{"id":2480,"date":"2016-11-17T18:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2025-01-21T10:26:54","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T09:26:54","slug":"outbound-sales-metrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/outbound-sales-metrics\/","title":{"rendered":"Outbound Sales Metrics Demystified – Which Should You Track & Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you know if your campaigns work or not? The answer is of course: metrics. What outbound sales<\/span> metrics should you track? What affects delivery rate and what can you do to boost it? What can you change in your email<\/span> content and settings to get more opens, more (positive) replies, and more customers? In this article, we investigate the most important sales<\/span> metrics for outbound campaigns.<\/p>\n

Let’s go!<\/p>\n

#4 Email deliverability rate<\/h2>\n

Starting with this one, because it’s a kind of a reference point for the other metrics. Say, you’ve collected a prospect base of 100 companies that you want to reach out to. You have 100 email<\/span> addresses. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that your email<\/span> will get to 100 people.<\/p>\n

This outbound sales<\/span> metric depends very much on the quality of your email<\/span> list. One of your main directives when collecting contacts for an outbound campaign should be data accuracy. If you have 100 addresses, ideally you want all of them to be confirmed.<\/p>\n

Various prospecting tools<\/a> allow email<\/span>\u00a0verification. Woodpecker<\/a> has a built-in mechanism for validating email<\/span> addresses, so if you\u00a0try to send something\u00a0to a non-existing email address, your email<\/span> will be stopped.<\/p>\n

Soft & hard bounces<\/h3>\n

But even if you’re 100% sure that all your prospects’ emails<\/span> are valid, there may be still some soft bounces. What is a soft bounce? In general, when a\u00a0message gets rejected by the recipient’s email server, we call it a bounce. A soft bounce is when an email<\/span> got rejected due to some temporary issue, for instance: the recipient’s mailbox got overloaded, or their server was temporarily down.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0comparison, a hard bounce takes place when the email<\/span> got rejected due to a major, permanent\u00a0issue, like a non-existing email address of the recipient, a non-existing domain, or a permanently blocked delivery.<\/p>\n

What is a bounce rate?<\/h3>\n

Bounce rate is the rate of rejected messages in reference to all the messages that you sent. If 10 emails<\/span> out of 100 have been bounced, the bounce rate is 10%.<\/p>\n

It’s important to avoid bounces, especially the hard ones, and keep the bounce rate as low as possible. That’s because a high\u00a0bounce rate negatively affects your reputation as an email<\/span> sender, and the reputation of your domain. If you don’t pay attention to that, you may get blacklisted, and as a result none of your emails<\/span> will be delivered to anyone.<\/p>\n

See more on how to improve your email deliverability >><\/a><\/h4>\n

But let’s get back to\u00a0deliverability rate\u00a0as a metric. The important thing is that you refer other metrics to the number of emails<\/span> that have been actually delivered to your prospects. If 10 out of 100 email<\/span> addresses from your list turned out to be invalid, or temporarily unavailable, your 100% reference point should not be 100 contacts, but 90.<\/p>\n

What to do, if you see a low deliverability rate?<\/h3>\n

If you observe that a significant number of your messages have not been delivered, you can conclude at least two things. First, your prospect base may be of low quality \u2013\u00a0<\/span>that is especially probable if you bought a ready-made list of email<\/span> addresses and weren’t really choosing the prospects yourself. Building the list and verification of\u00a0the addresses before sending emails<\/span> is the best way to avoid high bounce rates.<\/p>\n

Second, low deliverability may be a sign that your domain reputation may be endangered. The first action you can take is to check your email<\/span> server’s configuration and make sure your SPF and DKIM<\/a> are properly set up. It’s also a good idea to set up a separate mailbox<\/a> exclusively for sending outbound campaigns, to make sure you fully control the volume of outcoming messages and you don’t exceed your provider’s sending limits.<\/p>\n

#3 Email open rate<\/h2>\n

Open rate tells you how many of the emails<\/span> that were\u00a0delivered to your prospects have been actually opened. This outbound sales metric should be tracked, but you shouldn’t treat it as a success indicator. You could observe a 100% open rate at a campaign, but that wouldn’t\u00a0have to mean that the campaign was\u00a0successful.<\/p>\n

There are a few\u00a0factors that may affect the open rate. One of them is an email<\/span> copy. Especially the subject<\/a>, the “from” line<\/a>, and the introduction<\/a>. These are the pieces of information your prospect will see even before they actually open the email<\/span>. If there’s something alarming in one of those three elements, or even if they look generic and boring, some prospects may delete the message before opening it.<\/p>\n

The content\u00a0of your email<\/span> as a whole is important as well. If you stuff your message with graphics, and\/or\u00a0“spammy” words<\/a>, that is words and expressions often used in\u00a0spammy offers, the anti-spam filters may direct your email<\/span> straight to the SPAM folder. And let’s face it, the chances of\u00a0someone opening\u00a0your email<\/span> once it’s got to SPAM these days are very poor.<\/p>\n

The way you send your emails<\/span> will also affect the open rates. How? If you use a marketing automation tool that uses their own SMPT to send your emails<\/span> in bulk, (like Mailchimp, for instance), your messages will get to the “Promotions” tab\u00a0of your prospects inbox<\/span>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if you’re sending cold emails<\/span> manually, or use an\u00a0automation tool linked up to your own SMTP (like Woodpecker), your messages will get to the main inbox<\/span>. And the chances that your recipients will notice them and open them there are much greater than in the “Promotions” tab.
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