Analytics

Pretty much every email platform will give you information about email performance - and you can use this to learn what is working (and what isn’t!) for your email list.

Here are a few key metrics to check:

Open Rates 

Traditionally, open rates were the metric to use. 

In recent years, privacy conscious design changes by companies like Apple and Google have disabled the method traditionally used to track open rates.

With over 80% of email being read on mobile devices, usually through Apple or Google email applications on iOS or Android, open rates are unfortunately now completely wrong in many cases and cannot be relied on.

Consequently, whilst open rates will continue to be reported in Targeted Email, we recommend that you do not make decisions on based on the performance of open rates.

Click Rates 

Click rates are a measure of how many times links were clicked in the emails you’ve sent. This is a great way to measure how effective your email content is.

Click rates will vary massively depending on what you’re asking someone to do - a fundraising email might get between 0.5% and 2% click rates and be considered a success - but a survey email might get 10% and be a flop.

Track your open rates by what you’re asking someone to do and use this to compare fundraising emails to other fundraising emails, and survey emails to other surveys. 

Unsubscribe rates 

Unsubscribe rates are a measure of how many people no longer wanted to get your emails after being sent one.

It’s rare to have an email where nobody unsubscribes, especially with a large email list - and you shouldn’t worry too much about a small number of unsubscribes. 0.1% to 0.2% is normal. Anything over 0.4% is high and anything over 1% should be concerning - unless this is the first time you’re emailing people.