Paula G. Web Design

With email marketing it can sometimes feel like you spend time crafting your articles, bless them, send them off,and then wonder if anyone is every opening or reading them.  How can you know?  If you’re using a professional email publishing system you have easy access to basic statistics about your broadcast.

Information you will want to know about each broadcast includes:

• # of emails sent
• # and % of undeliverable emails
• # and % of people who opened your email

Any system you use should also automatically manage any undeliverable emails.  For instance, attempting to deliver the message a certain number of times before it considers it a “bad” email address.

As with any statistics, they are a benchmark, not an absolute. For instance, I use Aweber and while they can tell me the open rate of my broadcast, they cannot track this figure for emails that are sent plain text (vs HTML).  So, I can usually assume my open rate is “at least” whatever percent it is showing in the report.  I always include a plain text version of my HTML newsletters for people who either choose to receive plain text only or for email programs that do not support HTML (or have the settings turned off).

In the system I use, Aweber , I can also track the click-throughts. What that means is that if I have one or more links within my email broadcast (say to an offer on my website, or a new product), I can see what number and percentage of people actually clicked on that link.  This can be helpful to determine if anyone is being called to action by your text.
No matter what, I feel strongly about using an email publishing system.  Do not attempt to simply use your email program. It is a bad idea for several reasons I’ll discuss in another post. I recommend both Aweber and Constant Contact for email broadcasts.  If you are already using a shopping cart, you can use it for autoresponders and email broadcasts as well.

As with any set of statistics, it is just a metric.  Make sure you are interpreting them with care.  At the end of the day, metrics are great but the true measure of success is what kind of response you receive to the email marketing you do as part of your overall marketing strategy.  If people never click on the links, but readily call you to explore working with you, it is still a raving success. Make sure you look at the big picture as you design and adjust your email toolkit.

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