Email forwarding can grow your audience for free. It’s a way for your subscribers to share your content with others, making it a powerful tool for organic growth. But are you tracking it? Many marketers focus on open and click rates, ignoring forwarding metrics that reveal how well your content spreads.
Here’s what to measure and why it matters:
- Email Forward Rate: Shows how many recipients share your email. A strong rate is 0.5%–2%. Below 0.1%? Your content might not resonate.
- Forwarding Clicks: Tracks clicks from forwarded emails. High rates (2%–5%) show your content engages new audiences.
- Open Rate of Forwarded Emails: Measures how often shared emails are opened. This reflects how appealing your content is to new readers.
- List Growth and Conversion Impact: Links forwarding activity to new subscribers and revenue. Hard to track but critical for understanding ROI.
Why this matters: Forwarding boosts reach, lowers acquisition costs, and improves deliverability. Use calls-to-action like “Share with a friend” and add incentives to encourage sharing. Start tracking these metrics today to make your emails work harder for you.
What Are the Key KPIs to Monitor in Email Marketing Analytics? – TheEmailToolbox.com
1. Email Forward Rate
Email forward rate shows the percentage of recipients who share your marketing emails with others, offering a glimpse into how engaging your content truly is. This metric doesn’t just measure interest – it highlights the potential for your message to spread organically.
Why Tracking Email Forwarding Matters
When someone forwards your email, it’s more than just a click – it’s an endorsement. Recipients are saying, "This is worth sharing." That kind of action signals which content resonates deeply and inspires people to advocate for your brand. It’s a step beyond basic open or click-through rates. While curiosity might drive someone to open an email, forwarding reflects genuine belief in the content’s value.
To put things into perspective, industry benchmarks show that forward rates vary by sector:
- E-commerce: 0.1%–0.3%
- Technology: 0.2%–0.5%
- Finance: 0.1%–0.2%
These figures give you a baseline to compare your performance and identify areas for improvement.
Email Forward Rate as a Measure of Virality and Engagement
Unlike public social media shares, email forwards feel personal – like a one-on-one recommendation. That makes them powerful. If your emails are being forwarded frequently, it’s a strong sign that your content is connecting on a deeper level.
By analyzing which emails get shared the most, you can uncover audience preferences. For example, practical guides or industry insights might outperform promotional messages. These patterns provide actionable insights for refining your email strategy and crafting future campaigns.
Broader Impact on Marketing Performance
Forwarded emails don’t just spread your message – they reduce your marketing costs. Each forward has the potential to introduce new subscribers without requiring additional ad spend.
There’s also a technical benefit: strong forward rates can enhance your email deliverability. Email service providers see forwarding as a positive signal, which can improve your sender reputation and increase the likelihood of landing in inboxes rather than spam folders. Conversely, a forward rate below 0.1% might indicate poor content resonance, which could harm your reputation over time.
To encourage sharing, focus on creating content that provides real value. Add a "Forward to a Friend" button in your email templates and use inviting language like, "Know someone who’d find this helpful? Share this email!" Incentives like exclusive content or referral rewards can also motivate subscribers to pass your message along.
2. Forwarding Clicks
Forwarding clicks build on the insights gained from forward rate data by focusing on how effectively shared emails drive recipient actions. These clicks are recorded when someone who received a forwarded email clicks on a link within it. Essentially, this metric highlights whether forwarded emails are engaging enough to inspire action, showing that the content resonates with both the original and secondary audience.
Why Forwarding Clicks Matter
Forwarding clicks go beyond just tracking how many people share your email – they reveal how engaged the new recipients are. While forward rates tell you how many subscribers thought your email was worth sharing, forwarding clicks show whether the forwarded content leads to meaningful interaction. This metric provides a fuller picture of the forwarding journey, helping you understand not just who is sharing but also how the new audience responds.
When forwarding clicks are high, it’s a clear sign that your content appeals to a broader audience, maintaining its relevance and value beyond your initial subscriber base.
Gauging Content Virality and Engagement
Forwarding clicks are a valuable indicator of how viral and engaging your content is. If forwarded emails generate clicks, it means your content resonates beyond your immediate audience. Typically, forwarding click rates between 2–5% or higher suggest strong content virality. Emails that perform well in this area often include elements like exclusive offers, helpful advice, or interactive features such as quizzes or coupons – making them irresistible to share and engage with.
By analyzing forwarding clicks, you can connect the dots between sharing activity and measurable marketing outcomes.
Influence on Broader Marketing Goals
Forwarding clicks can significantly enhance your marketing performance by expanding your audience through organic sharing, reducing your reliance on paid advertising. Additionally, these clicks provide valuable data for audience segmentation. The individuals who click on forwarded emails often differ from your original subscribers, offering insights into untapped market segments.
