This post was guest written by Lary Stucker of FreshClicks.net, a blog about Marketing and Analytics Strategies.
If you're anything like me, one of the big draws of online marketing is the ability to use analytics to track, report, and improve your marketing campaigns. Not only can you use this data to demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts, you can also gain greater customer insight by studying how they respond. So lets look at 4 practical ways you can improve your email campaigns by using your basic reporting tools.
1. Improving Delivery Rates:
Low delivery rates make ISPs nervous. When ISPs get nervous about your emails they label you as SPAM first and ask questions later. Your email campaigns' delivery rates should be in the high 90%. If they are not it means that you need to:
• Filter out those bad and old email address: When you send email to bad addresses, ISPs take notice. Often ISPs will flag a known bad address and if you are sending email to that address they are going to think you are sending spam.
• Improve your collection methods: Make sure potential subscribers clearly understand what they are signing up for, and use a double opt-in method. You can even write the confirmation email so that it reminds them why they signed up for your list in the first place.
2. Improving Open Rates:
You got the email in their inbox, but now what? When someone receives an email they usually open it in the first 24-48 hours. After that, it has been pushed so far down by new emails and other priorities that it will most likely get deleted. So every minute that goes by decreases the possibility that they are actually going to open your email. There are two things that you can measure and test to improve your open rates:
• Time of Day/ Week: Your subscribers are busy people, and depending on the type of campaigns you are running they might not want to read your newsletter or "special offer" first thing Monday morning. I use our existing web analytics to see which days are the most busy on our website. Then I'll look at which hours are the busiest on those days. Once I have that data I'll create random samples from my subscriber list and send on those busy days/hours and see which ones have the best open rates.
• Subject lines: make sure that your subject lines are interesting, enticing, and actually re-enforce the body of the email. The great thing is you can test subject lines and see what kinds of messages entice your subscribers to open. You'd be surprised how the smallest changes can make a big difference. We had a campaign with a decent open rate, (16.8%) after adding the word "Tips" to the subject line our open rate jumped to 25.4%! Suddenly the email went from looking like a marketing piece, to a useful resource our subscribers could actually use. By the way, the body of the email didn't change, but the subject line changed the expectation of the subscriber.
3. Improving Conversion/ Click-Through Rates:
One of the best things to improve conversion and click-through rates is to make it clear what the subscriber is going to find when they click on any link. We recently ran an "upgrade" campaign and decide to run A/B testing on a random portion of our list. The email to group A contained a link with a "Upgrade Now" button, while group B received an email message with a "buy now" button. What we found out was that group A expected the link to give them information about obtaining a free upgrade while group B clearly understood that the "buy now" link would take them to our store to purchase the upgrade. The results, 9.2% conversion rate on the "Upgrade Now" group and a 19.4% conversion rate on the "buy now" group. A difference of 210%!
4. Decreasing Unsubscribes
Lets be totally honest for a second. There are two reasons your company is putting resources into email campaigns. The reason you state on your signup form, to inform, educate or entertain your subscribers, and the reasons you discuss back at the office. Whether it’s to drive direct sales, nurture leads or increase brand awareness, email marketing is a valuable tool for your company. You know it and guess what, your subscribers know it too, and their okay with it. What they want is to not feel like you are trying to trick them into anything. Make sure that your email campaigns add value, have a consistent send schedule, and don't surprise them. After sending a campaign I always check our unsubscribe rates. Our average unsubscribe rate is 0.01%-0.02%. Anytime I see it above those rates I know something went wrong. Usually it has to do with the perceived value of the message or the time between campaigns. When you have analytical evidence like an increase in unsubscribe rates it is a lot easier to convince your copywriter and others in the company of needed changes.
What do you think?
By studying the analytical of your email campaigns you can greatly improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and gain greater insight into your customers. What kinds of insights have you been able to gain from your analytics? How were you able to use that to improve your email campaigns and marketing to your customers? I'd love to hear from you on twitter @LaryStucker or on my blog, www.FreshClicks.net!
