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Mastering
Reporting for
Smarter Email
Marketing
with
www.informz.com
Table of Contents
03 | Introduction
04 | Email Metrics 101
06 | Reporting on Deliverability
07 | Discovering Your Mobile Audience
08 | Engagement Status
09 | Determining the Right Email Frequency
10 | Defining Your Return on Investment
11 | Most-Asked Email Marketing Questions, Answered
12 | About Informz
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Benchmarking Data for Strategic Email Marketing
In our many years of email marketing experience, we’ve discovered that most email marketers fall into one of two
categories: those who analyze, scour, and dive deep into reports for every email or campaign; and those who look at
reporting as an afterthought. Sometimes you’re juggling so many tasks that your email marketing reports get left to
the wayside, but in doing this, you’re missing the opportunity for improving metrics, understanding your audience, and
creating better messages.
Here at Informz we consider ourselves reporting fanatics, and that’s why we’ve built one of the most robust reporting
suites in the industry into our email marketing platform. Anything you could ever want to know (and everything you
didn’t even know you needed to know) about how individual emails and entire campaigns perform is available for
analysis with the click of a button.
This guide will walk you through the basics of different types of reports available, define reporting terminology, and hit
on key areas where reporting will help you refine your emarketing strategy.
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Email Metrics 101
Before diving into more complex areas of measurement, let’s take a look at the most common email
metrics and how we define them at Informz. This information can be found in the Mailing Activity Report.
Sent is the total number of subscribers the mailing was sent to, and reporting allows you to drill down
and see the list of email addresses. You can filter through this list by domain or apply a data format to
see subscriber details like first name and company.
Delivery Rate is the percentage of emails that were not reported back to Informz as bounced or blocked.
Bounce Rate is the percentage of emails that didn’t make it to the inbox because they hard- or
soft-bounced.
Average Email Metrics for Associations:
Average Email Metrics
for Metrics
Associations and Nonprofits: Overall Email Metrics
Overall
Email
100
98.28%
80
60
40
34.04%
18.03%
20
Unique Open Rate is the percentage of delivered emails that were reported back to Informz as opened.
If the text version of an email is read, it is not counted. Likewise, if an HTML email is read with the
images turned off, it is not counted. However, if an email is opened with images off, but a link is clicked,
the email is counted as being opened. This metric only includes unique subscribers, therefore multiple
opens by one subscriber only count once.
Unique Click Rate is the percentage of opened emails clicked by the recipient. Clicking on a link in a
text email is not counted as a click. This metric only includes unique subscribers, therefore multiple clicks
by one subscriber only count once.
Unsubscribe Rate is the total percentage of subscribers that clicked on the unsubscribe link in your
mailing and unsubscribed from the database. The Unsubscribe Report shows who unsubscribed, along
with when and why (if they provided feedback).
0
Delivery Rate
Open Rate
Average Email Metrics for Destination
Average Email Metrics
for Destination Marketing Organizations:
EmailMetrics
Metrics
Marketing
Organizations:
OverallOverall
Email
100
95.20%
80
60
40
32.69%
17.38%
20
0
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Click Rate
Delivery Rate
Open Rate
Click Rate
Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Email Metrics 101
Don’t be overly concerned if your metrics aren’t meeting these benchmarks. Instead, utilize the benchmarking metrics
available in your Mailing Activity report to see where your industry classification stands.
Smarter Email Marketing
If your metrics are below your industry’s benchmarks, here are some suggestions to improve them:
Optimizing Delivery
How clean is your list? Has everyone opted in properly? Have you warmed up your IP address? Read the next section
for more deliverability tips.
Optimizing Opens
Evaluate your envelope properties (subject line and friendly from), subscriber list, and delivery method. Use A/B split
testing to experiment with what works best for your subscribers, and use targeted subject lines to appeal directly to
the recipient. Get more tips here.
Optimizing Clicks
Provide readers with clear and accessible opportunities to take action in your emails by hyperlinking text, images,
and buttons. The easier it is to click, the higher click rates tend to be.
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Reporting on Deliverability
Regularly monitoring the delivery rates of your messages will help you
recognize when issues arise. A decline in your delivery rate should trigger
a response by you. If left unchecked, it could cause major issues. Delivery
rates can also provide you with a clear picture on the quality of your list,
and whether or not it’s time for a cleanup.