To boost forwarding clicks, focus on creating content that immediately delivers value and is easy for new readers to understand. Including forward buttons in your email templates can also encourage sharing. Monitor which types of content drive the most forwarding activity, and use this data to refine future campaigns and tailor content to specific audience segments.
3. Open Rate of Forwarded Emails
The open rate of forwarded emails measures the percentage of shared emails that are opened by new recipients. This metric goes beyond simply knowing that your email was forwarded – it tells you whether the forwarded content is compelling enough to grab the attention of a fresh audience.
When someone forwards an email, it acts as a personal endorsement. The open rate of these emails offers insight into how well your content performs when presented to a new group of readers. It also reflects how effective your original subscribers are in advocating for your brand. Essentially, this metric connects audience advocacy with content performance.
Why Tracking Forwarded Email Opens Matters
Forwarded email opens provide a window into your content’s potential to spread through personal recommendations. While your subscribers might share your emails, the real test lies in whether the recipients of these forwarded messages choose to open them. This metric helps you understand if your content is engaging enough to not only encourage sharing but also capture the interest of new readers.
Analyzing these open rates also reveals what resonates most with your audience. By identifying which forwarded emails are opened most often, you can uncover patterns about the type of content your audience values and is willing to share. This data becomes an essential tool for fine-tuning your targeting and crafting content that appeals to both your core audience and their extended networks.
Measuring Virality and Engagement
A high open rate for forwarded emails is a strong indicator that your content has the potential to go viral. When people outside your subscriber list open forwarded emails, it shows that your content holds its appeal across different audience groups.
This metric also highlights the types of content that spread most effectively. Emails with high forwarded open rates often feature elements that immediately grab attention – whether it’s a compelling subject line, practical and actionable information, or content that resonates with a wide audience. Tracking these trends allows you to replicate successful strategies in future campaigns.
Influence on Overall Marketing Performance
The open rate of forwarded emails can significantly impact your broader marketing efforts by expanding your reach organically. These opens represent growth through trusted recommendations, often resulting in higher engagement compared to more traditional acquisition methods.
When combined with click-through and conversion data, forwarded email opens provide a more complete picture of your campaign’s performance. They show how well your content connects with your current audience and how it resonates with potential new subscribers who are introduced to your brand through word-of-mouth recommendations.
"It’s important to consistently deliver content that matters to your audience. This often means your email campaign content needs to be valuable to the individual. So, consider personalizing their email marketing experience." – Seth Giammanco, Minds On Design Lab
To boost the open rate of forwarded emails, focus on creating content that delivers immediate value and appeals to first-time readers. Use subject lines that are clear and actionable, and ensure the email offers something meaningful even to those unfamiliar with your brand. Pay attention to the types of content that generate the highest forwarded open rates and let these insights guide your future campaigns. By doing so, you can strengthen the journey from sharing to conversion.
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4. List Growth and Conversion Impact
Email forwarding isn’t just about sharing – it’s a powerful way to grow your subscriber base and boost conversions while keeping acquisition costs in check. It also helps refine audience segmentation by complementing insights from open and click rates. Forwarding plays a key role in organic list growth, with a healthy forward rate typically landing between 0.5% and 2%. If your rate is below 0.1%, it might be a sign that your content isn’t hitting the mark.
Measuring Content Virality and Engagement
Beyond growing your audience, forwarding is a clear signal of content virality. When subscribers forward your emails, it shows your content resonates enough to be shared, extending your reach well beyond the original recipients. For example, forwarding rates often differ by industry: technology companies usually range from 0.2% to 0.5%, e-commerce businesses fall between 0.1% and 0.3%, and finance companies average around 0.1% to 0.2%. By analyzing forwarding rates across different segments – like demographics, email types, or content categories – you can uncover which topics and formats are most shareable. This kind of engagement doesn’t just increase reach; it also improves campaign performance overall.
Broader Impact on Marketing Metrics
The ripple effects of email forwarding are hard to ignore. With email marketing delivering an impressive ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, forwarding amplifies that success. High forward rates often go hand-in-hand with better click-through rates and conversions, as valuable content and strong calls-to-action naturally encourage sharing. Plus, forwarded emails carry the added benefit of word-of-mouth credibility. When someone shares your message with a trusted contact, it’s more likely to drive engagement and conversions.
To make the most of email forwarding’s potential, include clear calls to action like “Share this with a friend who might love it!” You can also sweeten the deal with incentives such as exclusive content, early access, or referral rewards to encourage more sharing.
