10 Email Marketing Terms You Should Know About

When it comes to email marketing, there’s ample discussion, studies and resources you can fall back on in order to make the most of your campaigns.

No marketer is as successful as an informed and well prepared marketer.

For those of you who are interested in taking the first steps in email marketing, or simply want to improve the efficiency of your campaigns, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the following email marketing terms.

In this article, we address email marketing terms which we find critical to the success of your campaign.

Email marketing terms

#1 Deliverability

You’re about to start your email marketing campaign. Awesome!

So, what’s first?

To start, you definitely should take a good look at your email list. Verifying your email list will guarantee that your campaign actually reaches the target audience.

Out of all the email marketing terms, deliverability has to be one of the most critical of them all. Your campaign can end before it even starts without proper deliverability.

Why is deliverability so important?

Simply put, your first question when starting an email campaign should be “How can I make sure that my emails reach my clients’ inboxes?”

Luckily the answer is just as simple. Email verification. You can find out more about what it is and why you need it here.

#2 Sender Score

But why does deliverability matter then? Certainly, the more emails you send the better, right?

Well, yes, but actually no. You see, sending emails will affect your sender reputation.

“What is a Sender reputation” you ask? It is best described as a reputation rating. Basically, for every outgoing email your score will be checked by the receiving email address’ server. If your score is low…

Computer says no.

#3 Bounce Rate

Which now brings me into the topic of bounce rates.

To first understand bounce rates you need to understand bounces. Luckily, we’ve got you covered.

In simple terms, however, the bounce rate basically determines the rate at which your emails are not delivered.

To put it in even more direct terms

bounces = bad sender score = bad campaign.

#4 Segmentation

So, you’ve verified your list and now understand the importance of sender score and why you want to avoid bounces. You have your deliverable addresses at hand and are ready to go.

Now, it’s time to segment your campaign.

Segmentation basically means to break your list apart into more than one group. You can choose the criteria for these groups (or segments) through various ways, be they preferences, language or even timezone.

#5 Merge tags

Merge tags are pretty useful. They allow you to automatically add consented data to the email. Giving it a more personalized look. Nothing like reading out our own name, right?

If you get creative with your tags you can make all kinds of interesting emails for your campaign.

#6 Open Rate

You finally sent your emails out. Congratulations!

That takes courage!

What are some of the data points you should be on the lookout for at this moment?

Let’s start with the most basic of interactions. Once someone receives your email, did they open it?

Being aware of your open rate is crucial in determining whether your awesome email was as awesome to everyone else as you thought it would be.

#7 Read or Open Length

Having clients open your email is the first step. But after managing to catch the attention of your audience to open your message, you want it read.

Read lengths are very important to understand how long people who do open your emails spend observing them.

#8 Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click through rate will give you a percentage representing the number of clicks in proportion to the opened emails.

In other words, out of how many people opened your emails, how many of those actually clicked on the content.

So, by now we are capable of knowing:

1. How many people opened your email
2. How long they spent reading it
3. How many of those actually interacted with it.

#9 List Growth Rate

Now it’s time to look at your list growth. Has this campaign brought new subscribers or clients to you?

Have people unsubscribed from your email list?

Facing this data is important to determine the success of your campaign.

You want a campaign that not only is successful in terms of reaching your target audience but also in terms of having your target audience interact with you, as to continue to build your rapport with your customers.

#10 Return on Investment (ROI)

As with every investment, it’s time to measure the performance of your campaign.

Return on investment is a widely used and well known measurement to determine the effectiveness of any action.

Always measure how much effort/resources went into your investment and compare them directly with how much result or income it generated.

In Summary

Let’s revise the email marketing terms we discussed in this blog entry.

• Deliverability - why it is important to make sure your emails are verified.
• Sender Score - why it matters when it comes to an email campaign
• Bounces - why you don’t want them
• Segmentation - why it is relevant
• Merge tags - the importance of personalization
• Open Rate - how many are openers
• Read Rate - how long openers read
• Click Through Rate - How many readers interact
• List Growth - Who joined, who left
• ROI - Was it worth it?

By familiarizing yourself with these terms, your email marketing campaign is sure to be much more successful.