Interpreting email marketing results

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide

There are many reports you can obtain about each email campaign, and the level of detail you get mostly depends on your ESP as well as the time you have to churn through the data.

The most basic of results that should be tracked are the open and click rates. The open rate will tell you whether or not your subject was effective, or the heading at the top of the email caught the readers’ eyes. By using the click rate, you can simply divide it into the open rate, to derive the click-to-open rate. This tells you how many people clicked though once they have already opened the email, which therefore indicates how compelling or relevant the offer was, or if it met the expectations set in the subject.

You can also make assumptions based on results. If you’ve sent 20 emails to a particular domain, with no bounce-backs and yet no opens, it’s usually safe to assume that you’ve been swallowed by Spam filters.

The most important thing about tracking results is that you set your initial benchmarks, and track your results against them over time. This will give you an idea of just how much you’re improving your email marketing campaigns, and also make a good case if you need to ask for a raise ?.

Oh, and there is one tip I can give you about trying to drive higher results: don’t bother attempting to re-send your offer to the same people on your list, who didn’t open it the first time around. All you’ll get is an even lower response rate the second time, and a much higher unsubscribe rate – not a result you’re looking to raise!

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide