How to analyse your news­let­ters with email tracking

Creating a news­let­ter is one of the most important dis­cip­lines in e-mail marketing enabling busi­nesses to stay in regular contact with their customers. But without analyzing an e-mail campaign, you can only guess how suc­cess­ful it is. This can be done with a series of e-mail tracking programs for news­let­ter analysis. E-mail analytics programs will let you know whether a news­let­ter has been opened by sub­scribers. It’s also possible to see whether the news­let­ters prompted readers to then visit the site, and even whether they completed a trans­ac­tion on it.

In online marketing, it makes sense to set a precise target for each campaign and then check whether it has been achieved. Analysing e-mail marketing campaigns such as news­let­ters or e-mails (the dif­fer­ence between these types of direct marketing is explained in our article on customer retention is hard to achieve without the correct tools. If you decide to promote certain products from your online store in your news­let­ter, but the campaign is not ac­com­pan­ied by e-mail tracking, you won’t be able to estimate how much influence the news­let­ter has had on sales figures. Even if the number of products bought increases after the ad­vert­ising campaign, you can’t say for certain whether this is due to the news­let­ter. Other factors could be re­spons­ible for the increase in sales figures, such as other marketing campaigns for the same product, or a change in the state of the market. Without a basic check on how the news­let­ter is per­form­ing, you won’t obtain any insight into how future e-mail marketing measures could be improved. News­let­ter tracking, as well as being used to un­der­stand the actions of different e-mail re­cip­i­ents, can also be used for op­tim­ising future news­let­ters. In e-mail marketing, tracking is prac­tic­ally one of the basic re­quire­ments for deeper news­let­ter analysis, and has proven to be very suc­cess­ful. E-mail analytics pro­grammes collect specific key per­form­ance in­dic­at­ors (KPIs) through e-mail tracking. These key figures or KPIs can be used to determine the success of marketing campaigns. In the case of news­let­ter tracking, this is primarily achieved by measuring certain e-mail actions (such as opening them or clicking on embedded links). By using tracking tech­no­lo­gies and other tools, KPIs can be collected.

To evaluate e-mail marketing campaigns, a number of very specific KPIs have proven to be reliable. The following in­dic­at­ors are always of interest, since they measure features that are found in every news­let­ter – re­gard­less of an e-mail’s content.

• Delivery rate: e-mails don’t always reach every address on the mailing list, es­pe­cially when it comes to news­let­ters with lots of sub­scribers. If an e-mail can’t be delivered, the sender ideally receives a bounce message, which can be used to work out the 'bounce rate' (the portion of mails that can’t be delivered). This meas­ure­ment helps the sender to calculate the news­let­ter’s delivery rate.

• Opening rate: if an e-mail reaches a recipient’s inbox, it doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily mean that it will be opened. However, tracking tech­no­logy that operates with a tracking pixel can let you know whether the recipient has opened the mail. The opening rate can then be de­term­ined by comparing it with the delivery rate.

• Click rate: the aim of a news­let­ter is to encourage the recipient to click on at least one link. Clicking on the link can lead the user to a website’s online store, to an article about the website, to a company or artist’s video, etc. The click rate measures the number of times the links in the news­let­ter are clicked on.

• Un­sub­scribe rate: a news­let­ter must offer the recipient the option to opt out of the dis­tri­bu­tion list. The un­sub­scribe rate provides in­form­a­tion on how many sub­scribers opt out of receiving the news­let­ter. If you compare this figure with the amount of new sub­scribers and the delivery rate, you can work out how many potential customers are happy to receive the news­let­ter.

In general, it can be said that a KPI is always dependent on the marketer’s goals and the cir­cum­stances of the news­let­ter. Those carrying out a news­let­ter campaign can create strict economic ex­pect­a­tions and hope for higher sales numbers when it comes to the product. You can find out whether the news­let­ter campaign has paid off by looking at sales and Return on In­vest­ment (ROI), which are used to determine the balance between ex­pendit­ure and revenue. In addition to monetary reactions from sub­scribers, news­let­ters can also target key figures, such as sub­scrip­tions on an online platform or downloads.

