Understanding Your Machinemail Email Summary And Reporting

Email marketing is one of the most measurable marketing tactics you can use. But, it can get pretty overwhelming.

Open rates, bounces, click-throughs, and unsubscribes… What does that all mean, how do you interpret the data, and most importantly, what does it mean for your business?

Let’s break it down, so you can understand your Machinemail reports and make the most of your data.

What to Expect in your Machinemail Stats Report

Machinemail puts reporting at your fingertips. Best of all, these reports are in plain English—simple and easy. Say goodbye to confusing data!

After every send, you’ll receive 2 email reports from Machinemail. You’ll get your first report 24 hours after you send your campaign. Then, we’ll follow up with a second report after 7 days. This way, you get a clear idea of how your campaign performed.

These reports show your:

• Open rates
• Bounce rates
• Click-through rates
• Who clicked on your machines

Let’s discuss these metrics so you have a clear idea how to read your report, and what it means.

Open rate

Open rate is the percentage of emails opened relative to the total number of recipients. So it gives you great insight into how well your email strategy is working and is a good measure of overall engagement.

In your report you’ll see the percentage of emails opened as the open rate. According to Mailchimp, the average open rate for all industries is 20.81%.

You’ll also be able to see the unique and total opens from your campaign. A total open is the total number of times your campaign has been opened. This number will include multiple opens by the same recipient.

Unique opens

So, we know that the open rate tells us the percentage of people that opened the email, but what’s a unique open?

Unlike your total open rate, the unique open rate doesn’t take into account multiple opens. So, if someone has opened your email 5 times, it will still only count as 1 unique open. The unique open rate will give you a better understanding of how your subject line is performing.

Overall, if your open rate is strong, it usually means that your subject line is resonating with your audience. But, if you’re not seeing the success you’d hoped for, your subject lines could use some improvement. Take a look at our tips for creating a killer subject lines here.

Click-through rate

Your click-through rate (CTR) tells you how many people clicked on a link or call to action within your email. Your CTR stats will vary depending on the content of your email.

Take a look at the average open and click-through rates for some main industries below:

Source: Mailchimp

Unsubscribe rate

Your unsubscribe rate will tell you how many people are leaving your list.

Let’s be frank, some aren’t going to love your emails or want to continue receiving them. When this happens, they are going to unsubscribe. And that’s alright! You only want to send to customers who interact with your business anyway. The only time you should worry is when you notice a higher amount of unsubscribes than usual.

Why are they leaving? It could be a few reasons. Maybe you’re sending them too many emails, they’re not seeing the value in what you’re sending them, or maybe they just didn’t mean to subscribe in the first place. It happens.

If someone has unsubscribed from your list, we’ll automatically remove them. This way you don’t have to worry about sending to the same person again.

How to Improve Open and Click-through Rates

Improving open rates

If you’ve noticed a low open rate you might be experiencing one of the following:

• Sending to a large list
• Irrelevant or uninteresting subject lines
• Sending too many or too few email campaigns

The best way to improve your open rate is by:

• Segmenting your audience
• Testing different subject lines
• Changing your send frequency

Improving click-through rates

Your click-through rate tells you how many people in your audience found the campaign content useful. So, to improve this statistic you’ll need to think about the content you’re putting out.

Ask yourself:

• Is it relevant?
• Is it informative?
• Is it being sent to the right people?

Deliverability

Deliverability relates to the actual delivery of an email, including the bounce rates and spam issues encountered. It relates to positioning your emails so they reach the inbox, avoiding spam filters, getting opens and hence, getting results.

Bounce rate

A bounced email is like throwing a tennis ball at a wall—it comes straight back at you. Bounced emails can be due to a temporary issue, like an inbox being full, or a permanent problem with the email address you’re trying to send to.

In your Machinemail report, you’ll see your bounce rate as a percentage. This is the percentage of people who didn’t receive your message. Once an email address has bounced, we’ll automatically remove these people from your active list to assist with deliverability.

We recommend cleaning out your list regularly so that you avoid bounces. Not sure how to clean your list? Check out this article.

Find out who clicked on your machines

This is the most valuable piece of information you’ll receive from your Machinemail report. We tell you which machines your clients clicked on and how many times they clicked, so you can put them down as a lead, follow up and convert the sale.

We told you Machinemail was a massively leveraged sales tool, and now you can see why. By telling you who and what machines your customers are interested in, you can easily chase the lead and get more return from your email marketing.

So, there you have it. That’s what you can expect from your Machinemail report.

Did you find this article useful? Let us know in the comments below!

Sources: campaignmonitor.com, mailchimp.com