bounce rate

Why Email Analytics Are Vital

email marketing analytics

The Snapshot

  • Harness analytics to measure KPI’s of your email marketing campaign
  • If emails are not being delivered find out why!
  • Send content your customers want to read (no spam please)
  • Implement changes that your data suggests will help
  • The more leads you generate the more sales you are going to make

In our last blog post we identified some of the key benefits of Ezine.ie and how it can help you and your business establish a more successful marketing strategy.  We wanted to explain some of the benefits of this service in more detail and expand upon why email analytics are such an integral aspect of any successful email marketing campaign.

The basic reason why it is so key to have complete visibility over basic data of any email marketing campaign is you need to be able to measure how successful it is. You have allocated time and resources into developing this marketing channel and you need to see how it is performing.

There are four main areas that you need to focus on, these are:

  • Bounce rates
  • Delivery rates
  • Click rates
  • Conversion rates

These four factors are fundamental aspects of your email marketing strategy that you need to maintain a close eye one. Don’t panic if you are not 100 per cent sure on what every point that we have listed above is, that is what we are here for!

Bounce Rates

Ok let’s have a look at what bounce rate means for all those lovingly crafted emails that your team has put together. A bounce rate simply refers to the number of emails that for whatever reason were not delivered to the intended recipient.

bounce rate

Firstly there are two different types of bounce rates one which is called a ‘soft bounce’ and indicates that the person who is supposed to be receiving your email is having issues with their server or that their email inbox is full.

 

This type of ‘soft bounce’ is not something that you should be that concerned about as it indicates issues that the person to whom you have sent the email is experiencing and there is basically not much you can do about that.

However the other type of bounce rate which is known as a ‘hard bounce’ is not good news for you. This can occur for a variety of reasons but some of the most common are:

  • Invalid user email address
  • Your email content is activating spam filters
  • Email client of recipient is blocking your emails

There are simple things you can do to try and reduce the amount of ‘hard bounce’ notifications that you receive. Making sure that your email database is updated regularly and ensuring that you have suitable non-spam like content in both the subject line and main body of the email would be a great start.

Delivery Rates

e-mail deliveryAs the name suggests this is focused on the number of emails that actually reached their intended target.

This is a really fundamental area to keep a watch on as if a high volume of your emails are not being delivered this indicates that your email database could be out of date, or that there is some issue with the content or images contained within your email.

The majority of email clients will not accept emails that contain large amount of graphical content or will not display those images once the email is opened.

You can help to avoid issues such as these by following the simple steps that we have outlined in relation to the design and layout of emails.

Click Rates

click rateThe click rate basically lets you see what content in your email the recipient clicked on. This really is very useful for all online marketers as it lets you see what type of content is engaging your readership. This allows you to actively tailor your emails to exactly what your customers want to know. If have already done this congratulations you are now an official on-line content marketer!

After all if you know what people want it is much easier to deliver it to give it to them!

Conversion rates

You want to find out what action people followed when they opened your emails. That could be anything from downloading content or following a link back to your home page. This is all really important actionable information as it increased the amount of solid leads that you can generate, which then have more of a potential to be converted into a sale.

conversion rate

If you can see that conversion rates are not at satisfactory levels, do something about it! Offer your email subscribers something different, something they want or something they can engage with. If you know your business inside and out it makes sense to know your target demographic in the same level of detail.