It's time to learn about some of the 'urban legends' surrounding email marketing. In this article we will dispel some of the misconceptions regarding your returned email marketing statistics. Knowing these will help you get the most out of the email marketing program you are using.

The term 'delivered' is not as simple as it seems, so looking to those numbers to determine your success is a fallacy. Taking a deeper look at what 'delivered' means will help you understand why this is. Emails that get caught up in spam/junk folders or are deleted as soon as they hit the inbox do not get factored into the stats that determine delivered emails. The reports you are getting are likely a little lower than you expected.

You CAN find these numbers, but you'll need to hook up with a program that has this capability.

Looking deeper at your statistics will bring to the surface other reasons why your campaigns are not as successful as they can be.

The averages and percentages that get returned to you from the emails that you send out are for the most part amassed from your entire contact list. Therefore, by not looking any closer you'll be glossing over some of the different reasons your contacts have opposing reactions to your emails. By zooming in on those percentages you might discover that a chunk of your contacts are all under a certain domain (like att.com or comcast.com). If these portions of email addresses are generally not opening your email, you now can determine that there is something 'off' with the deliverability of emails to those domains. What is more important, you can understand how to fix the issue and therefore have better results from your campaigns.

Another essential element in this game is scrutinizing your 'open' percentages as they will help you determine the consistency of your readership. Taking a look back at the open rates of previous campaigns should just about show you a line of numbers that are close to the same: 25%, 24%, 26%, 22%, 25%, 27%, 26%...etc.

Just by taking a quick glance it's not hard to determine that the average amount of readers per mailing you have is 25%. Although it's possible this is an accurate number to knowing your readership, it is even more likely that the number is greater. If you look at it a little differently, by determining who has opened the email in the last month, or over the last three sendings, you'll probably get a better measure of your consistent readership.

The reason is that your contacts might not open your email EVERY time you send it. They can be busy, on vacation, short of time one week - but not the next.

Variations also happen because of the differences in your contacts' wants and needs. As a result, this is key information to use to send them emails that speak to their interests. Here's an example to better illustrate the point: If contact 'A' only opens your emails when you offer a dessert special at your restaurant; and contact 'B' only opens your email when you offer family dining promotions then you now have a better understanding on how to target these contacts' wants.

Understanding your email marketing software data is mostly about taking a closer look at the metrics to determine what the context of your response is. Once you put in that extra effort, it'll be much easier to find how to better target your audience and achieve greater email marketing software success.

Rudy Barell is a Senior Business Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing software used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with the complete email marketing program. Try it free!