Email Marketing - Reporting

1. What are open rates, what do they mean… and how do I improve them?
The open figure is the actual number of emails that we can tell for definite have been opened. By 'tell for definite' we mean that the images in the email, seeded with unique codes, have been downloaded from our servers by the recipient's email software.

Everybody wants to increase their open rates. There are obvious things that you can do: make the subject line punchy so that the people want to open your email, for example. Remember that the first link is statistically the most likely to be clicked - so make this the most important one. And ensure that your email has a decent amount of copy and makes sense without the images - try to use different text styles and coloured backgrounds as much as possible, instead of images.

Always give pictures good descriptions (ALT tags), so that if the recipient has images turned off by default, they can still understand the message.

Above all, ensure that all your communications are relevant to the audience you're addressing - use wizemail to target your mailing list depending on the recipients' preferences. Study those reports to give you an indication of what content and links are most popular, and create new lists accordingly.



2. Tracking forwarded emails
"Tell a Friend" allows the recipient to forward your email as an exact copy of what you've sent them. It also lets them write a personal message to those they're sending it on to, encouraging them to open it. This is what the 'actual forwards' report shows - people who have forwarded the message in this way. You might like to target them in future with any viral campaigns - they're clearly people that like spreading the word.

Under the Data Protection Act, it is not possible to give you the email addresses of those who the message has been forwarded to.

If you haven't used the "Tell a friend" link, people can still forward your email in the normal way (from Outlook, etc). In fact, this is what most people will do. Then, when the email is received by the friend or colleague, their IP address is captured. This allows wizemail to let you know that your email has gone viral - this could be internally in a company (Views & Forwards), or externally (Tracked Forwards) to separate individuals.



3. Tracking links clicked
wizemail automatically tracks all links in your email. Click the blue "Links Clicked" button to drill down and see who's clicked on what and when - you can download this information if you wish to further target your audience.

You might for example, be inviting people to a seminar with a choice of dates. Recipients could click on the date link that best suits them, and you can then track these choices to send these people a confirmation email with the time, date and location of the event.

TIP -  if you have a large mailing list, try the hot prospect report - it uses certain criteria to give you a list of the people most interested in your email… perfect if you're planning follow-ups.



4. Tracking page views (only available on Professional accounts)
This lets you track your recipients from the email across to your website - and allows you to see what they do when they get there. Code that we provide for your site gives you a wealth of information about their behaviour, including which pages are most interesting to them - in addition to the usual wizemail reports.

Adding the code to your site is easy - we provide you with a single line of script to place on the page and all the rest is handled by wizemail.

If you don't have a professional account, contact your Account Manager who will be happy to discuss the upgrade options.



5. The graphs - what they actually tell you
wizemail also provides graphs to give you an immediate overview of your campaign's success.

Tracked Email Opens shows what hour of any day your emails are receiving the most opens, helping you to decide the best time to send out your next campaign.

Links Clicked provides a breakdown of how many times a link was clicked and what the link was.

More graphs can be found by clicking on the graph icon next to Hard Bounce Backs, Soft Bounce Backs, Replies and Remove Requests.

The print friendly report button allows you to dash off top line statistics very quickly - perfect for integrating into reports.