Resources > Email Analytics 101: Turn Your Data Insights into Action

Email Analytics 101: Turn Your Data Insights into Action

By Jani Kumpula
Senior Webmaster/UI Designer, L-Soft

Email newsletters and outreach campaigns are highly trackable, which is one of the main benefits of email as a communication channel. Let's take a closer look at email tracking and analytics, including the data that you can gather and how you can take advantage of these insights to improve your communication strategy and boost your results.

Email Analytics 101: Turn Your Data Insights into Action

Different Types of Email Tracking

There are four distinct types of tracking capabilities, with each type giving you different insights about your subscribers.

Open

Open tracking detects when someone opens your email by loading a hidden image in the message. It gives a basic sense of engagement, but results can be unreliable due to image blocking or preloading by email clients.

Click

Click tracking shows which links subscribers clicked. It's a more accurate method to measure interest and interaction. However, some security tools may trigger false clicks during link scanning operations.

Forward

Forward tracking captures when subscribers share your message via email or social media. This metric helps you measure how far your message spreads beyond your subscriber base and how many new people it reaches.

Conversion

Conversion tracking shows who completed key actions – like signing up, downloading or purchasing – after clicking on a link in your email. It's the clearest indicator of campaign success and supports targeted follow-ups.

Different Levels of Email Tracking

Professional email communication and marketing platforms like LISTSERV Maestro allow you to choose the degree of personally identifiable information to collect about your subscribers for tracking reports. The more detailed information that you collect, the more stringent your privacy and data security policies need to be. Decide on a level of tracking depending on the purpose of your email newsletter and only collect the amount of information that you need for your campaign.

Unique

Unique tracking shows how many people opened your emails and clicked on your links, but not who did what. It's a privacy-friendly option that gives you average open and click rates and lets you compare campaign performance, but it doesn't support tailored follow-ups based on subscriber behavior.

Anonymous

Anonymous tracking shows opens and clicks linked to general profile data – like age, gender, location or any other profile field that you store in your subscriber database – without identifying individuals. It helps you understand how different audience segments engage with your emails, while still protecting subscriber privacy.

Personal

Personal tracking shows exactly which subscriber opened your email and clicked on which links. It's powerful for sending targeted follow-up messages or automated reminders to individual subscribers. Note, however, that some regions like the European Union require you to obtain prior consent in order to collect this data.

Putting It All Together: How Email Tracking Benefits You

Now that you understand the types and levels of email tracking, here's a quick overview of how these capabilities can directly benefit your communication strategy.

You Want To ...	With LISTSERV Maestro, You Can ...
Know who is engaged	Track opens and clicks to see who is interacting with your newsletters, updates and campaigns.
Follow up based on past behavior	Send automatic follow-ups to those who opened, clicked or ignored previous messages.
Improve campaign performance	Test subject lines, content and timing with A/B-split testing to find what resonates with your audience.
Understand what content works	Use visual click indicators (pin-style overlays) to see which parts of your message attract attention.
Measure real-world results	Track landing page conversions like downloads, signups or event registrations to prove impact.

Best Practices for Tracking Your Email Newsletters

1. Tracking Permission

Collect only as much personally identifiable data that you truly need.
Obtain explicit, prior permission for personal tracking from subscribers.
Ensure compliance with global data privacy regulations.

2. Conversion Rates

Go beyond opens and clicks by tracking actual conversions.
Use hosted landing pages to measure outcomes.
Integrate conversion data into your email outreach platform.

3. Subscription Reports

Monitor subscriber growth and bounce rates.
Investigate high bounce rates for deliverability or reputation issues.
Address high unsubscribe rates with more relevant content or reduced frequency.

4. A/B-Split Testing

Randomly split your audience for fair comparisons.
Test one variable at a time, for example subject line, preheader, CTA or layout.
Use the results to optimize future campaigns for your audience.

5. Multidimensional Analytics