Accessing & Understanding Email Statistics

Accessing & Understanding Email Statistics

Just like everything we do, an important part of growth is to check on how well something has been done. Hitting send on an email should only be the beginning, and we should all be in the habit of checking how well our emails have performed, in order that we can improve upon them going forward. Action Network has built-in email statistics which you can use to measure the effectiveness of your emails.

Accessing Email Statistics (Quick View)

1. From the Start Organising menu, click on PEOPLE. Move your cursor over Emails and select the list icon that appears to the right.



2. You'll be presented with a list of all emails sent from your Action Network Group. To the right of the title, you'll see the word Manage along with some icons. Click on the bar chart icon to expand the email statistics.



3. You'll then see your email statistics. You can click on the bar chart icon to collapse these.



Accessing Email Statistics (Manage Email View)

1. Again, navigate to your list of emails as per step one above. Find the email you want to view statistics for and click on Manage.



2. You'll be taken to the manage email page, and the first tab that will open will show your detailed email statistics.



You're able to access information on individual link clicks by selecting the Clicks tab from the Manage Email page.



From this tab, you'll see a list of all the links in your email and how many times each of them was clicked. These numbers will be displayed as Raw & Unique. Raw gives you the total number of times a link was clicked. Unique shows the number of individual recipients who clicked on the link. So should a recipient click on the same link twice the Raw count will increase by two, but the Unique count will increase by one.



If you include the same link in an email more than once then each instance will be treated as an individual link. You can combine the figures if you wish, but it's a good idea to keep them discrete so you can measure the effectiveness of different link placements. For example, you could include a link to a fundraiser in your email text, as a button, and in your post-script and measure how each link does individually. On the Clicks tab, the links will be shown in the order in which they appear in your email.

Understanding Email Statistics

Your email statistics will be broken down into different sections: Opens, Clicks, Actions, and Unsubscribes.

Opens



Your headline figure for Opens will be the percentage of recipients who have opened your email. Beneath this you'll see:
  1. Total Opens: The number of recipients who have opened your email.
  2. Total Sent: The total number of emails sent. This will be shown in the format x/x. This allows you to see the number of emails that have been sent in near-real-time. For most emails, this figure will quickly update to show all emails have been sent, but if you're sending an email to several thousands of people it may take a little longer to complete sending.

Clicks



The headline figure here will show the percentage of recipients who clicked on any link in the email. Beneath this you'll see:
  1. Total Clicks: The total number of recipients who clicked on a link in the email.
  2. Clicks/Open Ration: The percentage of recipients who opened the email, and clicked at least one of the links within it.
The statistics related to Clicks are based on the number of individuals who clicked any link, and not the total number of clicks. To view detailed click-level statistics check Going Deeper above.

Actions



The headline figure for Actions will show the percentage of recipients who have completed at least one Action that was linked from your email. Beneath this you'll see:
  1. Total Actions: This will show the number of recipients who have completed at least one Action after following a link to that Action from the email.
  2. Actions/Click Ratio: This will show the percentage of recipients who completed an Action, as a percentage of those who clicked the link to the Action.
  3. Donations Rate: This will show the percentage of recipients who made a donation to an Action Network Fundraiser after following a link from the email.
  4. Total Donations: This will show the number of donations made by recipients after following a link in the email.
  5. Donations/Click Ratio: This will show the percentage of recipients who made a donation, as a percentage of those who clicked the link to your Fundraiser.
  6. Average Donation Amount: This will show the average donation made by donors accessing your Fundraiser via a link in the email.
  7. Total Amount Donated: This will show the total monetary amount raised via links in the email. 
Remember, the dollar symbol ($) is cosmetic only. The figures you see can be read as GBP (£).

Unsubscribes



The headline figure for Unsubscribed will show the percentage of recipients who have been unsubscribed following receipt of this email. Below this you'll see:
  1. Total Unsubscribes: The number of recipients who actively unsubscribed following the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.
  2. Unsubscribes/Open Ratio: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed, as a percentage of those who opened the email.
  3. Bounces: The percentage of emails that bounced. This means the email was not delivered due to the email address being invalid, the recipient's mailbox being full or another reason which rendered the email undeliverable to that individual.
  4. Total Bounces: The number of intended recipients who did not receive the email due to it bouncing.
  5. Previous Bounces: The percentage of intended recipients to whom the email was not delivered as a previous email had already bounced.
  6. Total Previous Bounces: The number of intended recipients to whom the email was not delivered as a previous email had already bounced.
  7. Spam Complaints: The percentage of recipients who reported your email as Spam.
  8. Total Spam Complaints: The number of individual recipients who reported your email as Spam.
  9. Previous Complaints: The percentage of intended recipients who did not receive the email as they have previously marked an email as Spam.
  10. Total Previous Complaints: The number of intended recipients who did not receive the email as they have previously marked an email as Spam.

