Email Marketing Analytics

Email Marketing Analytics;

The above sounds like a mouthful for the uninitiated, agreed, but it is so important for a successful email marketing campaign. Believe it or not, it’s not all that technical to understand and decipher what it’s all about. In short, the analysis of our campaign tells us so much about how successful or not our email campaign has been. It will give us the breakdown of how our campaign or broadcast has fared and from those results, we can make changes. Marketing analysis is done in every sector of commerce, so it’s no different in the email marketing industry. From the analysis reports, we see what elements of our test or campaign was successful and what parts were not.

In some quarters, its known as metrics, but it amounts to the same thing. In the feedback reports that we are given from our Autoresponders, all that data is critical and so important to digest and analyse going forward. It gives us a birds eye view of how our campaign behaved and delivered, according to the parameters we set out initially.

Email marketing analytics will give us reports and feedback in the following areas..

• Opened emails rate
• CTR, Click through rate,
• No. of subscribers
• Date subscribed
• Bounce rate
• Broadcast open rate
• ROI, Return of investment
• Unsubscribed
• Plus much much more….

We will briefly look at each of the metrics and explain the importance and function of each of the above list.

Opened emails rate : This is first and foremost the most important metric that we need to look at. When we have just processed an email marketing campaign, we wait with abated breath in the hope that all or nearly all of the subscribers would open their emails. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Reason..? It could be for any number of reasons. Look at the list below and it can be any of those..

1. Perhaps we send out the wrong offer,
2. Maybe we emailed the incorrect list,
3. The timing may have been an issue
4. The content of the email was the wrong type
5. The subject line was not attention grabbing enough and so on.
6. The formatting was not appealing enough to grab their attention

So based on that metric alone, there is plenty food for thought. It alone, is a substantial area to be looked at and revisited for reappraisal and serious analysis, so that we can improve that issue moving forward.

CTR, Click through rate : The click through rate or open rate is where our customers, users, or contacts have actually clicked on our offer ( link ) . In a previous post, ( click here ) we explained how to insert hyperlinks into the body of our emails. The link is usually a different color, highlighted, underlined or bold font, so that it stands out slightly and becomes a little eye catching. If that percentage figure makes good reading, then we have done a good job. It’s an area that can sometimes, be outside of our control, unfortunately. But for this metric, it’s a case of trial and error, just keep trying out different systems, different headings, better subject lines and so on. Have a look at the image below for reference and you can see a whole array of different results.

No. of Subscribers: Often, we will purchase a Solo Ad deal or package and that is when we buy a list of visitors and point them towards our website, opt-in landing page or funnel. Let’s say we purchased 200 visitors and only 125 of them subscribed, then our No. of subscribers box is populated by 125 for this campaign. Basically, this number is arrived at when the visitors decide to volunteer their name and email address. Have a quick sconce at the image to the right and see the opt-in box, for reference. This number is in the ‘Hands of the Gods’, sometimes. Again, depending on our offer and how well we have presented same with a view to getting our visitors to join our club.

Date Subscribed: This category of our analysis is self explanatory, yet there is still some info to be gleaned form this metric. Let’s say that we ran an email broadcast campaign, where we send out different emails on different days and we notice a bounce on a particular day, ie an increase in the number that subscribed on a particular date. We now know therefore, that the email sent on that date had worked the oracle and persuaded people to sign-up. So, we can bookmark that particular email or swipe for future usage and reference.

Bounce rate: The email bounce rate is the percentage of email addresses in a particular email campaign or broadcast campaign list that did not receive your email messages, for a variety of reasons. Mainly because the recipients mail servers or ISPs returned them. Bounces happen when emails cannot be delivered to email addresses. We try an avoid this by careful planning and attention to our subscribers lists.

Broadcast Open Rate: This amounts to the total number of people that clicked open our emails from an email broadcast campaign. Similar to the Opened email rate as described above. Self-explanatory and just another detail of numbers from our AR. Depending on the autoresponder that we have chosen, most have these figures available to us at the click of a button.

ROI Return of Investment: The money category or perhaps the most important detail in all of our analysis. Probably the first detail that we will look at from a financial point of view. Statistics vary from time to time and it’s fair to say, that if we do everything right from the outset, most email campaigns will return a profit. Some leading email marketers, predict that we can expect a return of anywhere between $20 – $30 for every $1 spent on our marketing emails.

Unsubscribed: Sadly, this is one stat that we do not want to look at and if we do, we do not want to believe what we read. I have left this particular unsettling stat ’till last and for good reason. This number is unfortunately the amount or number of people who unsubscribed from our mailing list. They have intimated that do no longer wished to be contacted by us or our company …!!!! .

These are, sometimes, the cold truths or hard facts of email marketing. But do not be alarmed, we can fix this. Revisit your emails and look at the content to see if the email was the proper fit or contained the right offer for that particular list. It’s important to note that under recent strict emailing rules and regulations, subscribers have the right to unsubscribe if they so wish, it’s their prerogative to do so. I have enclosed below, a screenshot from one of my emails, just to show where the ‘unsubscribe’ option is placed. It’s normally located at the very end or bottom of our emails.

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In Summary:

Above is the long and short of what Email Marketing Analytics is all about. It sounds complicated and difficult to comprehend, but take each category and look at them carefully. Then, you will see that they all have their own part to play in the overall scheme of things. They are there for a reason and they give us some great data and feedback on how our email campaigns have delivered for us. I hope that you have found this post interesting and if so, do please let us know in the comments box down below. We will get back to you with any issues that you may have concerns about in due course.