Have You Been Reading Your Email Campaign Reports Wrong?

Email marketing is an excellent way to keep your products and services in front of your fans. But before you can determine if you’ve put together a solid email marketing campaign, you first need to understand what constitutes a positive or negative outcome on your email campaign reports. When you know what’s working—and what isn’t—you can tweak subsequent campaigns for maximum impact.

Before drawing any conclusions on the performance of your campaigns, first research reasonable email marketing benchmarks for your industry. MailChimp.com has an excellent library of resources, including benchmark studies by industry and business size. These reports give you an indication if the success of your company’s email campaigns is average, above average, or below average within your industry or business size.

Opens/Clicks by Subscriber. One of my favorite email marketing reports is the open by subscriber and the click by subscriber reports. This is invaluable information because you can learn which fans by name open your emails the most frequently and which ones by name click on the links and go to your website, social media page or blog. If it t feels wrong to have this much data on someone, remember that as long as your email list is 100% opt-in, then it is absolutely ethical.

Bounce Rate. This is the number of recipients who did not receive the email. Sometimes mail servers send the email back with a message that it could not be delivered. There are two types of bounces: soft and hard. Soft bounces occur when a mail server temporarily cannot deliver an email because the recipient’s email inbox is full or the server is down. A hard bounce occurs when the mail server permanently cannot deliver the email because the email address no longer exists or is not valid.

Click-Through Rate. This is the ratio of clicks to the number of recipients. Clicks are generated when a recipient clicks on a link in the email and visits your website, blog, or social media site.

Spam Complaints. This is the number of recipients who reported your email as spam to their email service provider.

Unsubscribe. This is the number of recipients who asked to be removed from your email list.

Generally speaking, you’re after high clicks and a low bounce rate. But if you find yourself unsatisfied with the numbers you’re seeing contact Meredith Communications. We offer digital marketing services that can help you connect with and close customers. And if you enjoyed this blog, be sure to check out more marketing tips in my book FANtastic Marketing!

Categorised in: Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, FANtastic Marketing Tips