If you're anything like me, one of the big draws of online marketing is the ability to use analytics to track, report, and improve your marketing campaigns. Not only can you use this data to demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts, you can also gain greater customer insight by studying how they respond. So lets look at 4 practical ways you can improve your email campaigns by using your basic reporting tools.
1. Improving Delivery Rates:
Low delivery rates make ISPs nervous. When ISPs get nervous about your emails they label you as SPAM first and ask questions later. Your email campaigns' delivery rates should be in the high 90%. If they are not it means that you need to:
• Filter out those bad and old email address: When you send email to bad addresses, ISPs take notice. Often ISPs will flag a known bad address and if you are sending email to that address they are going to think you are sending spam.
• Improve your collection methods: Make sure potential subscribers clearly understand what they are signing up for, and use a double opt-in method. You can even write the confirmation email so that it reminds them why they signed up for your list in the first place.
2. Improving Open Rates:
You got the email in their inbox, but now what? When someone receives an email they usually open it in the first 24-48 hours. After that, it has been pushed so far down by new emails and other priorities that it will most likely get deleted. So every minute that goes by decreases the possibility that they are actually going to open your email. There are two things that you can measure and test to improve your open rates:
• Time of Day/ Week: Your subscribers are busy people, and depending on the type of campaigns you are running they might not want to read your newsletter or "special offer" first thing Monday morning. I use our existing web analytics to see which days are the most busy on our website. Then I'll look at which hours are the busiest on those days. Once I have that data I'll create random samples from my subscriber list and send on those busy days/hours and see which ones have the best open rates.
• Subject lines: make sure that your subject lines are interesting, enticing, and actually re-enforce the body of the email. The great thing is you can test subject lines and see what kinds of messages entice your subscribers to open. You'd be surprised how the smallest changes can make a big difference. We had a campaign with a decent open rate, (16.8%) after adding the word "Tips" to the subject line our open rate jumped to 25.4%! Suddenly the email went from looking like a marketing piece, to a useful resource our subscribers could actually use. By the way, the body of the email didn't change, but the subject line changed the expectation of the subscriber.
3. Improving Conversion/ Click-Through Rates:
One of the best things to improve conversion and click-through rates is to make it clear what the subscriber is going to find when they click on any link. We recently ran an "upgrade" campaign and decide to run A/B testing on a random portion of our list. The email to group A contained a link with a "Upgrade Now" button, while group B received an email message with a "buy now" button. What we found out was that group A expected the link to give them information about obtaining a free upgrade while group B clearly understood that the "buy now" link would take them to our store to purchase the upgrade. The results, 9.2% conversion rate on the "Upgrade Now" group and a 19.4% conversion rate on the "buy now" group. A difference of 210%!
4. Decreasing Unsubscribes
Lets be totally honest for a second. There are two reasons your company is putting resources into email campaigns. The reason you state on your signup form, to inform, educate or entertain your subscribers, and the reasons you discuss back at the office. Whether it’s to drive direct sales, nurture leads or increase brand awareness, email marketing is a valuable tool for your company. You know it and guess what, your subscribers know it too, and their okay with it. What they want is to not feel like you are trying to trick them into anything. Make sure that your email campaigns add value, have a consistent send schedule, and don't surprise them. After sending a campaign I always check our unsubscribe rates. Our average unsubscribe rate is 0.01%-0.02%. Anytime I see it above those rates I know something went wrong. Usually it has to do with the perceived value of the message or the time between campaigns. When you have analytical evidence like an increase in unsubscribe rates it is a lot easier to convince your copywriter and others in the company of needed changes.
What do you think?
By studying the analytical of your email campaigns you can greatly improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and gain greater insight into your customers. What kinds of insights have you been able to gain from your analytics? How were you able to use that to improve your email campaigns and marketing to your customers? I'd love to hear from you on twitter @LaryStucker or on my blog, www.FreshClicks.net!
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