Smarter Email Marketing
High delivery rates matter. Have you ever thought about the impact of your
delivery rates on not just your email marketing results, but your bottom line?
Let’s say you use email to deliver membership renewal notices.
Here are a few key deliverability reporting terms you’ll want to examine in
your reports:
Soft Bounces: A soft bounce is an email that was undeliverable due to any
of the following: the mail server was down, the mail server was not accepting
mail at the time, or the subscriber’s inbox was full.
Hard Bounces: A hard bounce is an email that was undeliverable due to any
of the following: the domain does not exist, the domain does not have a mail
server, or the email address does not exist on the domain.
Blocked: These are subscribers who have blocked your emails from reaching
their inbox. The email may have been blocked by anti-spam software installed
on their ISP’s or company’s mail server, or by anti-spam software installed on
the individual subscriber’s computer.
Repeated Bouncers: Repeated bouncers are email addresses that have
consecutively hard bounced four times or soft bounced seven times. Once
the subscriber becomes a repeated bouncer, Informz no longer sends emails
to that subscriber in order to protect clients from delivery issues. ISPs block
senders based on bad email lists—which consists of emails that are no
longer active—since spammers are typically guilty of this type of behavior.
We recommend that email addresses in the repeated bouncer category be
unsubscribed from the database.
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Intended Recipients
Deliverability Rate
Delivered
Click Through Rate
Conversion Rate
AVG Membership
Revenue
Good
Deliverability
25,000
98%
24,500
5%
0.33%
$400
$32,340
Poor
Deliverability
25,000
81%
20,250
5%
0.33%
$400
$26,730
In this example, a 17% difference in deliverability rate could mean a 21% loss
in revenue for your organization. That’s a lot! Delivery rates affect much more
than just email performance.
Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Discovering Your Mobile Audience
Reports are your key to uncovering how many of your subscribers have gone
mobile. According to our 2014 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report,
44.70% of readers are opening emails on a mobile device, while Destination
Marketing Organizations have fewer mobile readers at 33.49%.
In the Mailing Activity Report, there are a few ways to find your mobile
readers. On the Snapshot tab, you can easily see what percentage of your
subscribers used a mobile device. On the Details tab, look at Opens > Mobile
Clients to see a detailed breakdown of the devices your mobile readers are
using. You can even drill down and see the exact subscribers using mobile
devices.
Open Results by Email Client
Open Results
by Email
Client Type for Associations and Nonprofits
Type
for
Associations
Open Results by Email Client Type for
Open Results by Email Client
Type for Destination
Marketing Organizations
Destination
Marketing
Organizations
8.52%
Other
9.34%
Other
8.01%
Web Client
14.82%
Web Client
49.16%
Desktop
44.70%
Mobile
31.96%
Desktop
33.49%
Mobile
Smarter Email Marketing
If the majority of your readers are using mobile devices instead of desktop
computers to check email, the design of your email should be optimized.
A two-column layout using size 8 font isn’t going to be easy to read and
navigate. To simplify your design, use a one-column layout with larger fonts,
easily clickable links, and lots of white space. To take your design to the
next level and ensure readers using any device are in the clear, try responsive
design. Your reports are your guide for email design.
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Snapshot Tab
Details Tab
Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Engagement Status
Member engagement can be a tricky thing to measure because it doesn’t
always look the same. What does an engaged member look like to you?
Maybe they attend your events, or purchase books and attend educational
seminars. Maybe they’re a fan and follower on your social media pages and
perhaps regularly open, click, and share your enewsletters. It’s easy to pick
out those engaged email subscribers, because they show up in your key email
marketing metrics. But what about the others?
When subscribers stop opening and clicking on your emails, it’s not a good
sign. When subscribers never open your emails? That’s even worse. We like
to call these people “emotionally unsubscribed.” These people are not just
ignoring your content: they are hurting your email marketing metrics, chipping
away at your email block, and actually affect your deliverability.
Smarter Email Marketing
Consider running a re-engagement campaign to target your emotionally
unsubscribed readers, and send them quality content that exemplifies the
value of being on your list. Survey subscribers to see exactly what they’re
interested in, or encourage them to update their mailing preferences. At
the end of your campaign, suppress those who don’t engage; they’re holding
you back!
