Reggie's articles appearing in Target Marketing Magazine Does Your List Measure Up? How to slice and dice your email list and measurement April 2009
As direct marketers, you know “the devil is in the details.” Being able to drill-down on results is important to determine future strategies. Then you can fine-tune your results, target better and reap the rewards. Here are a few thoughts to help you do so. Give Your List an Annual Physical
It’s wise to make an appointment with your doctor for an annual physical. It’s just as important to determine the health of your list. Use your “churn” rate as one metric to assess your overall list fitness.
Picture a bucket with a leak. Once you determine how much fluid leaks out, you can determine how much additional liquid you’ll have to add to keep the level in the bucket even or increase capacity. With email, the negative factors that reduce list size are opt-outs, hard bounces, soft bounces retired after a certain threshold is hit and spam complaints. The frequency of email campaigns also affects churn. A monthly email results in losses to your list size; campaigns that are sent twice weekly (or eight times a month) incur many more opportunities for churn.
To examine churn, you want to log the number of names you have at the start of a year and then plot, over time, the average patterns you’ve seen for each of the negative factors mentioned. Create a simple spreadsheet and chart this activity for a year, based on the frequency of your campaigns. This allows you to see how many new names must be added to stay steady or to increase your list by a factor that you set.
Examine Performance Attributes
Your email database should be composed of multiple fields. Now may be the time to re-think the data fields you collect at sign-up and add additional fields.
Most email systems allow you to run queries and analyze performance based upon the data fields that have been set up for the list. It takes pre-planning to do this right. And, there is no magic bullet. What is right for one marketer may not be practical to another. Consider the following:
Maintain the source of each name. Look at other attributes that are collected at sign-up or added to your email file from information that resides in your offline customer database. It is relatively easy to import information from your centralized data repository to your email file. You might want to identify customers, online buyers, leads, multi-buyers or those who purchase in multiple channels. Think about how valuable this information is in planning email communications—you understand their past activities and can zero in on these patterns in your messaging. Look at other attributes that are collected at sign-up or added to your email file from information that resides in your offline centralized customer database. It is relatively easy to import information from your centralized data repository to your email file. You might want to identify customers, online buyers, leads, multi-buyers or those who purchase in multiple channels. Think about how valuable this information is in planning e-mail communications—you understand their past activities and can zero in on these patterns in your messaging. Study email behavior. It’s important to identify those who have not opened or clicked on an email in a certain period of time, so you can plan reactivation campaigns.
Campaign Analysis Ideas
Any good reporting system details the standard metrics. You want to analyze each campaign in terms of sent, delivered, bounces, total opens, total clickthroughs, opt-outs and new additions to your list (if you include a sign-up link within your emails). All calculations for activity should be based on delivered e-mails, not gross names sent. Some analytic approaches designed to give you additional insights include:Here are some analytic approaches designed to give you additional insights.
Clicks to Opens. This is a measure of how engaged recipients are with your messages. Given the assumption that someone has opened your message, it’s helpful to see how many of those who opened actually clicked through to your site.
Let’s say that your open rate is 20 percent and your clickthrough rate is 5 percent. The click-to-open rate is 25 percent (5 percent divided by 20 percent). As you examine the types of campaigns you send (new product announcements, discounts and sales, product ratings and reviews, etc.), you’re able to determine the averages for each type and see how well they stimulate engagement.
If certain types of campaigns stand out, you can drill down deeper in an attempt to figure out why.
Clicks on primary links. There are likely to be many links in an email campaign. If you just look at overall clickthrough results, you may miss a piece of the puzzle. Drill down further on clickthrough activity, and determine what your clickthrough rate is for primary, secondary and administrative links. This also may shed light on how well your template is working.
Conversions. Marketers should measure how many of those who clicked through actually made a purchase. In the instance where a marketer wants recipients to register for a promotion, it is helpful to know what percentage of clickthroughs did so. Not all email reporting systems are able to report specific site activity, but you can look at your Web analytics to determine the conversion rates.
Revenue per Thousand. Determine which products or categories generate the highest revenues.
Product and revenue analysis. Determine which products or categories generate the highest revenues. 
Here the marketer looked at emails over an extended period of time to determine revenues generated by product category, the revenues per thousand emails, what percentage of the emails promoted certain product categories and the overall mix of revenues derived.
Examine what approach works best. Many marketers use a mix of content emails and promotional emails.
Here the marketer identified promotional versus content-focused emails. While most of the revenues are generated from promotional emails, the inclusion of meaty content serves to keep their recipients engaged and opening all emails sent.
We’ve just scratched the surface on some aspects of email measurement. But these areas should serve you in good stead. If you take the time to analyze and look beyond aggregate results, you’ll be poised to better understand your list and create more successful campaigns.
Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and email marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reggie@reggiebrady.com. Return to articles
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