5. Growth-onomics‘ Data-Driven Email Campaign Analysis
Growth-onomics takes email marketing to the next level by transforming forwarding data into actionable insights. Their approach sharpens email strategies and drives better ROI, building on earlier discussions about the importance of forwarding metrics. By diving deeper into the numbers, they uncover trends that help clients refine their campaigns.
Tracking Forwarding Behavior with Precision
Growth-onomics removes the guesswork from email forwarding analysis. Using advanced tools, they pinpoint exactly how and why subscribers share emails with others. Their method involves creating targeted measurement plans with clear goals and precise timing, allowing them to track forwarding behavior across different audience segments.
But they don’t stop there. Growth-onomics also identifies which links and images within forwarded emails generate the most clicks, giving clients a clear picture of what makes their content shareable. On top of that, automated follow-up sequences can nurture both the original subscriber and the new recipients, amplifying the campaign’s reach and impact.
Measuring Engagement and Virality
Tracking email forwards isn’t just about numbers – it’s about understanding engagement. Growth-onomics benchmarks forwarded email performance against standard campaigns, fine-tuning personalization and segmentation to boost results. For example, subject lines often play a major role in whether an email gets forwarded.
They go a step further by analyzing engagement rates throughout the forwarding chain. While the average email open rate across industries is 21.33% and click rates hover around 2.62%, forwarded emails often perform differently. Retailers working with Growth-onomics and using behavioral segmentation have reported an 85% increase in sales growth and over 25% higher profit margins. These insights feed directly into strategies that improve overall campaign performance.
Driving Broader Marketing Success
Growth-onomics doesn’t just focus on individual metrics – they connect the dots to larger marketing goals. Their data shows that behavioral segmentation in automated email workflows can lead to a staggering 760% revenue increase compared to generic campaigns. By understanding how forwarding behavior fits into the bigger customer journey, they help clients achieve long-term success.
The agency also balances short-term metrics like open and click rates with long-term goals such as conversions and revenue growth. With email users projected to hit 4.5 billion by 2025, this comprehensive strategy is becoming more critical than ever. Growth-onomics ensures their clients are ready to seize these opportunities by optimizing forwarding strategies.
"With privacy regulations tightening, first-party data strategies will be critical for building trust while maintaining targeting precision." – Mark Damsgaard, VP of Marketing at Vancis Capital and founder of Global Residence Index
This philosophy is central to Growth-onomics’ approach. They help clients use forwarding behavior as a trust signal, building first-party data strategies that improve targeting and campaign effectiveness.
Additionally, their focus on ROI is a game-changer. With email marketing delivering an average return of $42 for every $1 spent, Growth-onomics ensures clients maximize this potential. By optimizing forwarding strategies, they help extend reach, improve conversions, and boost customer lifetime value – all while keeping acquisition costs in check.
Metric Comparison Table
To make the most of email forwarding metrics, it’s important to understand their tracking requirements and how they align with your overall strategy. Each metric serves a unique purpose and varies in terms of how easy – or challenging – it is to track. The table below provides a breakdown of four key metrics, highlighting their tracking difficulty, connection to campaign goals, and the KPIs they influence most directly.
| Metric | Tracking Difficulty | Campaign Goal Alignment | KPI Connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email Forward Rate | Medium | Brand Advocacy, Content Engagement | Share-worthiness, Brand Advocates, Content Relevance |
| Forwarding Clicks | Easy | Direct Response, Engagement | Click-Through Rate, User Engagement |
| Open Rate of Forwarded Emails | Easy | Reach Extension, Audience Growth | Email Deliverability, Content Appeal |
| List Growth and Conversion Impact | Hard | Lead Generation, Revenue Growth | Subscriber Acquisition Cost, ROI, Customer Lifetime Value |
Breaking Down the Metrics
Email Forward Rate falls into the medium range for tracking complexity. Most email service providers (ESPs) don’t automatically track this, requiring you to add forward buttons and monitor their usage manually. While this adds effort, the insights gained – like understanding how shareable your content is – can be highly valuable.
Forwarding Clicks and Open Rate of Forwarded Emails are much simpler to track. These metrics are typically included in your ESP’s standard dashboard, alongside familiar stats like opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. No extra setup is needed, making them accessible starting points for your analysis.
List Growth and Conversion Impact, on the other hand, is the most complex metric to measure. Tracking this requires you to connect data from your email platform, CRM, and analytics tools. Essentially, it involves figuring out how forwarded emails contribute to new subscribers and paying customers. This process often demands advanced attribution modeling and a deeper integration of your tools.
