As with any other business plan, email marketing needs to be measured to see whether it has achieved the desired goals. There are 4 main things to look at when considering the effectiveness of your email messages, and these are the delivery rate, the open rate, the click through rate, and the unsubscribe rate.

The delivery rate indicates the number of emails that have been received by the addresses on your mailing list. You will need to set your Internet marketing software to give you delivery reports every time you send out your emails so that you can manage any bounce-backs. The more people that successfully receive your emails, the better the chance of effectiveness. This is only the first step in evaluating your email campaign success.

Next, the open rate shows you how many of the recipients actually opened your email. The key to getting a high open rate is to use effective subject lines in your messages. An effective subject line identifies your business or product and tells your reader what the email is about in just a few words. If you can capture the whole message of your newsletter in less than 10 words, you will have a better open rate for your emails.

The click-through rate is now what measures the activity your email newsletter has generated. If your reader has successfully received and opened your email, the fact that they clicked through to your website means that your email has achieved its required goal. In many cases, these rates usually decline, for example, you may have a very high delivery rate, followed by a slightly lesser open rate, and an even lesser click-through rate. Do aim for relatively similar rates of these 3 events so that everyone who receives your newsletter reads it and clicks through to your website as much as possible.

The last measurement is the unsubscribe rate, which should be viewed as a very important feedback mechanism for your campaign. You can maximize on this by giving the unsubscriber a chance to tell you why they are removing themselves from the mailing list. This can be in the form of a text box where the user types in their reasons, or check boxes with alternatives for them to select. You need to look at what each person states as their reasons to improve your newsletter in future.

Use an Internet marketing software to get these statistics and develop a highly efficient campaign.