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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
