The email open rate for email marketing indicates the percentage of recipients who opened the email. For example, if your email open rate is 60%, it means that out of 100 emails sent, 60 were opened by the recipients.
The formula for calculating email open rate is:
In your example, if you sent emails to 100 subscribers and 60 of them were opened, the open rate would be:
A higher open rate generally indicates that your audience is interested in the content of your emails, while a lower open rate may suggest the need for adjustments in your email strategy or content.
The click-through rate is the percentage of people who clicked on a link within your email, but this is calculated based on the number of emails opened rather than the total delivered.
The formula for calculating email click-through rate is:
For example, if out of the 500 emails delivered, 200 were opened, and 25 recipients clicked on a link, the click-through rate would be 12.5% as shown below:
In summary, the click rate considers the total number of emails delivered, while the click-through rate takes into account only the number of emails that were opened. Both metrics provide insights into the engagement and effectiveness of your email campaign, but they focus on different aspects of recipient interaction.
Open rate and click rate are metrics commonly used in email marketing to measure the effectiveness of email campaigns. While they provide valuable insights, it’s important to understand their limitations and factors that can influence their accuracy:
Open Rate:
Accuracy: Open rates are not always completely accurate. They are typically tracked using a small, invisible image (pixel) embedded in the email. If a recipient has images turned off in their email client or if the email client doesn’t load external images by default, the open may not be recorded.
Interpretation: An open is recorded when the tracking pixel is loaded, but it doesn’t guarantee that the recipient has read the email content. Some email clients may automatically load images, leading to false positives.
Click Rate:
Accuracy: Click rates are generally more accurate than open rates. They are recorded when a user clicks on a link within the email. However, some security measures, like link scanning by email clients or antivirus software, may artificially inflate click rates.
Bots and Automated Clicks: Bots or automated systems may click on links, leading to inflated click rates. This is more common in certain industries or regions.
Factors Affecting Accuracy:
Image Loading: If recipients disable automatic image loading in their email client, open rates may be underreported.
Link Scanning: Some security software or email clients may scan links in emails before allowing them to be opened, potentially affecting click rate accuracy.
Bots and Automation: Automated bots, web crawlers, or security systems may interact with emails, influencing both open and click rates.
Alternative Metrics:
Conversion Rates: To get a more comprehensive view of campaign success, consider tracking conversion rates, such as the percentage of recipients who completed a desired action after clicking on a link.
Engagement Metrics: Monitoring metrics like time spent on landing pages or interaction with specific elements can provide deeper insights into user engagement.
In conclusion, open rates and click rates offer valuable insights, but they should be interpreted cautiously, considering potential inaccuracies and external factors. It’s often helpful to use them in conjunction with other metrics for a more comprehensive understanding of your email campaign performance.
Increasing the Click Rate in email marketing involves several strategies focused on improving the content, design, and targeting of your emails.
Here are some effective tactics which you can use in your email marketing:
1. Setting up DKIM, SPF, and DMARCcorrectly
DKIM: Adds a digital signature to your emails, verifying that the email has not been altered and that it truly comes from your domain.
SPF: Allows the domain owner to specify which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on behalf of the domain, helping to prevent spoofing.
DMARC: Aligns SPF and DKIM mechanisms to provide a unified policy for email validation, helping to protect against phishing and spoofing attacks.
2. Create Compelling Subject Lines
Use Personalization: Include the recipient’s name or other personalized information.
Be Clear and Concise: Clearly state the value or benefit of opening the email.
Create a Sense of Urgency: Use phrases like “Limited Time Offer” or “Act Now.”
3. Optimize Email Content
Focus on Quality Content: Provide valuable and relevant information to your audience.
Use Strong CTAs: Include clear and compelling calls-to-action (CTAs).
Keep it Short: Avoid long paragraphs; use bullet points and concise sentences.
4. Personalization and Segmentation
Segment Your Audience: Group your subscribers based on their behavior, preferences, or demographics.
Personalize Emails: Tailor content to each segment to make it more relevant.
