Jan 2nd, 2009 | By Hanif Khaki | Category: Email Marketing
One of the many benefits of email marketing is that it allows for measurable tracking. In order to achieve a successful email marketing campaign, it's vitally important that you understand and monitor email statistics such as Click-Through Ratios (CTR), Open Rates, and Bounce Back rates. Knowing and understanding these metrics allows you to improve your email marketing campaign and achieve significantly better results.
Here are some points to consider:
1. Basic Email Measurements you need to evaluate in each email campaign:
Open Rate - this is the total number of emails opened (in HTML format) by your readers, divided by the total number of emails sent.
Click-Thru Ratio (CTR) - this is calculated as the number of unique clicks on links within the email divided by the number of emails opened. In other words, the number of people who interacted with your email.
Bounce Back Rate - this shows the total number of emails that were not delivered and bounced back to the sender. There are many reasons why emails are rejected, such as email addresses that are no longer valid, email service providers (AOL, YAHOO, etc.) filtered the emails out, or the recipients mailboxes were over their quotas and simply full.
Additionally, depending on your email marketing objectives, you can also track and measure more advanced statistics.
For example:
- Total Number of Emails Opened based on Geography
(Region/Country) - Number of Sales based on
Region/Country/referring URL
- Conversion (Click to Sales) Rate
- Total Revenue Generated by each campaign
- Total Return on Investment (ROI) for each campaign
2. What metrics should you focus on most?
This is determined by your campaign's objectives. Of course, the Open rate is indeed a very important indicator, however to get a more accurate and meaningful picture of your email campaign performance, it should be evaluated in conjunction with other results - such as click through rates (CTR) and click to action rate, which is the actual conversion rate for the campaign.
Why is this so important? Because CTR and conversion rates can tell you how many recipients took the action you wanted them to take, whether it was to purchase a product, sign up to your newsletter, download a special report or whitepaper, or to fill out a survey. The open rate by itself will only tell you how many people read your email. To truly measure the effectiveness of the message, you need to not only look at open rates, but also the resulting actions if any.
3. How do you boost the Click-Through Rate (CTR)?
Of course, smart email marketers want not only to get their emails opened and read, but they also want to know how many people clicked through the links in the emails (measured by CTR). The higher this number, the better.
Here are a few key elements in each email that you will want to adjust since they dramatically influence open rates and CTR. These are:
Subject Line and Opening: You must make sure your subject line is attractive. The subject line is one of the critical factors that will affect your email mailing results. This does not mean that your subject line should be "perfect", as this could make it come accross as spam and be deleted without being opened. Make sure that the subject is brief and specific, and where possible, address each subscriber by at least his/her first name.
Make a Compelling Offer:
Your offer should first and foremost show how your reader will benefit from using your product. The first paragraph needs to grab the reader's attention and also not be too long or wordy. Make your offer attractive to the recipient, for example free offers and discounts usually compel readers to click through.
You Need a Call-to-Action: A “call-to-action” button or link must always be included to motivate the reader to click through for more information.
Spam Issues: The success of open rates are greatly affected by Spam issues within your email content. Most Internet service providers and web hosts have “spam filters” in place that can block out emails suspected of being "spammy". You must avoid the use of words that may be considered spam, such as “easy money”, “free offer”, “free trial”. , “30 day guarantee”, etc.
Message Structure and Design: Select your colours and images and use the same ones in all your emails, this will not only build your "branding", but will also allow people to recognize you, trust you, and develop desired expectations from your emails. It's important to break up longer messages by including interactive elements such as links leading to more information on your website. It's a fact that most readers will not read your emails word for word. They will scan the message quickly to find out "what's in it for me". This means you need to integrate headings and bullets to highlight key points within your emails. This will allow your readers to quickly and easily "digest" the benefits and features of your emails.
Studies show that it takes just 4 seconds for people to decide whether your emails are worth reading or not. If important elements of your emails are not structured thoughtfully and correctly, today's busy readers will simply delete your emails. And what's more alarming is that if they delete your emails 2 or 3 times, you will actually have trained them to ignore any emails from you.
The bottom line is this: craft your messages carefully and correctly, or let competent professionals do it for you. You can't afford to take chances when it comes to your most prized asset...your customer base. And as always, be sure to keep an eye on your email statistics to know what is working for you and what needs to be improved.