Key Terms Business Owners Should Know about Email Marketing
DELIVERED
Of all the contacts you tried to send an email to, how many did the email program deliver to? If you sent 1,000 emails and 200 of those contacts had bad email addresses or blocked your delivery completely, then 800 were delivered. This does not subtract emails that go to a junk, promotions or spam folder. Those emails still count as delivered.
OPEN RATE
This is the number of emails opened divided by the number of emails delivered.
HARD AND SOFT BOUNCE
This means that your email was not deliverable. Hard bounce means the email address sent to is invalid. Soft bounce means the email address sent to is having trouble receiving your message at the moment. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as a full inbox. If you would like to learn more about bounces, read a post dedicated to this topic here.
CLICK THROUGH RATE & CLICK TO OPEN RATE
The click through rate (CTR) and click to open rate (CTOR) are often confused and sometimes miscalculated.
CTR = (Unique # of emails contacts clicked within) divided by (total emails delivered)
CTOR = (Unique # of emails contacts clicked within) divided by (Unique # of emails opened)
The first metric is an overall measure of the campaign, including subject line and content. The second metric looks at only the email content’s performance.
CHURN
Churn is the percentage of your contacts that become contacts you can no longer mail in a year. Churn happen for a number of reasons, including to opt outs, spam complaints and bounces.
DKIM
This is a level of authentication for your emails which improves your delivery. It allows your email marketing program to provide a string of data in your sender information as a security key. When Gmail, Yahoo Hotmail or others see your email coming, they know that email marketing program is legitimately sending email on behalf of your company.
OPT OUT RATE
Opt out rate = (Number contacts who unsubscribed) divided by (Number of emails delivered)
SPAM COMPLAINTS
Contacts who, rather than unsubscribing, indicated that your email may be spam.
CANSPAM
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, US Congress, 2003.
This act requires promotional and marketing email in the US to include certain details and follow guidelines for an email opt out/unsubscribe process.
CASL
Canadian Anti-Spam Law, 2014. This focuses on Commercial Electronic Messages (CEM), which includes email.
This law requires organizations that send commercial electronic messages (CEMs) within, from or to Canada to receive consent from recipients before sending messages.
GDPR
General Data Protection Regulation law, affecting contacts from the European Union and enforceable as of May 25, 2018. This law requires businesses, regardless of where they are located, to comply with guidelines if they offer goods or services to, or monitor the behavior of, EU data subjects.