Email campaigning is very much in vogue in the present-day business world and it does indeed bring successful results. It is one of the simplest ways to make the world know about your business and keep people updated about what is new. These days almost everyone is active with their email inboxes, and therefore your chances of being recognized are very good. However, only a correct approach can bring the right response; otherwise, your emails might be dumped like thousands of others. Without going into too much detail, let’s just brief up with quality email marketing.

Emails you wish to send should be crisp and clear about your ideas, they should make an impact from the subject line itself, and should leave a positive impression. On the topic of email marketing, one thing that should be analyzed is tracking the results of your email campaigns because it will enable you to identify the success or failure of your email strategy. The basic idea behind your campaign is to make it reachable for your audience and then carry back benefits to your business.

This is possible when your ideas reach their correct destination through the emails, the users like them, follow them, and react to them by getting back to you. The reverse should also be expected: emails not delivered, users not liking them, and users unsubscribing to your mails. Now both results are important: the first acknowledges your ideas and that they count; the second one shows that there is something wrong with your email campaign and suggests you come up with a better one. These important results can only be realized through email tracking. This article will discuss the important factors involved with email tracking and how they will help you realize your position after an email campaign and know whether it is working positively.

Uses of Email Marketing Providers or EMP

You can use email marketing providers to track your email-related data. Most email marketing providers track emails and offer you a report with the tracking details. This serves as a great help for people who want to track their emails without spending lots of time tracking them. Email marketing providers (EMP) are also user-friendly. Not every one of you running a business will be an expert in html and database programming; and without knowledge of these, tracking emails of your own is not possible. In such cases, EMP serves as a savior, giving you all the required details of emails and helps you track your emails. In this article, we will first discuss the basics of tracking emails, how to use email marketing providers for email tracking, and some guidelines for tracking emails creatively. All these will help you to understand your moves and realize your position in the process of email marketing.

Basic factors tracked by Email Tracking Data

It is very important for you to understand the basics of email tracking data. As mentioned above, those who don’t have advanced knowledge of database and programming will not be able to track emails. It is preferable for them to use an EMP, which will give them data regarding email tracking. An EMP tracks the links included in your link and thereafter creates a list of records based on your emails. Your EMP adds a special tracking code to your links, which allows you to track the results of the follow-ups with those links. The tracking code used by an EMP is unique for every individual to whom you sent an email and therefore gives you absolute and clear data on record. The code is added uniquely to each email connected with the email campaign. The basic coding used by every EMP is tracking undelivered emails. An EMP uses an automatic coding through which it can track all undelivered emails from the email servers. You get a message instantly whenever an email is not delivered. Thus, you don’t need to take extra pain in guessing and analyzing what emails are left undelivered. This is a great advantage because, as you know the individual to whom the email was not delivered, you can send another one. There are a few basic factors most EMPs can track, which makes your task of tracking emails for your email campaign easy and simple. Below we list the basic factors tracked by almost all EMPs considering your email campaign:

• Track records of bounced emails
• Track reason for bouncing
• Track who opens your emails
• Track the links clicked
• Track the links followed
• Track who unsubscribes to your emails
• Track who forwards your emails

These are the basic factors EMPs provide, lessening your task of tracking your email campaigns. An EMP tracks all your emails and provides you with the individual records of these data during your campaign.

Understanding Email Tracking Data

Understanding the data provided by an EMP takes time. You might not be able to understand what the data is saying exactly, as the data might not be as you expected. An EMP offers a summary of reports, including all the above-mentioned factors, and you need to click on the reports and follow up with the details. This section will help you better understand an EMP’s data report. This will help you understand the meaning of the data and numbers, which will enable you to interpret them with the correct approach. You can use a sample report summary of an EMP to better understand this. You can easily download a sample report from the Internet.

Bounce rate of emails

The EMP report provides the bounce rate record of the emails you have sent. You can click on the bounced email records and get the details of the bounce report. Bounced emails are those emails that come back to you stating they were undelivered. Bounce rate is calculated from the data of your sent mails against the number of emails that came back as undelivered. It is very important to understand the bounce rate because this is something you can rework instantly. Your basic aim in an email campaign is to make users read the mail; if they don’t receive it, they cannot read it. You can also calculate the bounce rate of emails yourself. Below we list a few points based on that.

