I’ve been publishing a weekly enewsletter (Print Tips) since 1999. It’s my primary type of marketing, and because I see how effective it can be, I encourage most companies (especially solo-owned businesses like my own) to have one, too.

My tip today is about one lesser-known benefit of enewsletters – presuming you use an email management system with great reporting functionality. I use Constant Contact and am very happy with them.

With an online marketing company handling your enewsletters, you get access to reports – who’s opened your emails and who hasn’t. Who’s subscribed and who’s said good-bye. And you can see when your emails are opened – day and time.

My favorite part of these reports is the open rate: who opened your email, and more interestingly, Unique Opens vs. All Opens. Unique Opens are the number of email recipients who opened your email at all. All Opens will show you how many times a recipient opened your email.

I use this information in a few ways, depending on need:

• To gauge how successful (popular) a particular enewsletter is. Really popular topics mean I should do more of the same.
• To track particular individuals or companies that are regularly engaged with my enewsletters.
• To see if my enewsletters are more popular with a particular market segment (printers vs. print customers).

This knowledge is really critical. Think about developing new business – wouldn’t someone who’s been getting your enewsletter for a while and opening issues often (think All Opens) be a good prospect?

As for me, I use this information if I want to interview someone for an article or post I’m writing. I also use it when I’m building a panel for an event. When I need to find someone, I export the All Opens file into Excel and sort by name. Voila!

People who are long-time fans of your enewsletter are more likely to do business with you than strangers are.