Q&A from "Measure Your Nonprofit’s Email Marketing Success with Reports" Webinar

Caitlin_M
Administrator

After you’ve sent your email campaign, you’re ready to take a look at the results. Join us for part four of this 5-part webinar series to learn how to use email marketing reports to improve your results.

 

Your nonprofit’s email marketing data provides a wealth of information. This data allows you to measure success and improve your opens and clicks moving forward. That’s why it’s important to understand the information that’s available to you and how you can use it to increase engagement and build stronger relationships with your supporters.

 

In this free, one hour webinar, we’ll show you:

 

  • The types of reports that are available and what they mean
  • How to improve your email marketing results
  • How to use the reporting tools in Constant Contact

 

Here you'll find the questions asked by our attendees during the webinar. Want to view the recording? Click here to register and gain access! 

 

Interested in our free, future webinars? Sign up here to stay informed! 

 

Resources mentioned during the webinar:

[Guide] Do More For Your Cause With Email Marketing

 

 

 

Reporting

 

How do I find my email reports?    

You can view the reporting of your email campaigns under the Reporting tab of your account. 

 

What is a click rate?   

The click-through rate is a percentage that shows the number of times links are clicked in an email by a contact.

 

What's the difference in the click rate vs. open rate?

The open rate tells us the percentage of people who opened your email. The click-through rate shows how many people clicked on the links in your email. Check out this article on our blog on which email marketing metrics your nonprofit should measure.

 

For those that open more than once, are they counted each time they open it, or only once?      

They will only be counted as one for Unique Opens (and toward your Open Rate). But you can also display All Opens to see every time the email was opened by a contact.

 

Is there a way to show the individualized open rate per list?        

We are not able to show the open rate per list, only as an overall stat for all contacts that were sent the email.

 

Is there a way to quickly see average open times for emails when your list has over 10,000 contacts? Tips I've seen online are to browse each individual email's report and manually look at all open times, but with large lists that is very time-consuming.   

There is not currently a way to do this. In the meantime, here's an article in our Help Center that goes over average open rates based on industry.

  

Can you describe the difference between non-existent, suspended, and undeliverable bounces?

Different ISPs and different types of mail servers all use different response codes to let us know why an email address is bouncing. Our Knowledge Base has a great article that describes these different bounce types.

 

Is there a way to remove someone's suspended status?

Contact our support team and they will be able to assist with this.

 

Do we have access to a campaign comparison report within Constant Contact?           

Under the Reporting tab of your account, you can compare campaigns' reports.

 

Is there a functionality to track shared or forwarded emails? How can they subscribe right from that forwarded email?   

At this time, we do not have a way to track forwarded emails. The best way to make sure new contacts can subscribe to your mailing list would be to include a link to your sign up form, whether its for a coded form directly on your site or a landing page form.

 

If an email is posted on Facebook or a website, are they tracked in the reporting?

Since the email wasn't sent to a contact in your account, we do not have a way to track the email being opened or having a link be clicked on by a reader. We suggest including a sign-up button in your email to make it easy for new contacts to sign up for your emails!

 

 

Strategy

 

If you have a Did Not Open list, what can you send to them?  How do you know what specific information they are looking for?

Try adding a poll to your next email to collect their feedback, or include a survey page! Make sure to include different options of what your emails can be focused on.

 

Are preheaders very important? Do you have some good examples?

Yes, preheaders can be very helpful and can add more context to your email that your contacts can see before opening! Our blog has some helpful tips about creating an engaging preheader

 

 

Email

 

Can the 'promotion' box in Gmail be avoided?

It can possibly be avoided, but it depends on your contacts' settings in Gmail. Often times if the recipient moves the email over to Gmail's Primary tab, future emails will appear in Primary but it is not guaranteed. 

 

When you are scheduling an email, Constant Contact will give you a suggested date and time, sometimes a month in the future. What is that time/date based on?     

This suggested date and time is based on your contacts' open history. We also have an article about the best send times based on your industry if you were looking to schedule your email sooner.

 

Does Constant Contact send two emails if someone is in more than one list in the same send?

Our system is smart enough to make sure that your contacts are not receiving duplicate emails if they are on different lists!

 

If you are doing an A/B test, are you sending to the same list at different times or to two different segments at the same time?

Our Subject Line A/B Testing will send to a predetermined percentage of your contacts, say 25% for one subject and 25% for the other. The subject line has the higher open rate will send to the remaining 50%.

 

Constant Contact used to have an option of adding social media share buttons allowing customers to share. Will that feature come back?           

We're happy to share that this feature is now available in our third generation editor and your contacts can easily share your email on social media.

 

How do you resend to your Did Not Open list?

The good news is that you can set your email to automatically resend to contacts who have not opened your email within three to seven days. This feature can be enabled by checking off "Resend to Non-Openers" on the Schedule page.

 

 

Contacts

 

Is there a way to export a list of new subscribers aside from the weekly subscribe update email?

You can search in your contacts and sort them based on when they were added to your account. You can then export your results to an Excel or CSV file, or add your results to a list.

 

How do tags work in contacts? What does "No Permissions Set" mean?

Tags are another way to segment your contacts and you can Narrow By Tag on the scheduling page. "No Permissions Set" is a contact permission status for event attendees who have not requested to join your mailing list during the registration process. This allows you to send them event-related emails without sending them information that they may not have requested to receive.

 

How can I clean up and delete my old tags?    

A tag can be deleted under the Contacts tab of your account. To the right of every tag, listed in your left-hand menu options, is a downward facing arrow. Clicking this will give you the option to delete your tag.

 

Can you open a list and view how contacts within those lists are responding to campaigns?

We don't have a way to manage lists like this, but we suggest trying out the segments feature to see what contacts are engaging with you the most.

 

How do you handle members who unsubscribe, but then want to be added back to the list?           

Unsubscribed contacts can be added back through a confirmation email sent out from their contact profile in your account. 

 

Is there an easy way to identify contacts that did (or did not) open any emails in the past 6 months?

You can find these contacts by creating a did not open segment

 

If we need to import a contact list where emails may be repeated, will this affect the number of contacts in our plan?

We only count unique contacts in your account so if they are already part of your lists, they will not be added again.

 

If we hit the cap of our billing contact level (such as 0-500 contacts), will the system alert us while importing or adding contacts or will it automatically change the contact tier level?  

There is no alert like this when you are uploading your contacts. If the number of active contacts in your account increased during your billing cycle, it is possible that you will move to a higher billing level, depending on the number of contacts you have added. Here is an article about how and when you are billed in Constant Contact.

 

When someone opts out will customers see all my segmented lists on the unsubscribe page?

Contacts will only see what lists you have selected to display on either your sign-up form or your update profile form.

2 Comments
NicoleG2317
Rookie

Hi Caitlin, does the "Did not open email" number include those emails that bounced, unsubscribe, and successfully Deliveries?

Aaron_H
Employee

Hello @NicoleG2317,

 

Yes, the 'Did Not Open' report will include anyone who did not open the email, regardless of the reason.  So bounces will absolutely show up on there.  Most 'unsubscribed' contacts will actually not show up there, because they generally open the email to get access to the 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom of your campaign.

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