Email statistics

One of the main advantages of email marketing is the ability to measure a campaign's success with detailed reports. You can analyse the performance of each mailing very precisely: how many times it was opened, how many times and on which link recipients clicked, how many contacts unsubscribed, and so on. All this information is available easily and immediately in your email marketing solution.

Unlike postal mail, you can measure the impact of your sends in detail and improve your campaigns afterwards. You can find out which products and content people like most, which sending time works best, which subject line performs best, and so on. This lets you adapt your next sends and run increasingly effective campaigns, because marketers' golden rule still applies: optimise, optimise, optimise!

But before you start sending and analysing your emails, you need to know what the main rates mean:

Email deliverability rate

In practice, the deliverability rate is the proportion of all emails sent that reach your recipients' inbox. It is calculated from the total number of emails sent minus bounces (bounces are all undeliverable emails).

What influences the deliverability rate:the authentication standards offered by your email provider (DMARC, DKIM, etc.) and the reputation of your IP address.

Email open rate

The open rate is the proportion of recipients who opened your emails. Either every open is counted, or each recipient who opened is counted only once (unique open rate). In the latter case, recipients who opened the same email several times are not counted again, which gives a better idea of your campaign's real reach.

What influences the open rate:the subject line and preheader, since they are the first things your contacts see. Make sure you choose a short, punchy subject line!

Email click rate

The click rate is the percentage of recipients who not only opened the email but also clicked a link in it. As with the open rate, you can count every click or each recipient only once (unique click rate). The unique click rate is more useful because it clearly shows the percentage of interested recipients.

What influences the click rate:for recipients to click, your content must first interest them! Also add prominent calls to action and choose an airy layout that guides your recipients' attention.

Email unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate shows the proportion of recipients who fully unsubscribed from a newsletter by clicking the unsubscribe link (which you must always include in your emails).

What influences the unsubscribe rate: once again, content is king! If your contacts are interested in what you send them, they are unlikely to unsubscribe.

Email bounce rate

The bounce rate shows the proportion of failed deliveries compared with the total number of recipients. A distinction is made between hard bounces and soft bounces. Hard bounces are addresses that can permanently no longer be reached (for example because they no longer exist), while soft bounces are temporarily unavailable addresses (for example because the mailbox is full).

What influences the bounce rate: above all, keep a clean email list! Collect addresses with a double opt-in sign-up form and never buy email addresses in bulk. Also use email software that handles bounces and unsubscribes automatically.