Email data holds the answers to many questions. We dedicate ourselves to creating insights from your inbox. But what if you want to take things one step further, and create your own insights from your raw email data?
Your inbox is a treasure trove of insights into your behavior. Everything from the number of emails you send, the times you send them, who you talk to the most, and much more. It can all open your eyes to how you actually use your inbox—and how you work.
How to export your email data
NOTE: CSV Exports are a Pro and Teams feature in Email Meter — if you need access, get in touch and I'll activate a 2 week trial for you 😊
Go to Email Meter and create the report you want to export. Make sure you include the date range, team members and filters you want. Anything the export includes anything you see in your report.
Click on CSV export in the top right, and you’ll receive a download link to your email shortly.
Now that you’ve got your raw data, you’ll see that it’s organized in a specific way. Email Meter uses your email ‘headers’, which are like labels on a package (rather than the contents). They contain all the information about where the email came from, when it was sent, whether it’s a reply, and much more.
To get started with your data, we recommend using our template. Here you can paste in your data and will see some pre-made metrics for inspiration. You can find full instructions for this here.
So what can I do to take my data further?
Start with your raw data in a spreadsheet, to ensure the formulas below line up. Here’s some quick insights:
Find how many unique email threads you had
Here we are defining a thread as an email exchange with 2 or more messages during the filtered date range.
In the first column to the right of the raw data (for me it's column P) in cell 2, paste this formula:
=COUNTIF(N$2:N,N2)
(assuming gmail_thread_id is in column N)
Drag this formula down the length of the raw data or use the autofill shortcut, to have it applied to every row.
In any empty cell, paste this formula:
=COUNTUNIQUE(N2:N)-COUNTIF(P2:P,1)
This will tell you how many unique email conversations you had!
Find out your response rate in a percentage
By looking at how many received emails you reply to, it’s possible to see how responsive you are.
To do this you’ll want to count all RECEIVED emails from the C column.
Paste this formula into any free cell:
=COUNTIF(C2:C505,"RECEIVED")
This will give you the total number of received emails.
Next we need to see the total number of emails which received a reply. We need to count the number of emails where the ‘is_replied’ column has the TRUE value.
Paste this formula into any free cell:
=COUNTIF(I2:I505,"TRUE")
You’ll now have two values. One is the total number of received emails, and the other is the total number of emails which were replied to. For example, 446 emails were received, and 8 of those were replied to. To get the response rate we’ll want to add those two together, and then divide them by the number of replied emails.
(Number of replied emails)/(Received emails+Replied emails)
This gives us this formula, again you should paste it into any free cell:
=(D507)/(C507+D507)
Finally, format the cell to show as a percentage (Format > Number > Percent), and you’re all set!
Find your Median Response Time
We use Mean averages for our response times in your dashboard, as we’ve found they give the most accurate results. If you want to see your Median Response Time all it takes is a simple calculation!
Once you’ve imported your data, you’ll want to find the Median of the column with response times, with the heading ‘reply_time’. The response times are in seconds, so we’ll also need to convert them to minutes by dividing them by 3600.
Simply paste the formula =MEDIAN(K1:K505)/3600 into any free cell, and then format the cell to show as a duration (Format > Number > Duration).
There's endless ways to pull insights and create new metrics! What will you create? We’d love to hear your ideas! Get in touch with your experiments or problems, we’ll be happy to help :)
