Tracking Data in Your E-Mail Marketing Campaign
You have to be an advanced HTML and database programmer to track your marketing e-mails on your own, but an e-mail marketing program (EMP) can do the work for you. EMPs automatically add special tracking code to the links you include in your e-mails. The tracking code is unique to each individual on your e-mail list and tied to each e-mail campaign. EMPs also have programs that automatically read the code from other e-mail servers when they return undeliverable e-mail so you don’t have to do the hard work to determine why a particular e-mail wasn’t delivered.
E-mail tracking reports are analytical summaries of the results of a given e-mail campaign that can tell you
Which e-mails bounced
Why they bounced
Who opened your e-mails
What links they clicked
Who unsubscribed from your e-mails
Who forwarded y our e-mails
![A sample summary e-mail tracking report from an EMP. [Credit: Courtesy of Constant Contact]](http://media.wiley.com/Lux/30/270330.image0.jpg)
Credit: Courtesy of Constant ContactA sample summary e-mail tracking report from an EMP.
Making sense of the data in an e-mail tracking report takes a little getting used to because the technology involved in the e-mail tracking process causes the data to take on a slightly different meaning than you might expect.
