Once we've sent an email campaign out for you, you need to log in to your dashboard to view your results. The key things you are looking at initially are your open rates and click-thru rates.

What do these mean?

The open rate is the number of people who have opened your email. The click-thru number is the number of people who have both opened it and clicked one of the links.

How do we record opens? (and why the number can be skewed)

Every email we send out on your behalf adds a tiny bit of code that tells us the email has been opened. This all worked great until email clients (Outlook, Gmail, Apple mail etc.) started to block this tracking code.

This means that someone can open and read your email, but the code we added gets blocked, so we don't get told about the email being opened. Therefore your open rate can be recorded as lower than it was. A tell-tale sign of this is that your click rate is higher than your open rate.

We recently had a B2B client who got an open rate of 6% but a click-thru rate of 9%. This is technically impossible, as it's saying 9% of people clicked a link in an email, while only 6% of recipients opened it! So somehow, 3% clicked a link without opening the email! Clearly, impossible.

So nowadays, your open rates should be considered as the minimum number of people who opened your email instead of the exact number.

This problem is more widespread with business-to-business (B2B) campaigns, as corporate mail servers tend to block more tracking codes.

What are typical open rates?

This is a hard one to be definitive about. But let's give it a try.

First, you need to factor in the type of list you are using: opt-in or cold. By that, we mean an opt-in list is one where your recipients have specifically requested to receive your newsletters. Whereas cold lists are those that are purchased or scraped from your database. These people have not requested to hear from you, so they are not expecting your newsletter.

Then you need to separate B2B (business to business) list from B2C (business to consumers). Typically B2C lists get far higher rates than B2B.

Let's try to put some numbers to these...

B2B cold list (purchased lists etc.): The average open rate is 6%. B2B opt-in lists: The average is 15%. B2C Cold list: The average is 14%. B2C: Opt-in: The average is 24%.

As you can see, there are some massive differences there. And might make you reconsider spending thousands on a new cold (purchased) list.

But you need to consider that purchased lists tend to be very large, 5,000, 10,000, or even 20,000. So while you may get few opens in terms of overall percentage, you will get a large number of eyeballs on your newsletter content.

Summary: Getting someone from a purchased/cold list to open your email is tough!

How to improve your open rates

Subject Lines

One of the most important factors when it comes to open rates.

• Short and sweet. People check their email on mobile a lot these days, and you want your subject to stay on a mobile screen. Plus, short means easy to scan. Make it punchy. Your contact should be able to tell exactly what your email is about immediately in the subject.
• Don't be clickbait-y or misleading. If your subject line promises something you don't deliver in your email, people will drop off, ignore further emails from you, and possibly report your email as spam, which you don't want.
• Don't be super salesy. Your email should open up a dialogue, not just hard-sell someone on your product. Your subject line should reflect that.

Consistancy

Nowadays, no one gets an immediate response to a campaign unless it's a real giveaway. Most campaigns are no longer about getting one-hit business but building a rapport with your recipients.

So be consistent. Send a newsletter at roughly the time each week, fortnight or month.

Click-thru rates

Click-thru's (the number of times someone clicks a link in your newsletter) are what email campaigns are all about. 99% of campaigns want the recipient to do something. And that something is almost always to click a link.

If your open rates are high, but your click-thrus are low, it means that the content of your newsletter needs to hit home.

Maybe it's too "salesy". Maybe your presentation is wrong. Or maybe, you are sending the wrong messages to those on your mailing list.

When designing your content, always consider the 80/20 rule. Successful campaigns are about spending 80% of the time giving someone information for free, and then 20% asking for something in return. If your opens are high, but clicks are low, rethink your content.