Reading Your Email Stats

Wanna get the most out of your campaigns? It all starts with number crunching…

1. Look at the bounces.

It may not be the most fun place to start, but you need to pay attention to the number (and names) of bounced email from your campaign. Maybe there is a typo in the address (something you can easily remedy), or maybe the addy is no longer valid. It’s always best to keep your lists as clean as possible. (and don’t forget about the “in progress” emails… as a part of the overall delivery process, the system’s servers are retrying soft bounces for you, up to four times over 24 hours.

2. Do the numbers (but don’t overdo them).

Use the “campaign compare” feature to see how your most recent results stack up against your results from last month or last year. It’ll just take a few minutes, and you can even export to an Excel file that averages and summarizes the campaigns side by side.

3. Remember to follow up.

When people click on campaign links, it means they want to know more. This means you have a captive audience about a particular subject. Be sure to follow up with the clickers with smaller campaigns aimed at those most likely to respond. For example, you might send a 10%-off coupon just to the folks who clicked on your latest product but didn’t buy it. Or you could follow up with a reminder email to anyone who clicked to find out more about your upcoming seminar. Best of all, your account makes the process quick and easy. Just create a search to find people who’ve opened or clicked a specific link in a campaign, right from the response section, and send to it later. Or, you can use the “trigger feature” to set a follow-up campaign to send automatically when anyone clicks a particular link in a previously sent or scheduled campaign.

4. Think about your next e-blast.

You may find that you get your best ideas about next time when you’re breaking down the results from this time. Got a feeling that a shorter subject line might have increased your open rates? Write it down now and test your theory later. In this case, you might split up your audience during the next go-around to send two versions of the campaign. You could use a different subject line for each. Then compare the results to see which was more likely to get your audience’s attention.