Statistics Reinforce E-mails Role
6 Nov 2002
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 This issue we change format a little to keep things looking fresh. We hope you like it and welcome any feedback you might have.
I have been researching a good deal of stats lately to get a bigger picture of the future direction of e-mail marketing. It comes as little surprise that the future is clear. E-mail marketing is set to become the standard. More companies are dedicating larger proportions of marketing budgets and more resources to e-mail each year. The low cost, high speed, high response rate and high flexibility of e-mail marketing make it a marketers dream medium. Of course it comes with a warning – use it wisely or lose it.
To help you cope with the rigours of e-mail marketing and e-nurturing strategies, our team have been hard at work on creating the next generation of the GetSmartSuite application. The new release features increased reporting, filtering, HTML editing in a more WISIWIG style, multiple edition compilation and scheduling.
For those using the current version there will be free upgrades as part of the service. You will be contacted shortly.
Happy reading.
Paul Hodgson
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Tracking Your e-Mail Success
What metrics should you measure and why?
One of the key advantages of e-mail marketing is the ability to measure the success of your campaigns. Tracking open rates, click-throughs and deliverables quickly gives you live feedback from your messages that no other medium can deliver. It is this degree of measurability that professional marketers find irresistible.
What are the professionals measuring?
The graph above shows the most commonly tracked data along with data that marketers would like to be tracking. Most are tracking click-throughs without difficulty, with pass along rates being highly desirable, as the success of viral marketing campaigns requires accurate measurement for analysis.
So what should you be tracking and what do these reports mean to your overall marketing strategy?
There are three levels of reporting features to consider when broadcasting your e-mail messages. Where applicable reports should be expressed in numerical and percentage terms and drill down reports that result in a list of subscribers should allow you to save the list or add it as a filter for later use.
The First Level to deal with is the basics - deliverables, bounces, opens rates, new subscribes and unsubscribes.
Number in mail list - as it suggests this is the amount of people you are targeting. This can include outdated addresses, incorrect addresses and duplications in an unclean list. Cleaning your list is important if you can. Some service providers offer this service as an extra, others automatically clean and de-dupe your list at no charge.
Deliverables – the number of e-mails that could potentially reach their target from the clean list.
Bounces – E-mails that were sent but ‘bounced back’ to the sender. E-mails bounce because the address is no longer in use (perhaps someone left the company), the recipient has added you to their block list, or the message has received an out of office reply for several days in a row.
Successful deliveries - the number sent, minus the bounces.
Subscribe/unsubscribe report – a great way to compare the success of each message. More subscribers means more success, more unsubscribes mean less success. Ideally you should also be able to extract the new subscribers to a list or filter in case you wish to send them a unique message.
The Second Level is the real meat in the sandwich. Open rates (unique views), click-throughs, unique click-throughs and forwards give you a good picture of your broadcast.
Open rates – this report lets you know how many people have opened your e-mail (but it works only on HTML e-mails). This is very valuable information for measuring the appeal of your subject line since this is often the first thing people read before opening. Open Rates are often called ‘unique views’ as only the first time people read the mail is measured. This gives a more accurate report.
Click-throughs – this registers when someone clicks on a link within the e-mail. For instance, your newsletter may provide a brief overview of an article and a 'read more' link for the whole article. Alternatively, it may be a link to a purchase page on your web site, a document download or sponsors link.
Unique click-throughs - this measures new visitors to your links rather than repeated clicks as a visit. This allows you to accurately measure how many people have viewed the link rather than how often.
Forwards – measures how often the message was forwarded along. This is a vital tool for measuring the success of a promotion or viral campaign where the objective is to gain new qualified leads.
The Third Level - This is where it gets interesting! Who opened the mail, what links did they click on, and when was it opened?
Who opened - the mail relies on having a sophisticated broadcast system that records each subscriber’s identity. This has a very practical application if you wish to follow up on a broadcast with a targeted message to readers of a particular message. This also gives you a great record of what you have sent to whom.
What links did the subscriber click on? - this goes toward profiling the activities of the subscriber - a fantastic way to personalise future content based on past levels of expressed interest. If you can save the list of people who clicked on a particular link you can then follow up with a more targeted message.
When – a useful report particularly when comparing issues with differing broadcast times to compare open rates.
For the average marketer the first two levels are more than adequate. While it is interesting, knowing who opened what, when and where, is often more information than is useful for most people and can result in you pouring over pages of reports that will have no real impact on the bottom line.
However there is no excuse for not having access to reports. They are a valuable tool set for the professional marketer and communication specialist. For newsletters they provide important feedback on which articles are of value to readers, allowing you to constantly improve the level of content for each issue. For promotional mail-outs the ability to know how successful your campaigns are and who exactly is interested in your message can deliver very positive bottom line results for very little cost.
If you don’t already have an accurate reporting system in place, make sure you start making moves toward this as soon as you can. Without the tools with which to measure, how can you improve?
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How much e-mail is too much - the frequency question
Determining how much and how often you send your e- bulletins can be an art form. Use this guide to get the best mix for optimum performance
by: Paul Hodgson
Marketers and CRM managers are switching on to the growing preference for less frequent mail outs and at last publishers are paying more attention to quality over quantity. This is due largely to the increase in the volumes of commercial e-mails each person has to deal with on a daily basis. And as more companies turn to e-mail as their primary communication medium, a focus on getting the right mix of frequency and quality has become vital for survival.
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Getting Personal Produces Dramatic Results
How increased personalisation is impacting on open rates
We all appreciate messages that mean something to us. Therefore we are more likely to click on the message if it contains information that we can identify with. To me it shows that the sender values me enough to know about me and send information of direct interest. ( its all about me )
Does it really work?
A recent analysis of 9 million opt-in e-mails showed that click-through rates increased in direct proportion to the level of personalisation.
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Leading Real Estate Agent attributes sales directly to e-newsletter
Ray White Surfers Paradise hails e-newsletter strategy a resounding success
by: Paul Hodgson
What makes a great Real Estate agency? In short - sales and great service. Andrew Bell, CEO of Ray White Surfers, has hailed their e-newsletter strategy as a great boost to both.
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