It’s also possible to obtain data on the un­sub­scribe rate or the bounce rate by using specific tracking tools. This is because in­form­a­tion on whether a sub­scriber has opted out of the news­let­ter, or an e-mail hasn’t been delivered, can be found directly in the sender’s inbox. If you want to keep track of how re­cip­i­ents actually interact with a news­let­ter, you need to employ ad­di­tion­al tech­niques.

• Tracking pixel: an imagine element used to track the opening rate of a news­let­ter. The tracking pixel is tiny (often just 1 x 1 pixel), is trans­par­ent, and is in­teg­rated into a news­let­ter. As soon as an e-mail with a tracking pixel is opened, a message is sent back to the news­let­ter creator’s mail server. This can only happen if the recipient’s e-mail program doesn’t block the automatic down­load­ing of images. If this is not the case, the tracking pixel can determine a lot more than just whether the e-mail has been opened or not; the ap­prox­im­ate time and location of the recipient (via geo targeting) can also be as­cer­tained.

• Tracking link: the click rate is re­gistered by tracking links. Similar to the tracking pixel, this link sends in­form­a­tion to the exit server through which the news­let­ter was sent. Each news­let­ter link can be recorded in­di­vidu­ally.

There are various pro­grammes available to check the success of your e-mail marketing activ­it­ies. Many of them offer packages with numerous functions. E-mail marketing software is included in ap­plic­a­tions such as MailChimp, News­let­ter2Go, Clev­er­Reach (all are free when sending a low volume of news­let­ters), as well as pro­grammes such as GetRe­sponse and Cam­paign­Mon­it­or. These tools include the following features:

• An editor for producing news­let­ters
• The pos­sib­il­ity of sending the news­let­ter directly through the programme
• An analysis of the campaigns being carried out
• Recipient list ad­min­is­tra­tion

In addition, the above­men­tioned pro­grammes have an A/B testing function. With this, two different test versions of a news­let­ter (at least) can be sent to a pre-de­term­ined per­cent­age of sub­scribers. Different criteria (KPIs such as the highest possible opening rate or the click-through rate of an embedded link) are set as targets, after which different versions are sent out. After analysing the tracking results, the version that faired the best (regarding the pre-defined per­form­ance in­dic­at­ors) is chosen and then sent to the rest of the news­let­ter sub­scribers. A/B testing is a useful feature if the number of sub­scribers is sig­ni­fic­ant enough to produce a good result. This method allows the news­let­ter to be quickly adapted to the pref­er­ences of a target group.

Every pro­fes­sion­al e-mail tracking programme measures the click rate, delivery rate, un­sub­scribe rate, and opening rate of a news­let­ter (taking the bounce rate into account). In addition to these ele­ment­ary tracking features, News­let­ter2Go, Clev­er­Reach, and MailChimp also offer the following features:

• Click maps or heat maps to il­lus­trate the data obtained
• Geo targeting for the loc­al­isa­tion and as­sign­ment of the re­cip­i­ents
• Support from Google Analytics

In addition, most e-mail marketing tracking pro­grammes have various other features that help with the analysis. Starting with simple functions, such as being able to auto­mat­ic­ally create print versions of an analysis, through to pre­view­ing news­let­ters on different sized (mobile) displays: depending on the ap­plic­a­tion you are using, there are many options available for your news­let­ter analysis. A com­par­is­on of the best e-mail marketing software with more detailed in­form­a­tion of the different functions can be found in our article.

Apart from specific e-mail marketing software, there are also tools and plugins for news­let­ter tracking. With Google Analytics you can easily see whether re­cip­i­ents have opened a news­let­ter. Some WordPress plugins, such as Tribulant News­let­ters and SendPress News­let­ters, are more extensive. MailChimp, News­let­ter2Go, and other providers also offer specific ex­ten­sions for WordPress.