5. Improve Email Design
Responsive Design: Ensure your emails look good on all devices.
Visual Appeal: Use high-quality images and a clean layout.
Clear and Clickable CTAs: Make your CTA buttons stand out and easy to click.
6. Clean your Email List
Remove Inactive Subscribers: Identify and remove inactive subscribers regularly who haven’t engaged with your emails over a specific period (e.g., 6 months).
Validate Email Addresses: Use email validation tools to check for syntax errors, domain validity, and mailbox existence.
Use Double Opt-In: Ensure new subscribers confirm their email addresses, reducing the likelihood of invalid addresses.
Implement Re-Engagement Campaigns: Attempt to re-engage inactive subscribers with targeted campaigns. If they don’t respond, consider removing them from your list.
7. Send at the Right Time
Analyze Audience: Analyze your audience’s behavior to determine the best times and days to send your emails.
Email-checking Habits: Consider time zones and typical email-checking habits of your audience.
8. Engage Your Audience
Ask Questions: Encourage replies and interaction.
Include Interactive Elements: Use polls, quizzes, or clickable images.
9. Optimize for Deliverability
Clean Your List: Regularly remove inactive subscribers to maintain a healthy email list.
Avoid Spam Triggers: Be mindful of words and phrases that might trigger spam filters.
Authenticate Your Emails: Use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to improve deliverability.
10. Use Analytics and Feedback
Monitor Performance: Use analytics to track open rates, click rates, and conversions.
Gather Feedback: Ask your subscribers for feedback to understand what they like and dislike.
11. Leverage Behavioral Triggers
Automated Campaigns: Set up automated emails based on user behavior, such as abandoned cart reminders or follow-up emails.
Triggered Emails: Send emails triggered by specific actions, such as a purchase or a sign-up.
12. Provide Incentives
Exclusive Offers: Offer special discounts or promotions to email subscribers.
Free Resources: Provide valuable resources like e-books, guides, or templates.
By implementing these strategies, you can significantly increase your Click Rate and overall effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
Although MailBluster does not generate email tracking by itself, it uses Amazon SES along with Amazon SNS to track all email events.
MailBluster does provide detailed analytics like the number of open rates, click rates, and total email sent, and delivered.
After sending your first campaign through MailBluster, you will find a generated report from your Brand > Reports > View selected Campaign section as shown below:
The following are the metrics shown in the Report section of MailBluster for each campaign.
Here are the short description for all the terms used in the Report section of MailBluster.
Total Sent: This shows the total number of emails sent from MailBluster to the recipients.
Delivered: In the report section, the Delivered refers to the number of emails that are successfully delivered to the recipient’s mail server. The emails can land in the inbox, junk email folder, or even promotional tab of the ESP; however, they will be considered as Delivered. (This option is clickable for further details)
Failed: In the report section, it will show the numbers of recipients or leads who failed to receive the email campaign. (This option is clickable for further details)
Bounced: The Bounced refers to the total number of bounce-back email id for that specific campaign. Only hard bounce are considered as bounced because the recipient’s mail server permanently rejected the email campaign. Soft bounces are only included when Amazon SES fails to deliver the email after retrying for a period of time. (This option is clickable for further details)
Opened: In the reports section, the number of recipients who have opened your campaign in their email client is indicated by Opened. (This option is clickable for further details)
Clicked: In the reports section, Clicked means how many recipients click on any of the links of your campaign. It could one or more links in the email. (This option is clickable for further details)
Open rate: The Open Rate in Report refers to the percentage of recipients who opened an email campaign. It’s a metric used to measure how many people actually opened and viewed the content of an email compared to the total number of emails sent in a campaign. Open rates give insight into the effectiveness of subject lines, sender names, and the overall appeal of the email’s content. Higher open rates generally indicate that the email subject lines and content were engaging enough to prompt recipients to open and view the email. (This option is clickable for further details)
Click rate: The Click Rate in Report refers to the percentage of recipients who clicked on at least one link within an email. It’s a metric used to measure engagement and indicates how effective the content or call-to-action within the email campaign was. A higher click rate generally indicates that the email content was engaging and compelling to the audience. (This option is clickable for further details)
Complained: When someone complains, it means they’ve expressed a negative feedback or formally reported an issue about an email they received. This usually involves marking the email as spam or hitting the report as spam button in their email client. MailBluster keeps a record of the complaint email id for that specific campaign in Report section. (This option is clickable for further details)
Unsubscribed: This shows the total number of users (email id) who have unsubscribed after receiving your campaign. This option is campaign specific. (This option is clickable for further details)
Sell and Revenue: When you create an order based on a campaign, then it will be counted as Sell in campaign report section. And the provided Total Price will be counted as Revenue. (This option is clickable for further details)
Please Note: You will get this dashboard in Report for each email campaign you sent from MailBluster whether you choose the Free Forever Plan or the Unlimited Sending Plan.