"A lot of your email deliverability depends on how people are engaging with your email. Are they not opening, are they bouncing, are they marking it as spam? Or are they opening, clicking, reading, engaging with your content?" – Desirae Odjick, Product Marketer, Shopify Email and Shopify Forms
Why Tracking Difficulty Matters
Metrics that are harder to track often provide the deepest business insights. For example, while List Growth and Conversion Impact is difficult to measure, it directly ties forwarded emails to revenue and subscriber growth. These insights can be invaluable, but they require sophisticated systems to capture accurately.
When deciding where to start, focus on the simpler metrics your ESP already tracks, then gradually move toward the more complex ones. Building a solid foundation with easy-to-track metrics makes it easier to invest in advanced tracking later.
Aligning Metrics with Campaign Goals
The "Campaign Goal Alignment" column in the table reveals how each metric can serve different objectives. For instance:
- Email Forward Rate is ideal for measuring brand advocacy and content engagement, making it a great fit for awareness campaigns.
- List Growth and Conversion Impact, on the other hand, is essential for lead generation and revenue-focused campaigns.
Tracking these metrics together provides a more complete picture. For example, a high forward rate with little list growth might suggest your content is shareable but your conversion funnel needs improvement. Conversely, strong list growth paired with low forward rates could indicate missed opportunities to expand your reach through organic sharing.
Conclusion
Email forwarding metrics provide a deeper understanding of how your audience interacts with your content. Unlike standard open rates or click-through rates, these metrics show whether your emails are compelling enough for subscribers to share with their own networks.
As detailed earlier, these metrics work together to give you a fuller picture of email performance, linking engagement directly to business outcomes.
"Great emails are a conversation. The only way to assess audience perception is by studying the reactions to your email. Clicks, shares, and replies are the ‘facial expressions’ and ‘words’ that a person uses to communicate. And that will tell you how well your conversation is going." – Seth Giammanco, Minds On Design Lab
Metrics like forward rates and conversion impact are essential for turning emails into growth opportunities. By segmenting your audience based on forwarding behavior, you can design tailored strategies for those who actively share your emails. These subscribers act as brand advocates, and recognizing their value can lead to more effective content strategies. Additionally, analyzing which emails get forwarded the most helps refine your overall approach, ensuring future campaigns deliver content people want to share.
Growth-onomics takes these insights to the next level by combining advanced tracking systems with performance marketing expertise. Their analytics services help connect email forwarding metrics to revenue, ensuring you’re not just measuring engagement but also understanding its impact on your bottom line.
Email forwarding represents one of the most organic forms of growth. When someone shares your email, they’re vouching for your brand to their trusted circle – a recommendation far more powerful than any paid ad. By tracking and optimizing forwarding metrics, you’re creating a cost-free, sustainable way to expand your audience and amplify your reach.
Investing in robust tracking tools now will set you up for smarter decisions down the road. While tracking some forwarding metrics may require extra effort, the insights they provide can help you identify your most impactful content and turn every email into a growth engine.
FAQs
How can I track email forwarding rates if my email service provider doesn’t offer this feature?
If your email service provider doesn’t offer tracking for forwarding rates, don’t worry – you’ve got other ways to keep tabs on this activity. One option is to use third-party email tracking tools. These tools can give you detailed metrics, including when your email is shared or forwarded by recipients.
Another method is to include unique tracking links or pixels in your email content. These can help you see when someone interacts with a forwarded email, though setting them up might require a bit of technical know-how. Both approaches can give you useful insights into how your emails are being shared, helping you fine-tune your campaigns.
How can I improve the open rate of forwarded emails?
To improve the chances of your forwarded emails being opened, focus on crafting attention-grabbing, personalized subject lines that connect with the recipient. Pair this with a recognizable and trustworthy sender name to build credibility and encourage engagement.
Timing matters too – send your emails at times when recipients are most likely to be checking their inbox. Additionally, keep your email list up to date by removing inactive subscribers and segmenting your audience for more tailored messaging. These steps help ensure your emails feel relevant and appealing, increasing the chances they’ll not only be opened but also shared.
How does email forwarding help grow your subscriber list and boost conversions, and what are the best ways to track its impact?
Email forwarding can be a powerful tool for expanding your subscriber base. When recipients share your content with others, it opens the door to reaching new audiences organically – without adding to your acquisition costs. Plus, it can boost conversions by increasing engagement and prompting faster responses, which may ultimately lead to better sales results.
To understand how email forwarding impacts your efforts, consider using tools like email tracking software or analytics platforms. These tools can help you monitor forwarding rates, open rates, and engagement levels, giving you meaningful insights into how forwarding supports your list growth and conversion goals. With this data in hand, you can refine your email strategy to achieve even stronger outcomes.
