Aweber Stats explained

[ryangb74]

Anyone realizing this too?

I've never had any problems with any of my stats before, but I got a bit depressed lately when looking over my stats over the past couple of months.

I checked on the status of all my lists and found that virtually NO ONE was opening the emails, maybe 1 or 2 here or there, and the click thru ratio was near 0.

And yes, I'm tracking clicks through AW and all of that.

In the beginning of last week, I sent out an email to what I believed to be my most inactive lists, informing my subscribers that I would be purging those who didn't open emails, as it costs A LOT of money to maintain a list and each person costs me. There's no sense keeping people on if I need they don't open emails.

Keep in mind, this is all just a test -- none of the above is actually literally true, just wanted to get a response.

With one of my lists, not giving the niche out, but its not IM, I hate it and I think I will delete it anyway. They're just a bunch of xxxxx who want everything for free and don't want to buy.

I sent a subject to that list, "Why are you even on this list?"

I was for the most part nice about it, but the gist was, "why would you sign up for free xxxxxxx if you aren't going to open the emails?"

I invited them to unsubscribe as well, if they no longer wanted to be on.

Well here are the results, according to AW.

0 people opened THAT email, and 0 people have unsubscribed -- even though i have had 10 personal replies begging me to keep them on and telling me that they open EVERY email.

These replies were the direct result of hitting reply to the email, as "RE: [Why Are You Even On This List]" was the reply subject.

To make matters worse, I check the stats on the links I send them to, and I see a good number of visitors where AW is the referrer(and not the AW link verification).

Keep in mind, those are the people that chose to respond, what about the ones that opened the email and didn't!

What the hell is the deal here?

Those were broadcast stats -- and the follow-up stats are just as sketchy.

If anything, now I know not to get discouraged and believe that no one is opening my mails, as they are, and Aweber is not saying so.

So if your opening rate is low and your CTR is low, it doesn't mean no one is opening their emails -- it just means that AW doesn't have their s*** together.

Just keep that in mind for the future . . .

Anyone else see the same thing?

[impact-productions]

A lot of people don't open e-mails, but just read them in the 'Preview Pane' in Microsoft Outlook or similar. So there always will be more people who read (or at least get the gist of) e-mail content than would be reported by Aweber.

[Neil Morgan]

...except the preview pane should trigger the "open".

Cheers,

Neil

[rondo]

Open rates only apply to html emails, not text emails. And even html open rates are unreliable because people block the image in the emails which used to track the open rates.

So if you use text emails all you can really do is track clickthrus to get an idea of what is happening.

Also get a good traffic stats program like Statcounter or Google Analytics to monitor traffic from your list.

[ryangb74]

Well I guess that all makes sense, as I stopped doing HTML emails and was only doing TXT emails out of laziness. Thanks, why i never thought of all that i don't know -- brain is fried

[Neil Morgan]

It might be worth changing the title of this thread because it's now alarmist for no reason.

Cheers,

Neil

[HostingBurst]

Had problems like this its rather annoying.

[ryangb74]

Actually it still doesn't answer the question because I never use html and some are still counted as open

[JustinPremick]

Thought I'd step in here and share the deal with open rates.
These comments aren't directed at anyone in particular; it's
just that I see this sort of question a lot and it's clear that
opens are not universally understood.

OK, here goes...

Email opens are traditionally tracked using a 1x1 image. This
is the case at AWeber and everywhere else.

This carries several consequences:

1. Opens can be tracked for HTML, but not plain text (can't
embed an image in plain text because it's, well... plain. text. )

2. If subscribers don't enable images, they may be reading
your emails without "opening" them in the sense that they
won't register an open in your stats.

3. If subscribers click on (or scroll through) your email in
Outlook/Thunderbird/wherever so that it loads in the
preview pane, they may record an open but may not actually
read your email.

So opens are an imperfect metric. Useful (moreso if you keep
how they work in mind while drawing your conclusions about
them), but imperfect.

One thing we do at AWeber to try to address consequences
#1 and #2 above is infer opens.

This means if you have click tracking turned on, and a
subscriber clicks a link but did not register an open (either
because the email was plain text, or because s/he did not
enable images), we will record an open anyway, since how
can you click a link but not open the email?

This obviously doesn't mean you'll get to see all of
your opens if sending only plain text; you'll only get to see
the folks who clicked. What it does do is give you a
way to account for some of the people who view the plain
text version of your email when you're sending that email
in both plain text and HTML.

Bottom line/s:

1. Some people read your emails but don't register opens.
2. Some people don't read your emails but do register opens.
3. If you want to track opens, don't send plain text. Send HTML.
4. At AWeber, if someone does not register an open but does
click a link, we will infer an open for that person.
5. Opens are useful mostly as a relative measure of success, not
as an absolute one. If you send 2 emails to the same list with a
reasonably short time period between them, the one with more opens
probably was more compelling.
6. Track clicks and conversions for more concrete measures of success.

Hope this helps!

[cityofangels]

This is good to know. I exclusively use text emails so people will actually read them and receive them, but it seems like it's more to it than that.

[cbright]

suggestion that might help

In the top of the 'html' email. In the actual body text of the email put somewhere in there "enable html or images or you're missing the offer" or something to that degree

That would help with your tracking maybe especially for people who might be interested

But could also turn some people off, going to have to find a balance I guess or just stick with what you got.

[csc4u]

I'm glad I found this thread. I was searching how to find inactive subscribers so I could delete them. A little spring cleaning

Since there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to find those that are not actually opening the emails I guess I'll have to think of something else. Perhaps ask them to click a response link or something.

[Adam Roy]

You should call Aweber and get some support for that.

Sounds like a problem with Aweber that I'm sure they would appreciate if you addressed with them.

[Val Wilson]

There was another thread on this a few days ago Holy CRAP. Aweber click results are WAY off!

[David Keith]

a source inside aweber (not a normal chat rep.) told me that they are seeing the isps filter the html version of emails lately and so now more of most peoples subscribers are receiving the text versions of your emails.

thus no tracking on open rates and such.

i am certain this is part of the problem, but just one piece of the problem.

[tpw]

Originally Posted by Adam Roy

You should call Aweber and get some support for that.

Sounds like a problem with Aweber that I'm sure they would appreciate if you addressed with them.

Originally Posted by Val Wilson

There was another thread on this a few days ago Holy CRAP. Aweber click results are WAY off!

Interestingly, this thread was started 23 months ago, and it read as if it was started this morning.

[Randall Magwood]

Despite the stats issue, are you seeing that people are buying your products? When you get sales, do you take the email address and see if it's from someone on your list? This would let you know if Aweber is working correctly, or if you have a real problem somewhere in the marketing process.