I’ve been working with some new clients lately and one of the very first things I do is go back over their previous email campaigns.
All Email Service Providers (ESP) provide reports as part of their service. They all do it a bit differently from each other and have their own interface and quirks.
What I like to do is extract some core information from the ESP standard reports and export or transcribe the information to a spreadsheet. These days I’ve been using a Google Docs spreadsheet to work with so the client and I can go over the data together.
Here’s the basic info I look at.
1. Number of emails sent
If I have a list size of 20,000 names it’s very rare that number of emails sent will be 20,000. Normally the ESP reports a number of emails sent AFTER bounces or undeliverables. That means the list could be 19,398. This is the number I”ll use in our spreadsheet to calculate unsubscribes and opens. If you didn’t get the message you can’t act on it so I shouldn’t count you.
2. Number of emails bounced
Bounced emails come in two forms. Hard bounces and soft bounces. A hard bounce is an email address that can NEVER be delivered. Examples would be when a username is deleted or a domain is no longer active. No matter what that email address is not going to work. ESP’s remove these names from your list automatically so you don’t keep trying to send them.
A soft bounce is a message that didn’t get through this time but the ESP will resend it. A good example of this would be when a user’s email mailbox is full. It didn’t work this time but might work tomorrow. As a standard practice if a soft bounce happens 3 to 5 times in a row, they automatically get switched to a hard bounce and not mailed again.
3. Number of unsubscribes
Your unsubscribe rate is a pretty simple way for you to monitor how you’re doing with the frequency and relevance of your mailings.
Too frequent and not-relevant are the top two reasons people usually unsubscribe from a mail list.
Just to set your expectations. If you change your mailing frequency from monthly to weekly you’ll likely not see any change in unsubscribe rate. Don’t worry about trying more frequent mailings. If your information is good, no one minds hearing from you. Remember, Groupon is a daily email.
4. Number of spam complaints
This data you want to keep a close eye on. Don’t worry though, if it gets too high, you’ll be getting a call from the deliverability department of your favorite ESP. Generally, one complaint for every thousand emails sent is a high as you should get. If you’re at that level, time to review your optin process, your lead sources, and best practices to ensure you’re not bringing this on yourself.
5. Number of email opened
Open rate gets lots of attention when you’re talking about email campaigns. Keep in mind it is only one element to good email marketing. Make sure you are tracking unique opens. Don’t pay much attention to multiple opens. It’s not likely that one reader opened your email to read it 17 times!
6. Number of clicks
Click tracking is pretty valuable. It does tell you about behavior. Of course we want to know who many people clicked on a link in the message but really I’m most interested in which link got the attention.
7. Which links got the clicks
You’ll find patterns when you review which links get clicks. If you have the same call-to-action but three links see if the first version got the clicks or the last version got the clicks. That’s teaching you about your content and how people react to it.
Pay special attention to your social media share and follow buttons. Don’t be surprised to find most people don’t notice them nor click on them.
Bonus stat: if it’s my own mailing I’ll look at the actual email addresses that have opened and clicked. It’s very interesting to notice who is opening and reading your messages. I’ll see new leads, older leads, previous customers, ardent followers, and prospects all there. Different ones each time. Sometimes it will lead to a conversation and more than once it leads to a new client!