The National Kidney Foundation utilized Informz reports and reengaged over
13,000 subscribers and increased open rates by 155% and click-thru rates by
14%. Read their success story here.
To view this report, go to the Mailing Summary Report > Analyze Subscribers
> Subscribers Emailed & Opened and take a look at the Unique Subscribers
Opened chart.
In this example, 59.4% of subscribers have never
opened an email. Is it worth sending to them?
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Determining the Right Email Frequency
How many emails should I be sending? How much email is too much email?
How do I keep members informed and engaged while avoiding inbox fatigue?
Every email marketer wants to know the answers to these questions.
According to the 2014 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report, 70% of
associations send 1–5 emails to members each month. The associations with
the highest open rates also tended to fall in the 1–5 emails per month range.
Smarter Email Marketing
Informz Client EDUCAUSE used a combination of analyzing Informz reports
and sending surveys to members to uncover the right frequency for their
association magazine newsletter. They found that by increasing frequency
from once a month to twice a month, their content was receiving more
coverage and engagement, and open and click rates were not harmed by
increasing frequency. Read more about their story here.
Every audience is different, so look to your reports to guide your frequency
questions. The Email Volume Report in the Mailing Summary Report analyzes
how many email touch points you need to make to best engage your audience.
To view this report, go to the Mailing Summary Report > Analyze Subscribers
> Email Volume.
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Defining Your Return on Investment
Measuring return on investment isn’t easy, but in order to make educated decisions about what works and what
doesn’t, calculating your ROI is necessary. In some instances, having hard numbers to prove an email’s effectiveness,
and the revenue it brings in, can make a case for your organization’s email marketing programs.
Smarter Email Marketing
Here’s how some Informz clients are using reports to discover their return on investment.
The American Library Association, an Informz client, used conversion tracking and was able to attribute over six
figures worth of non-dues revenue to their email marketing program. This data not only proved that email was a
successful source of revenue, but also allowed them to reduce the number and frequency of printed materials that
weren’t as effective.
Beta Theta Pi used email marketing as a part of a blended fundraising strategy and raised $300,000 for their annual
fund in just one month. Targeted emails coincided with direct mail asks, social media outreach, and phone-a-thons to hit
donors at ideal times. Email proved to be a critical link in their strategy.
The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) and NAADAC, The Association for Addiction
Professionals, discovered significant ROI through integrated email marketing. GCSAA eliminated 300+ hours of staff
time and saved $38,000 and NAADAC increased membership by 38% in 11 months.
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Your Most-Asked Email Marketing Questions, Answered
The Mailing Summary Report has some pretty snazzy data that might change
the way your team operates. How many times has your marketing department
sat around and discussed the best day and time to send your enewsletter?
How many times have you debated whether or not a subject line was too
long? The Mailing Summary Report takes the guesswork out of these
decisions, and also saves you a lot of time. This report analyzes the data
for you and produces results in an easy-to-read, visual format.
Smarter Email Marketing
The Answer Marketing Questions section of the Mailing Summary Report is
your go-to report when you need a direct answer for the best day to send, best
time to send, best subject line length, etc. Use the results from this report to
help answer your most-asked email marketing questions:
Best Day to Send
Best Time to Send
Best Subject Line Length
Best Number of Recipients
Best Number of Links
Best Mailing Size
The best part? It’s all based on your data—not industry benchmarks—so you
know how to get the best results with your subscribers. Try using the results
from this report on your next campaign.
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014
Email Marketing
Professional Services
Mobile Event App
Our easy-to-use, web-based platform
will help you create highly targeted,
high-performing emails.
Whether it’s outsourced marketing
services or new email marketing
templates you need, we can help.
Engage members before, during,
and after an event with a premium
mobile event app experience.
Informz is a leading provider of digital marketing solutions that help
associations and nonprofits to easily and efficiently engage their members.
Over 1,100 organizations worldwide have chosen Informz and consistently
rank us #1 in client satisfaction.
Request a demo today to discover the power of Informz.
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Mastering Reporting for Smarter Email Marketing with Informz | © Informz, Inc. 2014