Confused by the word used within email marketing? We’ve detailed here some of the most common phrased and words used by marketing professionals, as well as what they mean.
Definitions
Here are some commonly used words and their definitions.
Click rate is the percentage of people who received the email that then went on to click one of the links found within it.
Clickthrough rate is the percentage of people who opened the email that then went on to click one of the links found within it.
Delivery rate is the percentage of users who received your email. For example, your mailing list has 1,000 people but when you send the email, it cannot be delivered to 100 people due to issues such as hard bounce. Your delivery rate would be 90%.
Email client – the software or tool that your recipients have used to open the email. For example, Apple Mail (iOS), Microsoft Office or Gmail.
Hard bounce refers to the number or percentage of people who were sent the email but whose inbox does not exist. For example, where somebody has left an organisation and their inbox has been deleted or closed down.
Open rate is the metric used to showcase what percentage of recipients opened the email you sent. According to MailChimp, the average open rate across all B2B emails (irrespective of sector or industry) it 21.33%.
Soft bounce relates to the number or percentage of people who were sent the email but where there was a bounce of some sort, i.e., where their email address exists but their inbox was full.
Spam reports are the number or percentage of people who have marked your email as spam.
Top clicked links – the most popular links within your email, as determined by engagement from the email list.
Time spent viewing/time spent reading – an indication of whether people have read, skimmed or glanced through your email:
- Read – typically eight or more seconds
- Skimmed – typically between two to eight seconds
- Glanced – typically less than two seconds
Unsubscribes are the number of people who have decided to opt-out of receiving email communications from you. This number is specific to the email they have received and is not a reflection of all time.
We hope you found this useful and that you now have a much better understanding of what the various email marketing definitions are!