Learning something new is exciting, but it can also be a daunting task when you take into consideration all the new terminology you have to learn to make heads or tails of the reports you’re looking at. To help in your fluency, we’ve defined five email marketing terms every marketer should know. With the help of this blog, you’ll be able to approach the critical numbers email reports with more confidence.

Unique Opens

This is pretty straightforward. Unique Opens is the number of subscribers who actually opened your email. What separates this from Total Opens (or Opens) is that Unique Opens only records the subscriber’s first time opening the email. If you want to know how many times any given subscriber opened your email, look at Total Opens.

Unique Clicks

Unique Clicks is very similar to Unique Opens in the sense that it records the subscriber’s first time clicking a link in your email. It does not count how many times each subscriber has clicked on a link. For example, if a subscriber clicks on the same link twice, it will only be counted once.

Click to Open Rate

Click to Open Rate compares the number of unique clicks to unique opens. Why measure this? This number indicates how effective the email is. A subscriber opening an email and then clicking on a link is an action that demonstrates interest, and hopefully it’s enough interest to turn into a conversion (an action).

Bounce Rate

Bounces are the number or percentage of email addresses in a mailing list that did not receive your email. There are two different kinds of Bounces: Hard and Soft. A Hard Bounce is when the email is returned for permanent reasons such as the email address is invalid or the recipient email server is blocking delivery. A Soft Bounce comes from an email that couldn’t be delivered due to a temporary reason. Temporary reasons could be the file size is too big or the recipient’s inbox is full. You can’t anticipate a bounce, but it is a smart practice to keep a record of how many bounces you are receiving and from what emails.

Spam Complaints

You have to be very careful with Spam Complaints. Even the best emails from the most seasoned marketers can receive a Spam Complaint. A Spam Complaint is the result of a recipient marking an email as spam/junk or reporting the spam/junk. A normal spam complaint rate is anything less than 0.1%. If you receive too many complaints, your sender reputation can be harmed, deliverability rates will decrease, and you could even get blocked by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Essentially, Spam Complaints are an action that signals the email is unwanted.