What Do I Do With All This Data? - Understanding the Click

No matter what you are trying to accomplish with your email marketing, what is the one common objective of all email marketing campaigns? From my point of view, it will always be getting your subscriber to take action, which in email marketing terms is a click. The exciting thing about email marketing is the ability it gives you to interact with your subscribers one-to-one. Understanding what motivates them and adjusting your marketing efforts to fit each individual subscriber making the subscriber feel like they are not just a faceless number to your company is key. This personalized approach would be much more difficult if it was not for “clicks.” Let’s review the basics of what a click is, and how to review click activity.

What is a clickthrough?
First of all, you have to have a link in your email if you are going to get a click. If you are sending emails without a single link, you are failing. Links within emails can be created to drive the subscriber to purchase a product, to read an article, to watch a video, etc… When the subscriber clicks a link, it provides you with a great deal of data about your subscribers as well as your emails effectiveness. All email service providers will report how many clicks each one of the links you created in the email received and you should also be able to see unique vs. total clicks for each link. This is commonly referred to as a clickthrough.

Just like I spoke about with the open rate, the number of clickthroughs is also subject to the same inaccuracies. However, if someone clicked a link, then you know there was interest and you know what they were interested in from the link they clicked. If you merge this data with your web analytics, then you will be able to tell even more from just a single click.

Since the objective of the emails is always going to be to get the subscriber to click on a link, all work put into creating a successful email is (or should be) focused on this objective. Therefore, the clickthrough rate can be affected by almost every aspect of your email. Determining why your clickthrough rate was higher the last time you send an email can be a difficult task. So, let’s first understand some of the basics data you should be looking at.

Click Tracking 101
First you should be looking at the percent of subscribers who clickthrough, or the clickthrough rate. This rate can be determined in two different ways. Some will base the number on the number of emails sent and others will base this rate on the number of emails opened. I only use this percent as a way to determine the performance of a single email compared to others like it. Just pick your methodology and stick with it.

Next, make sure you are looking at the link that got the most clicks. Whatever it was, find out why and then test your thoughts. Did placement have something to do with it? Was it the offer? Was it the content or maybe the creative? Whatever you determine is the reason for its popularity, test it. Also, be looking for those links that did not get any attention at all. If you realize over time that no one is interested that specific information, save yourself sometime and quit providing it. Your subscribers will lead you on what they like and what they do not. It is important to listen to them.

A Quick, But Necessary Tangent...
Back to the interaction with the subscriber for a second. Your email is not meant to sell the subscriber anything. It is meant to get them curious enough to click. The only decision the subscriber should be making in the email is to click or not. Similarly, if you are sending a newsletter with several articles, the only way you are going to know which articles hit home with which subscribers is to get the subscriber to click a link to view the rest of the article. Do not put the entire article in the email. Here are a few other things to think about when using links.

Placement of the link: Where in the copy is the link most effective? Should you have a link posted several times in different areas of the same email?

How the link displays: Do you create a button that is linked, link a group of words like “click here” or do you type out the entire link itself?

Where the link takes the subscriber: Are you sending the subscriber right to the place they need to purchase or just dumping them on your home page to find their own way? Are you creating landing pages for the links? Do your landing pages have navigation that will take them back to your home page or are they held in a microsite?

Find Trends
When it comes to clicks, look for trends with individual subscribers. Create a profile for each level of engagement with your company and, as a subscriber meets that level, move them and message to them differently. A subscriber who is engaged and clicking on your emails every time deserves a completely different status then one who seldom clicks any of your emails. For example, if a subscriber is not a client yet, but clicked on some information about a specific product, note that in their profile. If there is a sale on that product, that subscriber should know about it.

We have only scratched the surface on this subject in my mind. There are so many more ways tracking and analyzing clicks can improve your email marketing success. Look for more post from me with Advanced, real world examples of clickthrough analysis driving improvements in email campaigns.