• by Jordan Ayan , August 6, 2008

The international community is gearing up for the summer Olympics which start Friday, and while right now media attention is focused on the air quality in China and last minute travel snafus, in less than a week the focus will shift to the numbers. What was the score? How fast was the meet?  Did he beat the competitor from another country by a fraction of a second or more?  At the Olympic level, athletes are world-class and the very best is often only better by a thousandth of a second, or a hundredth of a point.  Every athlete however, knows which numbers count.

While email marketing is by no means an Olympic sport, good email marketers know which numbers are important and focus on the ones that make for winning campaigns.  It is that focus that separates amateurs from professionals.  So what are the "Olympic" numbers that a good email marketer should focus on, and what can be ignored?

Important numbers include:

Conversions - The number that probably counts more than any other.  This is different for every marketer, but it is the true measure of what you ultimately want to have happen (purchase, subscription, download, donation, etc).

Click Rate - Along with the conversion rate in a campaign, the click rate is a true indicator of the level of interest in the message.  

Bounces - Bounces tell you something about the quality of your list and are a good indicator if there is a problem.  Most marketers ignore bounces, but if there is a change in your bounce rate, something is amiss.

Unsubscribes - If this number starts to rise, you are missing the mark.   Remember what you have read here and elsewhere about relevancy.  When people unsubscribe, you are usually missing the relevancy mark or you have greatly offended a segment of your market.


Unimportant numbers include:

List size - Size does matter, but most marketers put way too much emphasis on it and therefore are afraid to prune their list.  Work on growing your list with quality email addresses.  Also, get rid of the dead wood.  If people do not seem to be opening your email, send them a message inviting them to "click here if you want to remain on the list."  They may have images turned off and are not registering as an open.  If so, this technique will keep them on the list.  Otherwise, you are wasting time and effort mailing to people who just don't want to hear from you.

Open Rate - This number is just not relevant the way it used to be.  With the staggering number of email recipients who have images turned off in their email client, this number is probably dropping, and doesn't tell you much anymore.

Total Opens - You can send 100 emails and have only one person open it, yet register 100 total opens.  This can happen if that one person scrolls back and forth across your message in their preview pane 100 times.  Therefore, this number is meaningless.  Some ESPs still report this as the "open" rate.  Ensure that you are looking at the Open Rate, not Total Opens.

Just like the Olympic athlete, learn to focus on what is important, and then measure.  Act on what you learn and fine-tune your performance.  You may not get a gold medal, but you will get results.

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