• You will be sending one type of mail to a list of participants. When a mail is not delivered, you get an instant message. Now, to find the bounce number, divide the total number of sent mails by the number of mails that came back undelivered. You will get the bounce number of emails.
• To get the bounce rate of emails like the EMP records provide, you should multiply your bounce number of emails by 100. Suppose you have sent 200 mails, and 40 came back undelivered. Your bounce number of mails will be 40/200, which is equal to 0.2. Now the bounce rate will be 0.2 x 100, which is equal to 20%. Thus, you get your bounce rate.

According to basic email marketing rules, a bounce rate between 2 and 15 percent is normal. In such cases, the bounce rate mentioned in the example is a bit higher and you should take the required steps to fix that bounce rate.

Non-bounce rate of emails

The non-bounce rate of emails represents those that are delivered to our recipients. Recording this rate is important to know the further effects of the results. EMP calculates the non-bounce rate by subtracting the total bounce number from the total of emails sent. You can find out your non-bounce emails the same way and calculate the rate of non-bounce emails by multiplying by 100.

Some time after comparing your bounce and non-bounce number of emails, you might observe certain differences. This occurs because at certain times the email server fails to send undelivered messages and you miss a few bounce numbers; also, sometimes your emails are dumped to a junk folder. You can avoid this difference until it becomes large. Now, taking your non-bounce number, you can decide the next direction of your campaign, as you are aware of the number of people receiving your emails.

Open rate of emails

After tracking the bounce and non-bounce rate of emails, the next important step in your email campaign is tracking the open rate of emails. Open rate of emails is the rate at which your recipients open the emails you send. While bounce reflects emails not received, non-bounce reflects those received, opened, and read. An email is considered open only with the occurrence of certain events.

• Firstly, whenever a link on your email is clicked that email is considered as an open email.
• Secondly, whenever the images in your email are clicked for a larger view or enable the images to be displayed, that email is considered an open email.

EMP provides you with data based on the open rate of emails. It calculates the open rate by dividing the opened email numbers by non-bounce emails. The steps to calculate the open rate are: dividing the open email number tracked by non-bounce emails and then multiplying the number of openings of emails per email by 100 to get the open rate. Here, the open rate is calculated against non-bounce emails because your open emails consider the email’s strength of identity rather than deliverability. Emails that are bouncing emails are excluded from this calculation because until they are not delivered, the question of being opened doesn’t arise. The open rate doesn’t give the actual number of emails read and the latter is always higher. This is because some people scan emails without displaying emails and some read the content without clicking any links. Plain text emails without images and links cannot be tracked as open emails or not. Therefore, EMP adds a blank image with your emails to keep track of open emails.

Click through rate of emails

Click through rate is the rate calculated against the number of links unique individuals click on your emails. Links can include those pointing to your Web site or links pointing to social sites for liking and sharing. EMP offers the click through rate of emails by dividing the total number of individual clicks by the number of emails tracked as open emails. To get the exact click through rate, the following steps are taken:

• Firstly, click through rate includes unique clicks; therefore, the multiple clicks coming from an individual are subtracted from the number of total links available in the email.
• Secondly, divide the total number of open emails by the total number of unique clicks. This will give you the total click per email.
• Thirdly, multiply the calculated total click rate against emails by 100. This will give you the click through rate of emails.

Users might click a link multiple times; therefore, to get the unique clicks, EMPs subtract the multiple clicks. Many EMPs also provide records of the number of times a particular link is clicked in an email per individual. They also show you which links are clicked and thus give you the value of your links as well as the click through emails. This is a very important feature of EMP that will help you acknowledge the importance of your links.

Non-click responses of emails

There are many other factors, which cannot be calculated by click through rates. Suppose your business idea is about bringing telephonic customers to you. In such cases, putting links will be a vague idea. Also, even if you put a few, your users might not click them as the importance is served rather by the number mentioned, rather than the links. In such cases, you need to track the other non-click responses of emails. The next section will guide you in understanding the tracking of non-click responses.