In bulk email sending reports, it might seem unusual for the number of clicks to exceed the number of opens, as one would typically expect that an email needs to be opened before it can be clicked.
However, several reasons can explain this discrepancy:
1. Image Blocking: Many email clients block images by default. Open metrics often rely on an invisible tracking pixel embedded in the email. If the images are blocked, the tracking pixel won’t load, and the open won’t be recorded, even if the recipient reads the email and clicks a link.
2. Forwarding: If an email recipient forwards the email to someone else, the forwarded recipient might click a link. The click would be recorded, but if the forwarded recipient didn’t download the tracking pixel, the open wouldn’t be recorded.
3. Link Previews: Some email clients or security software scan emails for malicious links by preloading them. This preloading can register as a click even though the email wasn’t actually opened by the recipient.
4. Bot Activity: Anti-spam bots and security software sometimes click links in emails to check for malicious content. These clicks can be recorded even if the email was never opened by a human.
5. Email Client Restrictions: Certain email clients, especially those used in enterprise environments, may block tracking pixels but not the ability to click on links, resulting in clicks being recorded without corresponding opens.
6. User Interaction Variability: Sometimes users interact with their emails in ways that bypass open tracking but still lead to clicks, such as preview panes that don’t load images but allow link interaction.
If you change any configuration on your Amazon SES Dashboard other than the recommended settings suggested by MailBluster, then MailBluster will not be able to track your email campaigns. You will see error like this.
You may notice this error message in MailBluster as well:
To check whether your AWS Configuration sets are set correctly, you need to sign in to your AWS Console of your AWS Account, then go to Amazon SES > Configuration sets. Click on the mailbluster-31436 (the numbers are generated randomly by AWS).
Click on Event destinations and check whether the status of Event publishing is showing Enabled.
If this is set to Disabled, then you can be sure that your AWS account is missing other configurations that MailBluster creates. If you face issues like this, then it’s best to enter your AWS credentials again in MailBluster by going to your Brand > Settings > AWS page and click the Save connection button. If everything works fine, it will create the necessary configurations in your AWS Account again.
If you need to generate AWS credentials properly in AWS then please follow this guide:Connect MailBluster With Your AWS Account. Be sure to sign in as IAM User in AWS.
According to Amazon SES’s best practices, it’s recommended to keep your bounce rate below 5% and your complaint rate below 0.1% to ensure optimal email deliverability. Exceeding these thresholds can lead to temporary suspension of your account’s ability to send emails.
To lower your bounce rate, clean up your email list using third-party email verification tools like Never Bounce, Zero Bounce, etc. These tools filter out bounced emails without sending real emails to them. A free tool called Super Email Validator is also available. For more information, refer to this: Clean Your Email List.
To remove bounced leads from your previous campaign, follow this guide: Remove Bounced Leads.
By cleaning your email list and following the above instructions, you should see improved deliverability for your marketing emails.
To check the Report of your last Campaign, you need to go to your Brand > Reports > Select the last Campaign based on “Send time” and then click on it. You will see the overview of the Campaign Report of that specific campaign.
If you want to see detailed information of each of the tabs inside the overview, just click the individual tab.
For example, we have shown here for the Delivered.
