Email & Coffee

You release the newsletter campaign and return to your email service dashboard to review metrics. Clicks, opens, bounces, unsubscribes, pie charts and percentages. How can your email data collection process measure success, support future email campaigns and your ultimate business goals?

First and foremost, determine a measurement plan that identifies which metric possesses the most value per campaign: open rate, clicks or conversions. Understanding these behaviors over time will help to clarify whether your email content is doing its job. Ultimately your goal is to create valuable content, more timely and targeted to your customers needs. In turn this will build a stronger brand, better relationship and increase overall ROI.

The following techniques will help to improve email metrics.

Delivery rates: Permission based emails may still get blocked by intelligent spam filters. Improve your delivery rates by:
1. Asking recipients to white list your email address
2. Practice list hygiene
3. Investigate spam reports

Open rates: Sender recognition is paramount. To increase the likelihood your email message will be opened, use your company name in the friendly from field and test subject lines.

Click-through rates: Click-through rate is a factor of open rate. The strategy here is to measure the engagement recipients display once the email is opened. Successful engagement depends upon link location and whether your marketing goals (click here, register now, read more, get more information) are prominently displayed. Keep your content simple but direct. Focus on one offer per campaign. Over time, tailor newsletter content to the most opened topics and clicked elements.

Unsubscribe rates: Evaluate to establish whether unsubscribers are new or old customers opting out. If older customers drop off, your content may be growing stale. If new customers unsubscribe, you may not be delivering a newsletter that meets their expectations.

Conversion rates: Achieving your campaign goal - whether it is registration, purchase, download or a phone call - is a result of your newsletter as a whole. Did your subject line compel subscribers to open your mail? Is the call to action clear and easy to comply with? Is the campaign branded, text customized, forms and graphics reflecting your corporate identity? While you want to keep the process simply, don’t lose any momentum to a misplaced element or a form that consumes too much time to complete or doesn’t capture the correct data.

Review your email metrics regularly and the patterns will emerge. Best day and time to release; engaging subject lines; popular newsletter topics; services and products that your customers require. Analyzing your subscribers’ behaviors provides insight to their interests. Knowing what they like (and what they don’t) will help to enhance your newsletter and continue to build your customer relations.

Don’t throw your email metrics at the wall to see what sticks. The best and most efficient way to measure newsletter results is through content creation and data analysis.