Published: December 23, 2024
Maildroppa includes a suite of reliable and informative analytics that allow you to review data relating to your Sent Emails by clicking on the title of a specific email.
Email activity usually peaks just a few hours after sending and then tapers off.
Checking the statistics relating to different types of mails allows you to assess each email's success and build a picture of exactly what is engaging your subscribers. This information is vital, so that you can adjust your emails to optimize your bulk email marketing strategy as you go.
The Delivery Rate tells you how many of your bulk emails actually get through to your customers. Some bulk email providers may only achieve 30 to 50% Delivery Rate, but Maildroppa offers delivery rates of up to 99%.
These delivery rates will usually increase over time, for a couple of reasons. Some emails will be delayed by recipient servers, as they run the email through spam filters and check if it is from a legitimate source. Some Soft Bounces (when there is a delivery problem on the recipient's end), may also be resolved over time.
When delivery of one of your emails is delayed, Maildroppa will log a delay event and retry sending any undelivered emails up to seven times each over about 4 days. As more emails get delivered with each attempt, the delivery rate will increase.
Open Rate is split into two categories. It gives you an indication of how happy people are to receive your emails and how engaging your email subject is (the better the subject, the more likely people are to open the email). There are a number of ways to improve the subject and content of your emails.
Unique Open Rate is calculated based on how many of the delivered emails are opened by your customers. In other words, it tells you what percentage of people receiving your emails actually open them. A standard Unique Open Rate is generally thought to be 15 to 25%.
Total Open Rate counts every time your email is opened, so it gives you an idea of the interest level in your mails, as you can see whether people are opening it multiple times.
Your open rates are also split into (Top) and (Bottom), which lets you know if people just opened the email (this is recorded by a tracking pixel inserted at the top of the mail) or if they actually scrolled all the way to the end of the email (recorded by a tracking pixel at the end of the mail).
This tells you what percentage of people are clicking on links you provide in your email.
Unique Click Rate records the percentage of the total email recipients who click on any links, while Total Click Rate does the same calculation based on the total number of times a link in your mail is clicked. An average Unique Click Rate is normally around 2.5%.
You can also view your Click to Open Rate, which gives you the percentage of those who opened the email who then went on to click one of the links inside. The global average Click to Open Rate in 2020 was 14.1%
The Click to Open Rate is an important indicator of how your readers are engaging with your content. They may still have a general interest in your company and the emails they receive, but may not be interested in specific content you're sending. If you can create content that captures their imagination, readers are much more likely to actively engage by clicking on links, videos, or other media included in your mail.
Sending out regular emails helps to keep your list “warm”. This means that you are retaining subscribers who interact with your content, while those who are not interested will generally unsubscribe. This will also help to improve your Delivery Rate and allow you to craft content designed for a smaller but more focused subscriber list.
If you don't send any emails for a few months, though, your list will “cool down”. This means that it is not as effective as it should be and will lead to higher unsubscribe and bounce rates, because of people losing interest or changing their email address, and more spam complaints because people have forgotten they ever subscribed to your list in the first place!
Your Bounce Rate Report breaks down your Total Bounces into several categories.
Soft Bounces usually (but not always) represent a temporary problem with email delivery, that may be resolved given some time. Some common causes of soft bounces include messages that are too large for the recipient's inbox, full mailboxes or Out-of-Office auto replies. Maildroppa limits your email size to 20MB, which should be within most servers' limits.
Alternatively, there may be a problem with the recipient's Domain Name Server (DNS): it may be temporarily down for a short time, but more serious DNS problems can take months or even years to be resolved. Similarly, full mailboxes require a recipient to physically reduce the amount of storage they are using, so there is no guarantee the soft bounce will ever be resolved.
Block Bounces are a concern: these are emails that for some reason have been blocked by a recipient's email server. This can happen for a variety of reasons. If someone makes a complaint about the email, URLs you have included in your email are blocked, or your IP address has been flagged as suspicious, it can cause the email to be blocked by the server.
Your message may also be blocked by spam filters based on its content (this can include a reply-to address or company name with a poor reputation). Some email servers only accept email addresses on the recipient's approved senders list.
Hard Bounces result from a permanent delivery problem, for example when an email address is not valid or it no longer exists.
Maildroppa's Double Opt-In system helps to prevent people signing up to your list with invalid email addresses, as they are required to click on the verification link sent to their inbox, but if it has been a while since you sent out a bulk mail, your list will probably have cooled down.
Some subscribers may have changed their personal email addresses, for example, or left their companies, so their work email has been removed. This is why a cool subscriber list usually leads to an increase in hard bounces.
Maildroppa automatically shows you any bounces in the Status column of your subscriber list. High bounce rates can affect your sender reputation, so Maildroppa will automatically remove the email addresses associated with most serious block bounces and hard bounces, to keep your bounce rate lower for the next email you send out.
Out-of-Band Bounces are a bit more complex. They happen when an email is initially accepted but the recipient's server rejects it afterwards. Some email servers accept emails provisionally while they are deciding whether to send the email to the recipient's inbox or reject (bounce) it. That's why you might initially see that the email was delivered, followed by a later bounce.
This is often the case when a recipient's email server uses a primary server to accept emails, before transferring them to a secondary server. The primary server accepts the mail and tells you the email has been delivered. But, when the secondary server conducts its evaluations (based on spam filters and email addresses stored in their system), it rejects the delivery. The bounce message is then returned to you outside the usual delivery parameters (Out of Band).
There are two other types of bounce displayed, but both are very rare. Admin Bounces are emails blocked by Maildroppa itself, for some administrative reason, such as if a recipient's email address has been flagged as suspicious. Undetermined Bounces mean that the recipient's email provider has bounced the email without providing us with any specific reason.
This is what we're trying to avoid by making sure that bulk emails are only sent out to people who have signed up or agreed to be added to your newsletter subscription list.
You don't want email servers marking your bulk email as spam, or people reporting it as spam! If an email gets too many spam complaints, it can result in your next email being automatically blocked by service providers - meaning that it also won't be delivered to those who actually do want to receive your email.
There are a number of reasons why people might report an email as spam. It could be as simple as not being able to find the unsubscribe link, or they may have forgotten that they signed up for your newsletter in the first place, especially if you have let your list cool down too much.
This shows you what percentage of your list have asked to stop receiving your emails. Unsubscriptions are not necessarily a bad thing, because the idea is to keep hold of your most engaged readers.
This is what leads to meaningful relationships; people who continue to receive your email but never bother to open them are not contributing anything to your cause. This relates back to how well-focused your content is to your audience and how well you are able to catch and keep the interest of your subscribers.
If your Unsubscribe Rate starts to rise, you might need to rethink how you are planning your bulk emailing strategy.
Maybe you are not emailing your list often enough and it is cooling down, or you could be sending too many emails and clogging up people's mailboxes! The content you're providing may not match your audience's interests, or your mails may be coming across as ‘spammy'... whatever the reason, you will need to pinpoint exactly where the problem lies and set about correcting it.
It is always a good idea to keep an eye on your email report statistics, to see if you can identify specific elements that help to increase your Delivery and Click to Open rates. Be sure to keep your subscriber list warm by sending out regular emails (but don't overdo it by bombarding people with meaningless content!).
Open Rates, Click Rates and Unsubscribes can change at any time, but opens and clicks should not change substantially after the first week following your email.
And finally, don't worry too much about a few people unsubscribing from your list, it's a natural part of the process. You need to make sure that you are retaining your core customers - the ones who are actively engaging with your content and with your business.
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