When reading your newsletter stats what do the different terms actually mean?

If you use an email newsletter and list management tool such as Campaign Monitor or Constant Contact you’ve probably enjoyed looking at the stats of your various newsletter campaigns. Understanding these stats is crucial in order to improve your newsletter content and increase your ROI. The following is a quick explanation about what the stats figures actually mean.

Total Opened
This is the total number of times your newsletter was viewed by your recipients. This means that if you send a newsletter to 2 recipients and one reads your email twice while the other reads it once, the total opened will be 3.

Unique Opened
The unique opened does not take repeat opens into account, meaning the figure represents the total number of recipients that actually opened your campaign.

Clicks
The Clicks data provides a number of important figures about the links in your campaign. As an example, “2,481 (14.28%) recipients clicked 7 links” tells us the following:

» A total of 2,481 recipients clicked at least one link.
» This resulted in a click-through rate of 14.28%.
» All up, 7 different links in the campaign were clicked.

This figure can be quite important when deciding what type of information will generate the most interest from your subscribers.

Unsubscribed
The unsubscribed data tells you the total number of recipients that clicked the unsubscribe link in the campaign and also provides you with the percentage of recipients that unsubscribed.

Bounced
The bounce data tells you the total number of recipients that bounced and also provides you with the percentage of recipients that bounced.

Delivered
The delivered count tells you the total number of emails that were successfully delivered to your recipients. It is equal to the total number of messages sent minus the total number that bounced back. The delivered percentage tells us the total percentage of messages that were successfully delivered.

Forward
If your newsletter contains a “forward to a friend” link, Campaign Monitor lets you know who used it and who they forwarded your email to.

Opens over time
Monitoring when subscribers open their email is also valuable information. If you’re not sure when to send your newsletter, this is the information that you would use to see what time seems to generate more opens.

To know more…
At Bluelime Media, we use Campaign Monitor to create newsletters for our clients. If you would like to find out more about our service or would like a demo, please don’t hesitate to contact us.