At Benchmark Email, we know that email marketing is one of the most effective ways to engage with your audience, drive sales, and build relationships. However, we’re even more aware that the success of your email campaigns hinges on understanding how they perform. That’s why our email marketing software provides comprehensive email reporting that gives you insight into various metrics to help you become a better, more innovative, and more effective email marketer. 

In this blog post, we’ll break down each Benchmark Email reporting feature and explain how you can use these insights to improve your email marketing strategy.

1. Opens

What It Is: The opens metric indicates how many recipients have opened your email. This is usually tracked using a tiny, invisible image embedded in the email. The image is loaded when the email is opened, and an open is recorded.

Why It Matters: The open rate helps you gauge how compelling your subject line is and how effectively your email captures the initial interest of your recipients. A higher open rate suggests that your subject lines are enticing and your audience is interested in your content.

How to Put It to Use:

• Improve Subject Lines: Experiment with different subject lines to see what resonates best with your audience.
• Send Time Optimization: Analyze open rates to determine the best times to send your emails for maximum engagement.

2. Clicks

What It Is: The clicks metric tracks the number of recipients who clicked on one or more links within your email. This is measured through unique clicks (how many individual recipients clicked) and total clicks (the overall number of clicks).

Why It Matters: Click-through rates show how effective your email content and call-to-actions drive engagement and encourage recipients to take action.

How to Put It to Use:

• Optimize Content: Analyze which links get the most clicks to understand what interests your audience.
• Test CTAs: Experiment with different CTA placements, wording, and designs to improve click-through rates.

3. Bounces

What It Is: Bounces are emails that cannot be delivered to the recipient’s inbox. There are two types of bounces: hard bounces, which are permanent delivery failures due to invalid email addresses, and soft bounces, which are temporary delivery disruptions such as a full inbox or server problems.

Why It Matters: High bounce rates can damage your sender reputation and affect your email deliverability.

How to Put It to Use:

• Clean Your List: Regularly update and clean your email list to remove invalid addresses and reduce bounce rates.
• Monitor Trends: Keep an eye on bounce trends to identify potential issues with your email delivery.

4. Unsubscribed

What It Is: The unsubscribed metric shows the number of recipients who have opted out of your email list after receiving a specific email.

Why It Matters: Monitoring unsubscribe rates helps you grasp how your content lands with your audience and whether your emails meet their expectations.

How to Put It to Use:

• Assess Content Relevance: High unsubscribe rates may indicate that your content is irrelevant or not engaging your audience. Reevaluate your content strategy to better align with their interests.
• Segmentation: Segment your email list to send more targeted and personalized content, reducing the likelihood of recipients unsubscribing.

5. Unopens

What It Is: Unopens are the number of recipients who did not open your email. This metric helps you understand the portion of your audience that didn’t engage with your email in any way.

Why It Matters: Many unopened emails can indicate issues with your subject line, sender name, or overall email strategy.

How to Put It to Use:

• Test Subject Lines: Try various different subject lines to see which ones result in higher open rates.
• Re-engagement Campaigns: Develop re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers to regain their attention.

6. Hourly Performance

What It Is: Hourly performance shows how your email performs at different times throughout the day. This metric tracks opens and clicks by the hour, providing insights into when your audience is most active.

Why It Matters: Understanding when your audience will most likely engage with your emails can help you optimize your send times for maximum impact.

How to Put It to Use:

• Send Time Optimization: Schedule your emails to be sent when your audience is most active based on hourly performance data.
• A/B Testing: Conduct A/B tests to determine the best send times for different segments of your audience.

7. Abuse Complaints

What It Is: Abuse complaints, or spam complaints, occur when recipients mark your email as spam. This metric is critical because it directly impacts your sender reputation and deliverability.

Why It Matters: High abuse complaint rates can block your emails or mark them as spam, reducing your overall reach and effectiveness.

How to Put It to Use:

• Review Content: Ensure your emails are relevant and valuable and meet the expectations set during the subscription process.
• Respect Frequency Preferences: Avoid sending emails too frequently, which can annoy recipients and lead to higher spam complaints.
• Ensure Compliance: Follow email marketing best practices and legal requirements, such as including a visible unsubscribe link and honoring unsubscribe requests promptly.

Reading and interpreting your email reports in Benchmark Email is essential for understanding the performance of your campaigns and making the right decisions that will improve your email marketing strategy. By closely monitoring these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your audience’s behavior and preferences.

Before You Go….

We recommend the following tips for ultimate email marketing effectiveness: 

• Continuously Test and Optimize: Regularly test different components of your emails to determine what works best for your audience.
• Segment Your Audience: Use segmentation to send more targeted and personalized emails, improving engagement and reducing unsubscribes and spam complaints.
• Maintain a Clean Email List: Regularly update and clean your email list to reduce bounce rates and maintain a high sender reputation.
• Focus on Quality Content: Ensure that your emails provide value to your recipients, keeping them engaged and less likely to unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.

By leveraging the detailed reports provided by Benchmark Email, you can refine your email marketing strategy, enhance your deliverability, and achieve better results from your campaigns.