Here it shows how many leads (email addresses) received this campaign. You can Export the leads from here as well if your user role is Admin. The same goes for other campaign reports.
You need to pass campaign ID at the time of creating order. You can use query parameters with a link for this purpose. When you create a campaign, you get a campaign ID which is shown in the screenshot. Then with this ID you can create a link like this: https://example.com/product/ball?c=12345 which will be placed into your campaign email. When an order is created, you get the value from URL and pass this query parameter value as campaign ID. When calling the Order API, send the Campaign ID. You will find all the details about Order API here: https://app.mailbluster.com/api-doc/orders
In Campaign Report, the Sell refers to the total number of products sold, while Revenue reflects the total income generated from the sale of those products under the campaign.
The Revenue and Sell in Campaign Report is useful when you use MailBluster developer API for Products and Orders.
After sending the campaign, you can track the people who have unsubscribed in your campaign report, as shown in the screenshot below:
Once someone unsubscribes from your leads list, they won’t receive any future emails, even if you send another campaign. MailBluster automatically ensures that unsubscribed leads are excluded from all of your future campaigns.
As far as we know, MailBluster uses Amazon SES along with Amazon SNS to track email events. When an open or click occurs, SNS sends the information to MailBluster, which then displays it. Essentially, AWS handles the tracking, while MailBluster stores and displays the data.
However, email open rates are never completely accurate, not just for AWS but for all providers. Opens are tracked by embedding a transparent image in the email and tracking the URL of this image. Most ESPs (Email Service Providers) don’t display images by default, which prevents open tracking. Gmail, however, uses an image proxy server to protect user information and sometimes opens the email before the actual recipient does, causing a false open event.
Therefore, accurately tracking open events is impossible. This explanation is based on our observations and experience. It might not be 100% accurate, as Gmail and other services do not disclose their algorithms. Nonetheless, this seems to be the most logical explanation based on what we’ve observed.
To count the number of payments you received and revenue from your email campaign, you need to use MailBluster Developer API. Through developer API, it is possible to create order. If you have created an order based on a campaign, then it will be counted as sell in MailBluster Campaign Report section. And the provided Total Price will be counted as Revenue. Learn details about Order API from here: https://app.mailbluster.com/api-doc/orders
The following screenshare has been taken from MailBluster Reports showing Revenue and Sell of an order of a certain campaign.
When an email fails to deliver, it can fail due to various reasons such as:
1.Permanent Bounce/ Hard bounce: This occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to an invalid email address or a non-existent domain. In such cases, the email server considers the bounce as permanent and won’t attempt further deliveries to that address.
2. Temporary Delivery Issue/Soft bounce: This might happen due to a full recipient mailbox, the recipient server being temporarily down, or other transient issues. In these cases, MailBluster retry sending the email after a certain period.
The rest of your emails might face temporary Delivery Issue/Soft bounce event.
When a soft bounce event happens, SES continuously retries to deliver your email for 12 hours before giving up. There is no limit of retries during this 12-hour interval and as long as the ISP recovers, your email will be delivered.
Some subscribers with strict security settings, such as those using .edu or .gov domains, might generate automatic opens or clicks when you email them. This occurs because spam filters preload links and images to ensure their safety. You can verify this by adding a hidden link in one of your email campaigns and seeing if it gets clicked.
If your audience frequently uses strict domains (such as .edu, .gov, etc.), we recommend asking them to provide their personal email addresses when they subscribe for newsletter/email campaign. If you use online forms to collect subscribers, you could add text suggesting that subscribers use their personal email addresses instead of their business email addresses.
To report email abuse, such as spam, phishing, or other malicious activity, you can follow these steps:
1. Identify the Email Provider:
Check the domain of the sender’s email address (the part after the “@” symbol) to determine which email service provider they use (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook).
2. Report to the Email Provider:
Gmail:
Open the email and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
Select “Report phishing” or “Report spam.”
Yahoo:
Open the email and click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
Select “Report phishing” or “Report spam.”
Outlook:
Open the email and click the “Junk” button in the toolbar.
