Learn how to interpret campaign reports
For most of the questions that pop up during the creation of your campaign, the answer is “Know your audience and what they respond to”. And you can get to know your audience a lot better via your campaign reports.
It is true that no two email campaigns are the same, and therefore it is also true that no two campaign reports are the same. Reports include helpful overviews, maps, and comparisons.
This article will tell you about the most important metrics, however, remember to always look at a report behind the filter of what matters most to your business. We encourage you to get familiar with your reports and use them in your own way to stay on top of your game.
Know what you are looking for
When you are looking at your campaign reports, your statistics will tell you what you need to stick to, what you need to change and where you need to improve in the future.
The first thing you need to know is that your report is generated automatically as soon as your campaign is launched. Therefore, the numbers you see initially will change.
You will learn more about your campaign from differences than you will from similarities. When you are reading your report, pay attention to outliers. For example, if your messages have been opened equally as much on mobile screens as they have been on desktop, that does not give you a lot of information about how to improve. However, if you notice that your contacts are two times as likely to open your message in the morning rather than in the afternoon, that already tells you what your preference should be about when to send your campaign.
CTR
Amount of clicks per amount of opens. You will find the click-through ratio in the Ratios section of your report. It is an indicator of how compelling your messages are. It compares the number of clicks on your links, compared to the number of opens of your emails. For example, if the CTR for the campaign is 33%, that basically means only a third of the contacts that opened your message actually were tempted enough to click on a link.
Notice that in your report, you will see a comparison between the CTR of the current campaign and the CTR of your account – i.e. your average CTR. That will give you an idea about how this campaign is doing compared to others you have launched.
Analysing your clicks is essential for your business. To start off, they are more reliable than opens. We can track an open if someone downloads your images (which Gmail does automatically) or if they click on a link. If they read your email without images enabled or clicking on something, you won't find them under the opens in your report. Clicks however can be analysed in a number of ways.
The absolute number of clicks shows the volume of direct traffic to a website, and allows your email to be compared to other traffic sources and campaigns outside of email.Total and unique clicks can be presented as a percentage of delivered and opened messages, and show the relevance of the content to targeted recipients.Total clicks as a percentage of unique clicks (click quotient) is also used to measure how many times each user has clicked. Clicks can be used to get up-to-date preference data on a subscriber's interests and needs, which may have changed a lot since they registered to receive emails, allowing you to further improve your audiences and content.
Open ratio
This ratio will tell you how many of the contacts actually opened the emails you have sent them. With it, you will learn if your subject line is effective. Also look for people who opened your email multiple times. This also gives you an idea on the quality or importance of your content.
Similarly to CTR, here you can also compare the ratio of the current campaign to the typical ratio for your business.
Overview
In your Overview, you will find the most important metrics of your campaign. ( Remember to always click on the arrow next to the metric and click on Details for the full data.) The number of Bounces will tell you if you need to clean your contact list or segment. You can compare the number of opens to unique opens to discover how many times your contacts went back to your message for another look. Pay attention to the number of opens in a browser - If it is too large, there might be issues with your email message. You want to keep the unsubscriptions at a minimum. You will see how many this campaign brought on in the report. ‘Marked as spam by the receiver’ will tell you if your content is perceived as harmful or unwanted.
Link map
In the link map, you will discover a message preview of your campaign with the click rates of all of your links superimposed over the respective hyperlink locations. Make sure to adapt your link tracking for duplicate links to get even more info out of this report.
Email clients
The Email clients will tell you more about the devices of your contacts. For example, mobile device users are more likely to appreciate a message with more images or shorter content.