How to track your email marketing campaign

You have to be an advanced HTML and database programmer to track e-mails on your own, so I recommend using an ESP to track your e-mails for you. ESPs automatically add special tracking code to the links you include in your e-mails. The tracking code is unique to each individual on your e-mail list and tied to each e-mail campaign. ESPs also have programs that automatically read the code from other e-mail servers when they return undeliverable e-mail so you don’t have to do the hard work to determine why a particular e-mail wasn’tdelivered.

E-mail tracking reports are analytical summaries of the results of a given e-mail campaign that can tell you

- Which e-mails bounced

- Why they bounced

- Who opened your e-mails

- What links they clicked

- Who unsubscribed from your e-mails

- Who forwarded your e-mails

A summary e-mail tracking report, generated by an ESP, that allows access to the report details when the user clicks the summary statistics. Making sense of the data in an e-mail tracking report takes a little getting used to because the technology involved in the e-mail tracking process causes the data to take on a slightly different meaning than you might expect. This section explains the origins of the data found in a typical e-mail tracking report so you can interpret the true meaning of each number being reported. This section also includes references to current industry statistics so you candecide whether your data warrants any action to refine your strategy.

Calculating your bounce rate

Bounce rate is the number of e-mails that were returned as undeliverable expressed as a percentage of total e-mails sent. ESPs calculate bounce rate by taking the total number of bounced e-mails and dividing by the number of e-mails sent. You can calculate your own bounce rate as follows:

1. Divide the total number of e-mails that bounced by the total number of e-mails sent to get the total number of bounces per e-mail. For example, if you send 100 e-mails and 20 of them bounce, you bounced 0.2 e-mails for every e-mail sent.

2. Take your bounces per e-mail and multiply by 100 to get your bounce rate as a percentage.

For example, the bounce rate for 0.2 bounces per e-mail is 20%. According to a study conducted by ReturnPath (returnpath.com),the average bounce rate for commercial e-mails is 19.2%.

Calculating your non-bounce total

Non-bounce total is the number of e-mails that were not bounced and therefore assumed delivered. ESPs calculate non-bounce total by subtracting your total number of bounced e-mails from the total number of e-mails sent. You can calculate your own non-bounce total as follows.

For example, if you send 100 e-mails and 20 of them bounce, your non-bounce total is 80. Non-bounce total is sometimes expressed as a percentage, but the non-bounce total is more useful as a real number because e-mail open rates are actually based on your non-bounce total instead of the total number of e-mails sent. (I explain open rate in more detail in the following section, “Calculating youropen rate.”)

Your non-bounce total isn’t the same as the total number of e-mails delivered. Some e-mails aren’t reported as bounced because software on the user’s computer or a portable device bounced it not an e-mail server and some e-mail servers falsely deliver your e-mail to a junk folder that users can’t access.

Even though you can’t be sure whether your non-bounced e-mails are being delivered, you can assume that your non-bounced e-mails are reaching your audience until you have good reasons to believe otherwise. Because nonbounce total is basically the converse of the bounce rate, the average nonbounce rate is approximately 80.8%, according to ReturnPath.

Calculating your click-through rate

Your click-through rate is the number of unique individuals who click on one or more links in your e-mail expressed as a percentage of total tracked opens. ESPs calculate click-through rate by taking the total number of unique individuals who click a link in your e-mail and dividing by the total number of tracked opens. Here are the steps for calculating click-through rate:

1. Take the total number of clicks on all links in the e-mail and subtract any multiple clicks attributed to a single subscriber to get total unique clicks. For example, if your e-mail contains two links and ten people clicked both links or clicked the same link multiple times, subtract ten from the total number of clicks.

2. Take the total number of tracked opens and divide by the total number of unique clicks to get clicks per open. For example, if 30 of your e-mails track as opened and you receive 3 unique clicks, your e-mail received 0.1 clicks per open.

3. Multiply clicks per open by 100 to get click-through rate.

For example, the click-through rate for 0.1 clicks per open is 10%.

Because clicking a link in your e-mail causes the e-mail to track as an open, your click-through rate never exceeds the number of tracked opens. Your e-mail might receive more total clicks than tracked opens, however, because some people click a single link multiple times or click more than one link in your e-mail.

Even if your audience clicks multiple times, your click-through rate represents only the number of unique individuals who click one or more links. Most e-mail tracking reports also allow you to view the total number of clicks attributed to each unique individual as well as showing you exactly which links are clicked.

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How to track your email marketing campaign

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