Email recipient in-store customers

When your emails are aimed at bringing in customers to your product stores and make them buy products, you need to track the number of customers you have secured from emails to track your email campaign results. Below we list some of the ways you can keep track of the visitors who come to your store via your email campaign.

• Put a command on a mobile device showing the emails of those who come to the store.
• You can also ask them to bring a printout of the email bringing customers to your actual store.
• You can ask your email recipients to mention your email when they visit your store.
• Make your staff ask about the factor of receiving emails from customers.
• Advertise a special product or offer in your emails that is exclusive to emails.

These are some ways through which you can track the number of customers you gain through emails. By using these methods, make a list of email recipient customers, and deduct (them?) from the actual number of customers. This will give you data of the customers brought by emails. However, you should use certain methods to enhance your emails, otherwise asking such questions might sound weird. You can mention offers in your emails and put a clause in to show the emails in the store taking advantage of that offer. Include a coupon system in your emails; give away gifts and so on. These will make it simpler for you to track your email recipient customers.

Email recipient callers

Besides in-store customers, you can also track your mobile phones to realize the number of non-click responses. If your goal is to bring your users to phone calls, you need to use your emails to track phone calls. Here are few ways you can track phone calls coming from your email recipients:

• Firstly, ask customers who call to mention your email. Track the number of callers that does so; they are your email recipient callers.
• Secondly, maintain a separate phone number to attend to email recipient callers and mention that number in your email campaign. All callers calling that number are your email recipient callers.
• Thirdly, advertise a specific or exclusive product in your emails. The number of callers mentioning that specific offer or product are your email recipient callers.
• Finally, maintain a record by asking callers how they got your number. You will get your email recipient callers by that record.

These methods will let you track phone calls coming from your emails.

Email recipient event’s guests

Suppose the idea behind your emails is to bring your email recipient to a particular event. In such cases, you should utilize certain ways in your emails through which you can establish the attendance that results from your emails. Here are few simple ways you can track your email recipient event guests:

• You can ask your email guests to show the email on their mobile devices when they come to the event. Track the records of guests showing emails.
• You can ask them to bring printouts of emails they received to the event. Store the printouts to track your email guests.
• You can mention a particular code or name and ask them to refer to it while attending the event. Track those who mention the code or name while attending the event.
• Ask in your emails for online registration or registering over the phone. Track the record of online and phone-registered guests.

Email replies to your emails

Asking for replies or responses through emails is simple and it works. Therefore, tracking email replies to your emails is important to track your email campaign. An EMP cannot track the replies coming from a particular mail. But every email server puts messages with the same subject line within the same group. Also, a few put a “re” in the subject line automatically, which will let you know the number of replies. A record of the number of email replies to your emails might not always be useful but the qualitative information mentioned in the replies is very important to be tracked for you to understand the result of your motif of email campaign. Therefore, keep track of your email replies’ content. Track the nature of your email replies and make a list of the complaints mentioned, suggestions advised, and issues brought up. You can make your emails better with this assistance. You can address complaints, work on suggestions, and solve issues. Thus, you will be able to understand your targeted customers’ requirements and address them. Therefore, tracking your email replies is important for tracking your emails. Though the record might not work quantitatively, it will definitely work qualitatively. This is a very simple and unexpected way of tracking email responses but it is worth taking the time to do it.

These, then, are the ways you can track your email campaign. You can use records provided by your EMP to track the bounce rate, non-bounce rate, open rate, and click through rate of your emails. You can also use your own ways to track your email campaign. You can track the non-click through responses, which includes tracking your email recipient customers, tracking your email recipient callers, your email recipient event guests, and tracking email replies to your emails. All these will help you track your email campaign and let you know the results and where you stand after the campaign. Also, this tracking will help you improve your emails and help you understand the required investment necessary for your campaign in terms of money and time. Thus, tracking your email campaign helps you to get an overall view of email marketing and the way it is useful for you and your business.

Image Credits

• Business related email concept