the number of new subscribers and the revenue earned for each promotion sent to other lists.
Imagine you run a test campaign and promote your lead magnet to a portion of a list. For this example, the list is 100,000 subscribers and you run a test promotion to 20,000 names. It can help you determine whether to roll out the promotion to the entire list or not. With this report, you can analyze each promotion’s results and compare the results of the other promotions to the other lists.
In the future, I will write an article on the marketing report because it is essential to tracking the list’s growth, revenue, and the business’s health.
Daily Revenue
If you sell things either through an online business or through affiliate marketing, running a daily revenue report helps you stay on top of performance against your revenue goals.
Weekly Reports
Each week, I also review these reports containing crucial performance metrics for my lists.
Email Open Rates
This report has helped me optimize a lot of lists over the years. It has led to the development of list growth strategies and the creation of new products.
For this report, I track the date, time sent, day of week, subject line, and the type of email, such as a newsletter or a promotional email. I track the total emails sent, total emails delivered, total emails opened, the open percentage, the number of unique opens, the unique open percentage, the number clicked, the clicked percentage, the number of unique clicks, and the unique click percentage.
Next, I have a column for each link with the total number of clicks and the item promoted. This is helpful for newsletters that may promote multiple items. Normally, I track the top five links for each newsletter.
Finally, I track the unsubscribes, unsubscribe percentage, the number bounced, the bounce rate, the number of complaints, the complaint percentage, the total number of opt-outs, and the total opt-out percentage.
I track every email sent in this report.
Tracking these metrics helps you learn a lot about a list and then optimize it.
Marketing Calendar
Recently, I wrote an entire article on how to Increase the Size of Your List with an Email Calendar. Essentially, your email calendar helps you plan emails and promotions going to your list, media buys to other lists, and affiliates who promote you.
This isn’t as much a report as a review of your plans for the upcoming weeks. When taken together with the other reporting you’re doing, you can update your planned activities to meet any shortfalls you may have.
Monthly Revenue to Date
This report applies to freelancing, an e-newsletter business, or any other business.
This report gives you up-to-date insights on how revenue is performing for the month.
Essentially, you look at how much revenue you have earned up to that specific date. You can then compare it to your monthly revenue goals. By tracking your monthly revenue to date, you can make adjustments to reach your monthly goal.
If you need to earn additional revenue, maybe change the products you promote, send additional emails, or reach out to others to see if they have any open dates on their calendar to promote your lead magnet or product to their list.
Also, I use this report to compare annual income to date from previous years. In QuickBooks or any other accounting software, comparing revenue from previous years is easy. Comparing earlier years to current revenue can help you stay on track and surpass the revenue from previous years.
What I love about an e-newsletter business is that your list grows each week, month, and year. Plus, the products you create can become more stable, and people become more familiar with the products and your reputation. This can lead to more people purchasing when you promote.
Long-Term Reports
Long-term reports are mostly monthly and annual reports.
Profit and Loss Statement
The Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement is an essential report that lets you know how much revenue and profit the business earns.
There is a big difference between revenue and profit. Revenue is the business’s total sales that can be tracked daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. Profit is the revenue left after expenses have been deducted.
If you earn $50,000 each month but you have $48,000 in expenses, are you really earning a lot of money?
A Profit and Loss Statement shows a breakdown of your revenue compared to your expenses. It is a detailed report that shows the profitability of the business.
I look at this report each month to determine if the monthly and the annual year-to-date results are profitable.
You can generate this report using most bookkeeping software.
Annual Year in Review
At the end of the year, it is essential to review the business and analyze what happened throughout the year.
With the annual year in review, you look at each aspect of the business.
This is for you and your entire team to discuss the business and the results.
This means analyzing the list, each product, and the revenue generated. It’s looking at the business’s expenses and overall profit.
It is a time to discuss the performance of each employee or contractor.
It is a time to discuss the wins and the losses.
It’s looking at the progress and addressing what needs to be changed.
The Annual Review is a time to reflect on the business’s results for that year and then make decisions for the upcoming year.
Track Your Core Metrics for Success
Ultimately, you can ensure your list is healthy and growing with these reports and tracking numbers. The better you manage and run your business, the more successful you will be. Whether you are writing copy, freelancing, or building your business based on your email list, knowing your core metrics is essential for success. Tracking your results will help ensure your business is growing and profitable.