What Does Good Look Like?

Although this information is readily available, it may not be clear how to interpret it, how to improve email performance, and what good looks like. Good will look different depending on the Group, the individual email, and its target audience. 

Spam Complaints

Avoiding any Spam complaints should be a high priority. Each Spam complaint increases the likelihood that future emails will be filtered out as Spam for other users. Spam is the name given to digital junk-mail. It's impossible to completely avoid someone marking one of your emails as Spam, but you can reduce the likelihood by ensuring your emails are high quality, have value to the recipient, and are targeted appropriately.
  1. Check who should be receiving your email. Is it intended for members only? How To Send An Email Which Targets Only Your Current Local Members
  2. Enhance your email targeting to exclude donors, previous email recipients or Action takers. If somebody has already registered for an event, sending them another invite offers no value. How To Avoid Email Fatigue With Targeting
  3. Make sure you double-check your email before sending it. Send a test email to yourself and check the spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Click on each of the links and make sure they take you where they should. Get in the habit of asking a second person to check the email before you hit send.
  4. Avoid low-effort emails. Recipients will not thank you for emails made up of one or two lines, with no images, or messy formatting. Use the Drag & Drop Editor to make your emails visually appealing.
  5. Use your Green Party email address in the reply-to field. Using a personal email address in the reply-to field of an email looks Spammy. Many times your recipients won't have an opportunity to mark it as either Spam or not as their email provider may block it entirely.
When an activist marks an Action Network email as Spam they are added to a global block list. This can prevent them from receiving any emails sent via Action Network. If they wish to resubscribe they'll need to request removal from the Global Block List. You can find out more here: Spam Complaints and Resubscribing to lists.

Unsubscribes

Just like Spam complaints, there's no way to avoid Unsubscribes entirely, and we must respect an individual's right to not receive emails from our Action Network Groups. The same principles of avoiding Spam complaints apply to Unsubscribes- make sure your emails have value, are targeted appropriately and you're not emailing people on your list too often. The number of Unsubscribes may not be a useful measure as ten unsubscribes from an email targeting fifty recipients is obviously more significant than ten unsubscribes from an email targeting two thousand.
  1. Plan how you'll engage with members who you can no longer contact by email. Is post or a phone call an option? Do we have their consent to call?
  2. Ask for feedback on your emails and the frequency with which they're sent. Be mindful of non-response bias: the people whose opinions you need to capture are unlikely to respond to requests for feedback via email.
  3. Allow people on your list to set their mail preferences. You could ask your mailing list to select their preferences using an Action Network Form, and use Tags to segment your list either by inclusion or exclusion. For example, you could use a Once a month email Tag, or use more specific Tags to target Activists based on their interests- Events, Training, News.
  4. Reduce the amount of email you're sending based on email activity. If a member isn't opening your emails is there any value in continuing to send them every email? Target emails so that they're only receiving the information they need.

Actions & Donations

When it comes to Actions & Donation performance for emails you may need to spend some time using the statistics you have available and finessing your email content for best results. Here are a few tips to get started with:
  1. If the aim of an email is to encourage people to complete an Action or donate to a Fundraiser then it's best practice to only include links that point to that Action/Fundraiser. So sending an email inviting members to donate to a Fundraiser, that also includes links to articles, or another type of Action tend to perform less well. You can use the same link multiple times in the same email, but ultimately recipients should be directed to the same Action page or Fundraiser.
  2. The postscript (P.S.) is the last thing your recipients will read. It's a good idea to link to your Action or Fundraiser here. For example, P.S. Don't forget to click here and let us know your favourite biscuit!
  3. Make use of Action Network's email testing feature- see how different emails perform and use the results to inform future emails.

Opens

You'll rarely see an email reach a 100% open rate unless it's targeted at a very small, active number of recipients. There are things you can do to increase your open rate though.
  1. Try different sender names. For example, Green Party Digital Support; Norm- Senior Digital Support Officer; Norm Cassidy. Be careful about misleading recipients, as this could leave them with a negative impression of you. Simply sending an email with the sender name set as Norm may increase the open rate, as recipients may be curious as to who it's coming from- but upon opening may consider this deceptive and unsubscribe.
  2. Get creative with your subject lines. Use emojis (not too many), compelling calls to Action, or something that piques interest. Again, you can make use of email testing to see what works for your list.
  3. Test different email delivery times for different types of email. Is someone more likely to open an email when they first log in in the morning, during lunch hour, or during typical commuter times? Combine this with other data- it's good that your emails are being opened when sent at 11am, but do they have the time to complete a donation form then?
  4. Coordinate with your regional party, and others who may send emails to your list. If a member receives multiple Green Party emails close together they are less likely to open or engage with them. Although you have no control over the actions of others you can work together to make sure we're not competing with each other. Perhaps your local and regional party can work together to decide which days of the week are available for email.

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