by Wikus Engelbrecht
8. June 2010 03:34
Email marketing reports - what is it that you want to get from them?
I suppose the better question would be, ‘What is it that you want to gain from your email marketing?’ After all, your send reports are there so you can track how your campaign is doing. Basics, I know – but I sometimes get the impression that a lot of users don’t know exactly how to read their reports. The graphs and statistics are easy enough to understand, but how do you interpret them?
Email is a useful marketing tool in that it gives you the perfect opportunity to engage with both existing and potential clients directly. You get to engage on a more personal level and convince them that your business really does cater to their needs rather than relying on mass advertising messages. It makes sense then, that your reports should give you an idea of how well you are engaging with your audience.
So what do I have to look out for? How do I interpret my statistics?
Open rates
One of the first things you probably look at when examining your reports is your open rates – and rightly so. After all, in order for subscribers to engage with your emails on any level they need to open them first If you want to boost your open rates, think the things subscribers see immediately when they receive an email: The From name and the subject line. If the subject line is attention grabbing, unique and relevant, your recipients are more likely to open your emails. Also consider things like when you send your emails – is it at a time that is convenient for your recipients to read it? Or do you perhaps email them too often? Small tweaks can boost your open rates. We find that most emails are sent mid-week: Most are sent on Thursdays, followed by Wednesdays, Tuesdays, Fridays, Mondays, Sundays and lastly, Saturdays. It’s clear that our clients don’t get as good a response to their mailings over weekends as they do on weekdays. It's something to bear in mind when timing your sends.
Unsubscribe statistics
Another important statistic is the number of people who unsubscribed from your list. Inevitably there will always be some people who are no longer interested in receiving your mailings, so it’s important to keep track of how many people do so, on average, after each send. That way you’ll notice trends, so if for a few sends the number of unsubscribes is slowly increasing, you know that something in your emails is putting your readers off. Perhaps there is even a particular message that caused significantly higher unsubscribe rates than usual, in which case it’s a good idea to sit down and analyse the message to identify what in the email caused them to do so.
Click-through rates
The interaction that (in most cases) is probably most valuable to an email marketer is when a subscriber clicks on a link in your email. Not only does it generate traffic to your website, but it means that they are one step closer to buying your product or signing up for your service. It means that you’ve managed to pique their interest sufficiently enough in your email that they’ve decided to look into it further. Understandably then, click-through rates are something you want to keep an eye on.
But how can you boost your click-through rates? Subscribers are a simple bunch – they don’t want to spend more than a few seconds skimming through your email. Make sure that your content is relevant, direct and targeted. Make it very clear what you want them to do: “Click here to sign up” or “click here to get your 20% off coupon”.
Social share statistics
Your best metric is one that sends your campaign soaring beyond the immediate Inbox – it’s when your subscribers become so engaged with your email campaigns that they share them with their friend and contacts. Emails are perfect for growing your audience virally – that’s why we offer you the option of inserting ‘forward to a friend’ buttons and social widgets to your email footer. (Social widgets allow your readers to share your email through their social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.) And again, if your subscribers find your emails valuable or informative enough to want to share with their peers, you must be doing a good job of engaging them – so make sure you track your growth through your social share rates. These give you a clear indication of how many people forwarded or shared your message. Who knows, their friends might also sign up as subscribers, so you increase the reach of your emails. Just remember that your subscribers might not be aware that they have these sharing options, so be sure to point it out to them clearly.
If you keep track of these statistics you should be able to track the efficiency of your campaigns and be able to adapt your email marketing strategies to ensure optimal results. Of course, sometimes you can notice fluctuation in these rates, but not be quite sure what caused the changes. When in doubt – test! Use the A/B split testing tool to measure how well your emails compare against each other. That way you’ll have a very clear indication of which one works best, so you can send out effective newsletters with every send.
