Important Email Campaign Metrics

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By Jeff Horsager
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-05-21

Email service providers allow users to keep track of important campaign metrics.

These metrics are usually unique to the campaign itself and ignore what happens after the user clicks through to the web site. That said, many providers allow you to set up email tracking with analytics packages so that you can track email from delivery through conversion -- the entire channel path.

Deliverability Rate. The first metric reviewed is deliverability rate. This essentially gives you the percentage of emails that were deliverable. The formula for deliverability rate as a percentage is as follows:

(Successful Deliveries/Total Recipients) * 100

Total Recipients here is the number of delivery attempts. Successful deliveries is the Total Recipients minus bounces. Bounces are undeliverable emails, and can further be differentiated as hard and soft bounces. Hard bounces are undeliverable as the email address doesn't exist. Soft bounces indicate that an email exists, but the message was undeliverable -- perhaps due to a down server. You multiply by 100 to get the result expressed as a percentage.

Open Rate. The Open Rate expresses the percentage of emails that were opened by unique recipients. The formula is as follows:

(Unique Opens/Successful Deliveries) * 100

Tracking unique opens is usually done using a small graphic that is inserted into an email. This graphic is sometimes called a web beacon. This method of tracking comes with a few caveats. Only HTML email messages can contain graphics. Text message opens cannot be measured in this way. In addition, many email services don't automatically download graphics for security reasons. This means that a user could have opened the message without images. If a beacon is used to track, the message is considered unopened.

Email service providers usually extend the accuracy of Unique Opens by counting any unique emails with click throughs to any links as opens if they aren't already counted via the beacon. The obvious logic here being you can't click on a link if you don't open the email.

Click-Through Rate. Click-Through Rate, or CTR is the same concept as CTR in banner or text ads. It is expressed in the following formula:

(Unique Clicks/Unique Opens) * 100

Unsubscribe Rate. Lastly, Unsubscribe Rate is a good thing to track as it gives you good feedback on how your campaign is being received. The Unsubscribe Rate is calculated as follows:

(Unsubscribes/Successful Deliveries) * 100

In addition to these common metrics, it is important to follow email users through the click-path once they get to the web site. This is accomplished via analytics software of some sort. It is important as well to keep up on Spam Complaints. If too many users mark you message as spam, whether it is compliant with CAN-SPAM or not, will get you banned from ISP's.

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About the Author:
I am a copywriter who specializes in online and direct marketing. Direct response is my strength, but I also do SEO Copywriting. Send me an email if you're looking for a copywriter.I do online sales letters, ppc ad campaigns, landing pages, press releases, and email marketing campaigns. Offline I write sales letters and direct response copy.Beyond writing copy, I am interested in testing and analytics. I'm from the Claude Hopkins school of scientific advertising. If you can measure it, you can improve it.

http://www.adlabdirect.com

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