Stat tracking 101

Analyzing your email statistics is a huge part of determing the overall sucess of a campaign. In order to maximize your list potential, you need to keep a close watch on your deliverability rate, , bounce counts, click throughs and openers. These analytics are just the tip of the ice berg in terms the number of various statistics to track, but in my opinion are some fo the most important.

• Deliverability Rate - Your deliverability rate is determined by factors including your list quality, domain history, and complaint ratio. Delieverability is the toughest problem when it comes to marketing via email, it has been for years. Your list better be at least 90% deliverable or you will run into major issues. Once you start going under the 90% threshold ISPs will start blocking because of the sheer number of undeliverables. Additonally, deliverability is affected by the number of complainers you have in your list. All the major ISPs, aol, hotmail, yahoo, msn, gmail, make it very easy for users to complain. (Beware of the report spam button!) Large numbers of complaints has a negative affect on your domain history. The bigger ISPs have internal tracking mechanisms to determine if your domain is reputable enough to continue to send mail through their network. Keep in mind, each ISP is different, and just because something works for one ISP does not guarantee overall success of the campaign.
• Bounce Counts - The two types of bounce counts you need to be aware of are hard and soft. Hard bounces are very straight forward. These are users with a dead or inactive email address. The errors will say something like, user known or cannot find recipient. Your email sofware program should remove these immediantly from your list. When I say your list needs to be at least 90% deliverable, the undeliverables I am refering to are hard bounces. Soft bounces, on the other hand, are a whole different story. the reason you recieve a soft bounce could be a whole myriad of issues ranging from too many complaints, too much volume, spam listings, dns issues, and many others. When analyzing boucne counts you need to spend about 99% of your time exlporing soft bounces. If you are getting blocked from a certain ISP the key to future inbox delivery is finding the error and fixing it.
• Click throughs and Openers - Once your mail is delivering properly and you are generating traffic to your newsletter or ad campaign, the stat you should be paying most attention to is your click throughs and openers. Click throughs are people who actually clicked on your link and visited your website while openers are users who just opened your email. Only HTML campaigns can track openers. These factors determine the number of time a month you send email blasts, the content of your campaign, and the products you sell. Whenever possible you should always be tracking clickers and openers and keeping the stats on file.

These are just a few of the main stats that you need to be digesting on a daily basis. Your success depends on it!

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