In today’s business world, one thing is certain: email marketing is at an all-time high and going higher all the time. Some companies, some campaigns have been very successful. Very successful. Others? Not so much.
   Of course, the major advantage of email marketing is the cost. Not only are the costs low, the barriers to entry are equally as low. You can launch an email campaign with relatively little cash.

How do you know when it works?
   Another major advantage of email marketing is the availability of tracking analytics. Open rates. Click through rates. Unsubscribes. Who opened it and when. Etc., etc., etc.
   The bad new is that open rates – one of the more significant barometers – can be deceiving and/or misleading. According to Constant Contact, the average open rates for email campaigns range from 17-32 percent depending on your list, the industry, your message, etc. The bottom line is that if your email campaign is registering open rates of around 30 percent, you’re doing pretty darned well.
   So, as soon as someone clicks on your email, it’s been opened. Right? Not so fast. According to superoffice.com, not until “the reader enables images in your email to be displayed in the preview pane or in a full view of the email” is your email considered “opened.” This is determined by a “tracking pixel” which is loaded when someone opens the emails. If images are blocked or auto-downloaded, the open might not be tracked — or it might be falsely recorded. It all comes down to an industry accuracy rating of “moderate.”
   Conversely, “high” accuracy is typically attributed to “delivery status” as tracked by notable providers such as Gmail, Outlook or MailChimp. This is simply an electronic register generated from receiving servers. Also “high” in reliability are “click rates” which are easily tracked when an email is redirected to a third-party URL.
   Low, medium or high, for the most part email statistics are mostly reliable – though not 100 percent. It can be difficult, for example, to square email stats with website analytics. We had an experience where a trusted name in email marketing (who shall remain nameless) showed 100 clicks from our email to the client’s website. The problem was the website analytics didn’t show 100 clicks from the email. Something or someone is off the mark.
   Who do you believe? Barring any technological catastrophe, reputable email providers generally can be trusted — at least, if nothing else, to provide comparative data. And, generally speaking, the data generated by reputable email providers should be sufficient to plan your next steps.