In a normal case, the values collected via news­let­ter tracking are not absolute (as is often the case in stat­ist­ics), but rather show tend­en­cies, since only the success of part of the dis­patched news­let­ter can be fully analysed. This is due to the fact that certain e-mail pro­grammes prevent tracking pixels from being used. Users whose e-mail pro­grammes prevent this kind of tracking are therefore not included in the stat­ist­ics. However, other factors can also falsify results: for example, a user could open the news­let­ter several times, so that this in­form­a­tion is recorded each time as a new action when passed onto the e-mail analytics database. The same applies to the click rate.

Ad­di­tion­ally, results should not be seen as defin­it­ive values. Just because a news­let­ter has been opened, doesn’t mean that its content has been read. Just because a link has been clicked on, doesn’t mean that the in­form­a­tion has been properly read or taken into account. There are many factors you should bear in mind when analysing results. When it comes to the values, the quality of the results should be assessed real­ist­ic­ally, keeping the factors that distort the results in mind.

After analysing and tracking your news­let­ter via an e-mail analytics programme, you should now have a col­lec­tion of data and stat­ist­ics. The final step is to draw correct con­clu­sions from the results. However, only sig­ni­fic­ant results should be used for the basis of any op­tim­isa­tion: if the figures are quite small compared to the total (which may be the case in A/B testing), the data obtained won’t be very rep­res­ent­at­ive. However, if the sample is large enough, this is a solid basis for op­tim­isa­tion. Some of the problems that can be tackled, include:

• Low opening rate: the e-mail’s subject is often the reason behind a low opening rate. If it isn’t in­form­at­ive enough or too long, it won’t peak the recipient’s interest enough to be opened. Further reasons for a low opening rate could be the lack of sender in­form­a­tion – it should be obvious to the sub­scriber who the e-mails are from. It could also be that you’re sending the news­let­ter out at the wrong time.

• High un­sub­scribe rate: if you send out too many news­let­ters, it could come across as annoying. Sub­scribers also won’t ap­pre­ci­ate it if the content isn’t optimally prepared or the wrong topic is focused on. Many news­let­ter ap­plic­a­tions offer users the option of giving a reason for un­sub­scrib­ing. This can give provide insight into a high un­sub­scribe rate.

• Low click rate: first you should check whether all links can be re­cog­nised as such: if a user doesn’t see it’s a link, they obviously won’t click on it. If the links are indeed visible, it could be that there are too many of them. Instead of linking everything in your news­let­ter, it makes more sense to add links that are best suited to your campaign goals.

• Low con­ver­sion rate: even with an un­sat­is­fact­ory number of con­ver­sions, you should make sure that you haven’t ad­vert­ised too many offers in your e-mail. Keep in mind that your sub­scribers do not want to spend an infinite amount of time searching through a news­let­ter and all its links. In­cent­ives are a good way to get readers in­ter­ested, alongside being per­son­al­ised and quick to read.

If you were able to determine the problems with your news­let­ter and have rectified them, you should then carry out an A/B test to determine whether the changes have worked or whether you need to make any further changes. Sometimes patience is required: getting your news­let­ter just right can take time – e-mail tracking, news­let­ter analysis, results analysis, and resulting op­tim­isa­tion should be built on each another.

Make sure you don’t rush into making con­clu­sions from the given stat­ist­ics and also don’t over-interpret the findings. Some in­dic­at­ors point to non-rep­res­ent­at­ive results – a low delivery rate versus a large bounce rate, or a very low sample in an A/B test. Knowing the limits of news­let­ter tracking is also important, for example, that not every e-mail programme allows tracking pixels to be loaded and that this can falsify results.

If you are cautious and are able to generate mean­ing­ful stat­ist­ics with the analysis, e-mail marketing pro­grammes and as­so­ci­ated ana­lyt­ic­al methods prove helpful. The resulting im­prove­ments should have a no­tice­ably positive effect on the success of your future e-mail marketing campaigns.