If you scroll through your e-mail inbox right this second, how many marketing e-mails do you come across? If you’re anything like me, and refuse to clean out your inbox, probably hundreds. It’s safe to assume that e-mail marketing is here to stay.

But from a business standpoint, in a world full of flooded inboxes, how do you determine if your e-mail marketing efforts are making a powerful impact? By understanding how to decipher analytics. There are three metrics that you should keep an eye on.

Open Rate

Of course, you’ll be interested in learning how many people open your e-mails. But, what constitutes as an “open” in the e-mail marketing world?

An open rate is calculated by dividing the number of unique opens (only once) by the number of e-mails sent, minus the number of bounces.

It’s important to note that not garnering a high percentage for an open rate isn’t uncommon. In fact, the industry average of open rates for marketing and advertising e-mails is a mere 17.8 percent (MailChimp). In reality, anything between 10–20 percent is revered as successful.

Click Through Rate

So, you’ve noticed that your recipients have opened your e-mail, but have they engaged with any of the content? This is where a click through rate comes into play.

A click through rate is the percentage of recipients that have clicked on any link in your e-mail message. It’s calculated by dividing the number of unique clicks (only once) by the total number of e-mails delivered.

Much like open rates, it’s advantageous to recognize that a high click through rate is quite uncommon. Typically, they’re going to be even lower than your open rate. The industry average for marketing and advertising e-mails is only 1.9 percent (MailChimp). With it being so low, anything between 0.5–1 percent is doing the trick.

Bounces

When it comes to bounces, there are two types—a soft bounce and a hard bounce.

• Soft bounce: Indicates a temporary delivery issue to an address, including: recipient mailbox is full, recipient e-mail server is down or offline, or e-mail message is too large.
• Hard bounce: Indicates a permanent reason an e-mail cannot be delivered to an address, including: recipient e-mail address does not exist, domain name does not exist, or recipient e-mail server has blocked delivery.

Bounces are bound to happen. The industry average of bounce rates for marketing and advertising e-mails is around 8 percent (MailChimp).

While it’s not the only factor, analytics play a large role in building an effective e-mail marketing strategy. Continue to refine both your content and mailing list, and try not to let the numbers get you down!