What data is your email tracking software able to provide?
- opens
- click-thrus
- bounces
- opt-outs
Opens
Measures the number of subscribers that open the newsletter or commercial message you send with one bulk email campaign. In order to get true statistics, count opens only once. For example, there are people that do not read their newsletter in the body message and prefer to open it in a preview window, or then further enlarge it into a full size window. Counting three opens wouldn't be realistic.
Click-Thrus
Even more interesting is to see, once a subscriber has opened your newsletter, which articles he decides to read further, accessing links to the complete articles on your web site. Suppose your newsletter's purpose is to sell a book, orders to click-thrus ratio will give you an idea about the effectiveness of the email campaign.
You need to be realistic when judging effectiveness. They say that in case of free, opt-in newsletters, purchase rate can hardly surpass 10%. If the purchase also involves a visit to your website, through a link, only 5% of those who access the link buy a product.
Click-thrus, more than anything else in bulk email marketing campaigns, are inconsequent on short term. Some users click through by mistake, and don't read any content, while others call their colleagues to read along. All these are uncountable actions. If the newsletter is meant to sell something, you should refer to purchases per click-trus, per opens, per valid emails or total emails sent.
The long term benefits of newsletters are building a good company-image, readers' trust, ensuring good communication with your public.
On long term, newsletter metrics can tell you about:
- reader's profile
- your content consistency
- the true impact of marketing mistakes
It's worth mentioning that people are less probable to order a product first time they receive an email from you. That's why results must be tracked in time.
Bounces
Measuring bounces is very important. Things are not as simple as removing an email address the first time it is bouncing.
If the newsletter is sent:
- Every day: remove an email address after five consecutive days that it bouncebacks.
- Once a week: wait for a month before removing the address.
- Once a month: wait for two months.
Of course, these are just personal opinions, and you can always choose other tactics. The only thing that has to transpire here is that you can set the email software to remove the bouncing addresses automatically after a number of consecutive bounces.
Opt-Outs
When a person decides to give up receiving your email you need to know the cause. Maybe you've became boring, or offended her/him, or s/he's changed interests. You need to count unsbcribers in two separate cathegories: long-time users and fresh users. When long-time users unsubscribe, you can sum:
- Customers that unsubscribe: somebody who bought from you in the past or has been very active as a member of your community, may unsubscribe because your newsletter lost in consistency, or s/he was disappointed with the service. However, you need to gather more data from this cathegory.
- Users that unsubscribe with an explicit reaction: e.g. this happens when your newsletter content has been perceived as offensive.
- Unsubscriptions due to changes in your newsletter: you need additional information to calculate if the change was opportune or not. 10% users may unsubscribe while the other 90% may become more active and motivated.
- Passive users that unsubscribe for no obvious reason: they could have changed their interests or never really been interested in your materials.