Email marketing, unlike most other forms of marketing that makes you wait till a person responds to your ad, allows you to know what the status of your email campaign is while it’s happening. Want to know who received your email? Want to know who opened your email and how many times they did so? Want to know what links were clicked on? Well, any email marketing program or service should do that and more. Here is what reports I would look for in any potential email marketing program.

Overall Report – this is the report that shows the bottom line numbers that the boss wants. Whether this be a webpage or report emailed to you, it needs to include the total number of emails, the number of emails actually sent, the emails sent but not received, the number of emails opened, a number of emails that are able to be sent, and a summary of the links clicked.

Open Report - A detailed report of who opened the email. When I say detailed, you want to see the email address, the time sent, the time opened, the recipients ip address, the clients system settings. Why do you need all this information? Most of the information you see here is basic information that you can understand why you need them, but the IP Address and the Client Type might be a little tougher to figure out why you need them. The IP Address is the location of the computer that received your email. If you see a recipient opening your email multiple times with a different ip address, then this is a good indicator that email is being forwarded to your recipient’s friends. If you see a recipient opening your email multiple times but the ip address stays the same, then either your recipient of the email really likes looking at your email or your email is being forwarded to his or her colleagues within the company behind a firewall. The client type is a wealth of information. There is the browser type, the browser version, the operating system, and, in some cases, the isp they are using. You can use all of this information to tailor your email to your audience.

Here is an example of information you will receive with an Open Report:

ADDRESS	SENT_TIME	OPEN_TIME	IP_ADDRESS	CLIENT_TYPE
EXAMPLE@WOLFMAILING.COM	11/12/2002 5:34	11/12/2002 5:35	68.15.97.220	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Detailed Click Thru Report – This report will show you what links in your email were clicked on, by who, and when. Most of information you found in the detailed open report, you will also find here. With this information, you know what your audience is truly interested in and you can change your emails to focus on what they really want to read about.

Here is an example of information you will receive with a Click Thru Report:

ADDRESS	SENT_TIME	URL	CLICK_TIME	IP_ADDRESS	CLIENT_TYPE
EXAMPLE@WOLFMAILING.COM	11/12/2002 5:34	http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=21879	11/12/2002 5:36	68.15.97.220	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Bounced Report – While we would like every email to reach its destination, it doesn’t always happen. Changing email addresses, bad email addresses, or server failures can stop your email message from getting to its intended party. A bounced report will tell you who didn’t receive your email and why. You can remove or fix these email address, so that your email list is always up to date.

There are plenty of other reports that can be used in a email campaign, but the majority of reports will involve these four reports and the information you see here. Plus, you can customize these reports; such as, lets only see the people that opened this email between 8:00-11:00 am. The database of information allows you to quickly manipulate your stats to suit your needs.

I hope this information comes in handy when you decide to pick an email marketing program or helps you realize what you’re not getting from your current email marketing program.