Understanding the Open Rate and Click Rate of Your Email Campaigns

What do these numbers mean anyway? They can mean a lot to some companies. Decisions on whether or not to sell a certain product or service are often based on a response to an email campaign. We've broken down what some of these numbers mean.

The Open Rate

We consistently find open rates to be "all over the map". For example, if you send a great offer or targeted message to a list that you've been actively emailing, you can expect to see open rates in the range of 40 - 60%. However, if you haven't mailed to your list in quite some time you can expect a far lower open rate and possibly a higher unsubscribe rate.

Make sure you have a powerful subject line or some type of incentive that draws them in as a way to help your cause. Overall, open rates in the 20 - 30% range are fairly common for this type of mailing.

To increase your open rate, keep these tips in mind:

• Don't try to be cute or misleading in the subject line. Using "Re:" so it appears as if you're sending these individuals a reply to a message they've sent is deceptive. This practice is now against the Federal law.
• Keep your subject line concise. Some ISPs will shorten the subject line to 30 or 40 characters. You want your recipients to open and read your email; you don't need to tell the whole story here.
• The most important thing to remember is that an open rate is only valid for people who receive HTML emails. Make sure you evaluate your campaign performance with this fact in mind.

Click Through Rates: Once they're in!

Click through performance is always a tough statistic to gauge. What can be considered a "good" click through rate and what other factors are involved? For starters, you must always consider WHOM you are mailing to and WHAT message they are receiving.

A good click through rate for a link within your email can range from .5% - 1.5% but obviously these are just approximations. Different types of offers and the duration of the relationship you have with your recipients can contribute to the overall click through performance so make sure to factors in these variables as well.

To increase your click through rate, keep these tips in mind:

• Put your most important articles or offers above the fold or at the top of your email.
• Targeted, relevant messages not only receive higher open rates, they also receive much higher click-through rates. Target your messages based upon your subscriber's demographics, preferences and interests, and past purchase history.
• Don't clutter your email with too many offers or links. This can confuse and overwhelm your recipients and possibly have a negative effect on your sales or campaign performance.
• Use graphics or pictures to explain your product, and make the graphic clickable to direct readers to a web page providing more information.

Focusing on your good responses is necessary, but don't let your other responses such as your bounced mail fall by the wayside. Understanding what it is and what to do about it can increase or decrease your list size dramatically.

Lastly, the best thing you can do to increase your rates is give your recipients value. Whether you define value as a discount off of goods and services or a piece of information your recipient can't do without, this will strengthen your relationship, thereby increasing your response rate.

About the Author: Janine Popick is the CEO of the leading self-service email marketing company VerticalResponse. Take a FREE test drive of VerticalResponse and see how easy it is to create and send email campaigns in minutes, right from your browser.