There are many misconceptions about email marketing software data. The following article will help clear the air. Knowing more about your email marketing statistics, will ensure that you start reaching the potential that a powerful marketing tool like email marketing software can provide for your business.

The term ‘delivered’ is not as simple as it seems, so looking to those numbers to determine your success is a fallacy. Taking a deeper look at what ‘delivered’ means will help you understand why this is. Emails that get caught up in spam/junk folders or are deleted as soon as they hit the inbox do not get factored into the stats that determine delivered emails. The reports you are getting are likely a little lower than you expected.

The only way to get real statistics on the delivery of your emails you’ll need to look for some of the services offered that monitor in detail the delivery of your emails.

As strange as it sounds, your data has a lot of hidden meanings. Taking a magnifying glass to them will certainly show you how your emails can be even more successful.

Most of the reports that your email marketing software statistics tell you are averages and percentages based on your entire contact list. Unless you dig deeper, these averages can mask some important differences in contacts’ reaction to your emails. You might realize that one portion of your list is largely from a certain domain, like roadrunner.com or hotmail.com. If this is the case you know you are having deliverability issues to that domain. This is extremely helpful in finding a solution to the problem and therefore can improve your overall success in your email marketing software campaigns.

It is also important to review your open rates with a fine toothed comb in order to get a more accurate measure of how many active readers you have. By looking back to see the trend in your open rates you will probably see that they tend to look similar with some small variation as time goes on: 25%, 24%, 26%, 22%, 25%, 27%, 26%…etc.

It safe to say from just ‘eye-balling’ the numbers, that the average readership is 25%. This is possible, but more often than not it’s not the same people opening each email. Instead of just looking at open rates by each campaign that you send out, look for how many people opened at least one email in the past month; Or, input another period of time that makes sense for your sending schedule. You may be surprised by what you unearth. You might discover that your average open rate is much greater.

This is because your contacts might no necessarily open the email EACH time you send it. It is far more reasonable to conclude that they might be busy sometimes, or on vacation. In other words they might not have time to read the email one week, but have plenty the next.

This can also happen because of the varying needs of your contacts. This in turn gives you important insight on how you can go about splitting up your database to target those needs better. As an example, if one portion of your list only opens the email when you offer a promotion, or another only opens the email when you send a newsletter then you are now better equipped to target their interests to illicit a better response.

Paying attention to email marketing data is easy, but takes a bit of time. It will help you determine how to find greater success with your email marketing solutions by targeting the needs of your contacts with more efficacy.

Rudy Barell is a Senior Business Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing solutions used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with the complete email marketing program. Try it free!

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The people who put the most effort in their email marketing solutions find the greatest success. That’s not just common to email marketing, that’s practically the way everything works! Here are a couple of ways to work a little bit harder and get better email marketing results.

You might have heard that it’s very important to remove in-active subscribers from your mailing list. Definitely a great tip, but before you go crazy eliminating contacts, let’s look at this a little deeper. So, first you’ll need to separate the ‘bad’ or in active-emails, from the good and have them segmented into their own list. This way you can send this not-so-responsive group emails prompting them to take some form of action. This means asking them to click on a link they are interested in your email or getting them to re-sign on to your mailing list. Once this email is sent, you’ll be able to better understand if you can remove a contact, or if you can re-establish a relationship with them. This is an easy way to start having a more targeted list.

It is widely understood that an in-active user is one that has not opened or clicked on links in your email over a given time period. And now we know how important it is to send that group an email to test if they are actually in active. But before you can determine this, you must first understand HOW a contact opens their email, otherwise you might be assuming they are inactive when they could be potential customers.

There are a percentage of people who do not download images in their email programs. The way that tracking open rates works, is that they will not be counted on your data for opens if subscribers do not download the images. However they will still be able to click on the links in your email. So if you attribute your success based on open rates, you might be doing even better than you think! You should also change your strategy to considering both your open rates and the clicks. You will get a much more correct understanding of you which contacts are not active by using the opens and clicks data in your email marketing solutions account.

Before deleting an inactive contact make sure you have taken the time to determine that they REALLY are inactive: give them a chance to re-confirm their interest through one or maybe two emails that are designed to get them to take action, like signing up again to the list or clicking on a link that might be of interest to that contact. Then look through your metrics and see if they haven’t opened or clicked on your email so that you can delete the ones that haven’t.

Another thing to focus in on is keeping a keener eye on ‘Unsubscribe Rates’. If you measure the success of your mailings by looking at which of your contacts have unsubscribed, then here is another bit of info that will make you think twice. Instead of unsubscribing, many users use the “spam” or “junk” button to remove an email from their inbox. This is especially true for senders that the contact deems untrustworthy.

Users that have pressed the junk or spam option will not be counted as unsubscribed. That means that a low amount of unsubscribes does not tell you everything you need to know

Your focus really should be on metrics like ‘opens’ and ‘clicks’ as a measure of your success with email marketing solutions. The better email marketing solutions experts look for ways to read their data to initiate higher quality and more refined contact lists. Knowing the whole story about your data will help you make your list more refined and therefore give you greater email marketing solutions success!

Rudy Barell is a Senior Business Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing software used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with the complete email marketing program. Try it free!