A
Word on Click-Through and Open-Rates
- You can gather Click-Through statistics
using your webserver and your webstatistic
software, e.g. Google Analytics.
Click
here for information about tracking using Google
Analytics.
or (not using Google Analytics):
Create a webpage as link-target on your
webserver, which is not linked from any other
source. Include the link to this page in your
newsletter and you can gather statistic
information, like e.g. geo-location, number of
unique users, ... but you cannot say who has
clicked on it. The privacy of your members is not
at risk.
- "Open-Rates" measures how often
someone has "opened" the message -
(clicked on the message to open it). Most todays
mailclients show the message content on the
right-side of the application window, so its most
unlikely that someone will really click on it - to
open the message.
Today "Open-rates" means the message
was displayed in the mailclient, which does not
mean much, the message will be displayed even if
someone just selects a message to delete it or
mark it as spam.
Another problem is, that "Open-Rates"
are typically based on external images, which
contain a "secret" tracking code
(web-bug).
This information is completely inaccurate, because
most todays mailclients like e.g. MS
Outlook, MS Windows Mail or Thunderbird are blocking
all external images for privacy reasons by
default. The tracking code will be downloaded
by the mailclient only if the recipient has
changed the privacy settings or has
authorized the sender.
If you want to measure the success of your email
campaign, then you should use use the
"Click-through" statistics instead,
which will give you detailed information on how
many recipients have clicked on a link in your
email.
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