"Arm yourself with effective email marketing tools" isn’t just something people tell you to do because they want you to buy their software. Okay, maybe a few – but if you ask around, you’ll also find that there are plenty of people with no stake in the matter who’ll tout the importance of being able to review and compare your email campaign statistics. If you have doubts as to how email statistics can help you fine tune your game, here are a couple of basic stats that you should be aware of, and a little about what they might mean.
Unsubscribes – This tells you how many of your readers have taken the time to remove themselves from your mailing list, and can tell you a lot – especially if you create an automated unsubscribe campaign to ask your ex-reader why they’re unsubscribing and allow them to leave feedback. The important thing here is acting upon the information. What they tell you might have an impact on how often you’re sending messages, whether or not your content is offending people, or if you’re not providing information of interest. One thing that you should bear in mind about unsubscribe rates is that it’s perfectly normal to experience anywhere from a 10 to 30 percent dropout rate per year. If your rate is higher than that, it’s time for a serious overhaul.
Hard Bounces – These are instances where your email is returned undeliverable as a result of an invalid email address, a closed email address, and in some instances can tell you if the recipient’s ISP is blocking your delivery because you’ve been blacklisted. If you’re starting to see a high number of hard bounces from a particular email service provider, it’s time to talk to them about whether the latter scenario is the case.
Soft Bounces – Not to be confused with hard bounces, these usually occur if the message didn’t get through because your recipient’s inbox is full, or their server is down. It could also be indication that your email was too big to be accepted, in which case you need to take a closer look at why your marketing message is so big and make changes.