Metrics That Matter for E-mail October 2005 BY REGINA BRADY One wonderful facet of e-mail is that we have many different measurements at our fingertips and we can use this information to better understand our customers, to learn from each campaign effort, and to improve future mailings. Any good e-mail reporting system should provide a wealth of information on campaign performance. It’s important to take a “macro” and “micro” approach to e-mail reports. Look at overall results and then dig into the details to optimize campaign results in the future. Basic Reporting It all starts with the standard metrics that are collected. Here’s what to look for. - Delivery statistics. You’ll want to understand whether your mail has been delivered. Most programs break out invalid addresses and bounces. Invalid addresses have a problem with their syntax such as a space in the e-mail address, a misspelling of the domain or a mal-formed extension. There are hygiene programs that can correct invalid addresses, although you should apply them cautiously so that any correction does not result in your sending e-mail to someone who has not given permission. Bounces are e-mails that did not reach their destination and were “bounced back” to the sender. Technically, information is included with the returned message that allows the sender to know why the message was undeliverable. These are generally categorized as “hard bounces and “soft bounces.” ISPs do look at bounces by sender and a high percentage of bounces may result in your e-mail being blocked.
Hard bounces indicate the domain or the individual at the e-mail address no longer exists. They should be retired immediately, or you can drill down further to examine reason codes and selectively retire these names.
Soft bounces indicate a temporary condition that makes the e-mail undeliverable. The mailbox could be full. A server could be down. Resend soft bounces over up to four campaigns and then retire any names that could not be successfully delivered.
- Open rates. They allow senders to know how many recipients opened the message and give marketers insights into how well their brand and subject line resonate. Generally, open rates are only available for HTML e-mail. They can be misleading (recipients may have their preview pane set to display the first few lines of a message and this would be counted as an open) and should be used as a relative measurement to compare and contrast campaigns over time. Look at total opens and unique opens. Unique opens measure the number of individuals who open a message, not the total number of times a message was opened.
- Click-throughs (CTRs). The number of recipients who clicked on a link or image within an e-mail and who hyperlink to the web site for additional content. Each link in an e-mail should be tracked separately. You’ll want to examine click-throughs in total, unique activity and specific link results. Total click-throughs measure the number of times any link was accessed. Unique click-throughs measure the total individuals who clicked on any link. Specific link results allow you to determine what content or promotions within the e-mail captured attention.
- Unsubscribes (opt-outs). The number of recipients who ask to have their e-mail address removed from the list distribution. Most marketers will see unsubscribe rates of 0.2 percent. (That's two-tenths of one percent.)
- Referrals or pass-alongs. This measures the number of recipients who forward the message along to a friend or colleague.
- Sales. Some reporting systems can also tie in buying behavior generated by an email. For e-commerce sites this information is critical to determining success.
As you examine overall results, you’ll also want to compare and contrast your overall metrics with industry averages. There are articles and reports on the Web that provide this information. Drilling down With basic reporting metrics in place you are armed with tools to analyze performance and enhance subsequent campaigns. Here are some areas you should examine further: - Length of the relationship. New subscribers to your e-mail programs are often enthusiastic and your opens and CTRs may be higher for this group. If you have recently had a large influx of new customers, this group’s performance may mask a problem with older customers. Try to understand whether there are certain timeframes where your recipients begin to show vulnerable behavior. If CTRs decline, for example, after individuals have received your e-mail program for four to six months, you may want to plan a stimulation effort to reactivate these customers.
- Results by domain. It is helpful to analyze behavior for the top domains that represent the largest portion of your recipient base. ou may be able to spot a delivery problem with a specific domain and then work to correct the issue.Or, you may see that performance of free e-mail accounts (such as gmail, hotmail and yahoo) is significantly lower than with ISP accounts. In this instance, you might develop a contact strategy to obtain a “better” address.
- Results by offer or content. Understand which offers or content appeal to your list. Look for general patterns of receptivity so that you can fine-tune your program. Also examine this behavior with an eye toward developing meaningful subsets of your file. The time you spend developing segments based on activity can help you develop future strategies.
For example, you may identify a group that responds to sales and are low margin customers. Y ou might choose to either give the group more discount offers or find a way to stimulate buying behavior to improve margins. Or customers who respond to particular content might dictate the inclusion of additional content in their area of interest. If you can tailor your communication to segments you will be more relevant and results will improve.
- Results by activity. Identify those customers who are actively engaged with your program as evidenced by frequent click-throughs, opens and resulting sales as well as those who are inactive. Inactive customers are vulnerable and once you pinpoint this group, you can develop strategies to re-engage these individuals.
- Results over time. Be sure to examine consistency of campaign results over time. How do your October results compare with the previous months? Are patterns stable or did certain campaigns do significantly better? Delve into the details to understand what is working and what is not.
- Results by data attribute or combinations of data attributes. You likely have multiple data fields that define your customers. Look at behavior by specific data attribute to determine whether there are differences in behavior. For example, do males respond differently from females, or do recent offline buyers perform differently from online buyers? There are many ways you can slice and dice data. Direct marketers often employ recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis. This is another way to develop sub-segments within your customer base.
Once you analyze e-mail specific behavior you will also want to link pertinent information on customers to your master file or offline database. There may be additional data fields on your master file that would be helpful to add to your e-mail database and vice versa. This will also help you build an integrated communication plan for customer touchpoints.
It takes time and effort to conduct the appropriate analysis of your e-mail programs, but the approaches outlined here are similar to the rigor applied to any direct marketing campaign. Careful investigation of campaign results will allow you to develop hypotheses, test, and ultimately improve results.
Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net.
Return to Articles
| |
