Campaign stats and measurements

Do you know what your campaign stats mean? Do you know what it is that you’re measuring? I think there are a lot of emailers out there who have no idea what they are measuring and what those measurements mean.
The most common measurement used is “open rate.” There’s been quite a bit of discussion recently about open rates, how they’re calculated, and is there a better way. In my own opinion, open rate can be useful, but only in some circumstances. More often it is a distraction from real measurements
Not only has there been the recent discussions about “open rate” versus “render rate” and a lot of confusion among people about what the underlying issues are, but I’ve also been working through some campaign stats questions with other people that indicate maybe they don’t actually understand the numbers they’re using.
For instance, what do the delivery statistics reported by the various mailbox monitoring companies mean? If you have 100% inbox delivery as measured by the program, does that mean all your mail has reached the recipient’s inbox?
What about bounce rates? Everyone says “keep them low” but what does low mean? How do you measure them?
Over the next few posts, I’ll talk about the different stats and measurements in common use and what they do and don’t mean.