Some Terminology
Open Rate - refers to the number of people who opened the email versus how many people the email was sent to (expressed as a percentage). As you might have guessed, having a higher open rate is best. The more people that open your email likely means the more people that will become your customer (usually) by buying something.
Clickthrough rate (CTR) - refers to the number of clicks on links within an email, divided by the total number of emails sent.
Conversion rate - refers to the number of people that actually take action on the website (by buying a product, downloading an ebook, signing up for a course, etc…) after clicking on a link within your email.
You need to keep track of the various statistics listed above in order to determine the success or failure of an email campaign.
Whitelist - is a group of contacts that are considered acceptable by a particular user. Messages sent by these contacts will not be sent to the trash folder or any bulk/junk mail folder. When a reader first subscribes to your mailing list, it is important to have them include your domain in their whitelist to prevent any messages you send from being accidentally filtered.
Blacklist - a blacklist, with respect to email, is the polar opposite of a whitelist. It contains a list of domains or contacts that are considered unacceptable by a particular user. Any messages that are received from domains entered in the blacklist will automatically be filtered.
Most Internet Service Providers (ISP) will also contain a blacklist of domains that are known to be spammers. You never want to be included on this list, as it will result in a poor delivery rate for your email campaigns. We will cover what to do to avoid being accidentally blacklisted, or flagged as a spammer, by ISPs later on.
People will open an email from a company or person they recognize. It is your goal to be recognized by your subscribers. Everything you do with respect to email marketing should bring you closer to that goal.