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.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
What Do I Do With All This Email Data? - Open Rates Understood
Ok, you built a strong list of subscribers and you have begun to send your emails... Now what? Are your campaigns successful? Are your subscribers interested in your emails? What do you do with all this data from your email sends? How does it help you improve your campaigns?
Close to the end of April I created a poll on twtpoll asking what area of email marketing is the most difficult to find information about. It was not a big surprise to me, or to @jacaldwell (another fellow email marketing guru that RT'ed my post) that the clear winner was information about how to analyze your data. A close second was strategies for testing, which I have written about as one of the first posts I wrote for this blog.
I believe there are some basics that need to be understood as a good foundation for all to build from when it comes to analyzing the data you obtain through email marketing. Understanding and acting on the data to improve your results is one of the major keys to long term success with email marketing. For the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts on the basic data points and what to look for in each area when you are analyzing your results. First up...
Understanding Open Rates
Open rates are not used to understand just the effectiveness of your subject line, they can help you to discover many things about your email's overall effectiveness. Once you have gotten a subscriber to opt-in to your emails, the next hurdle is getting them to open the emails. Before you can act on the open rate to improve your emails, you need to know what exactly is the open rate and how is it determined.
The open rate is defined as the number of times a specific email has been opened or viewed by the subscriber. The stat is found by adding the number of times the images from the specific email have been downloaded by the a specific subscriber id that is unique to each subscriber. Every time an HTML email is opened, your email browser with "call' for those images and provide the server with the information needed to record an "opened email."
Here is where things start to get confusing...
The open is nowhere near a perfect number. Emails can be opened by the same person several times. Emails can be forwarded and opened by friends which will "look" just like the original subscriber. Emails can be read completely and deleted without ever being noted as opened since the subscriber decided not to download the pictures. Images might automatically get downloaded when the subscriber views the email in the preview panel in an email browser. When is comes to open rates, the waters can quickly become muddy.
Unique vs. Total Opens
The unique open rate is the number of subscribers that opened your email. The total open rate is the number of times your email was opened regardless of subscriber. For example, If I opened an email 5 times over 2 days time it would record 1 unique open and 5 total opens. Simple enough... right?
The difference between these two numbers for each email you send is important to understand. There is a trend among email marketers to start looking only at the unique open rate, believing that the total open rate is too clouded with junk and uncertainty that it will not bring value to review. However, there is a lot that can be found by looking at the total open rate numbers.
It is true that if one subscriber's data shows the email was opened by this person 10 times it could just be that the person opened the email 10 times. But what if that person is actually forwarding that email to 9 friends? Wouldn't you want to know that? What if that happens with that subscriber often? Is that subscriber an advocate for your company? Would you want to message to that subscriber differently? Well of course you would! Dig into the data and find the trends. What if one subscribers total opens were 50 or more for one email? What was it about that email that caught the subscribers interest? You can learn a lot from this number.
It not a bad thing that your campaign became viral...
One of the best things to happen to an email campaign is for it to go viral or spread quickly to friends not currently on your list. Knowing the difference between the total and unique opens is one way to know that your message is hitting home and beginning to spread. The larger the difference the larger the potential that your email was forwarded and read by more then just your subscribers.
Quick question... When your email is forwarded to a friend, does the friend have a way to subscribe within the email if they like the email and want to receive more emails in the future? If not, you are missing out... Capture the new subscribers when they are interested!
What is a Good Open Rate?
That is all you really wanted to know from this post, right? Is your open rate good or is it horrible? That is an all too common question without a good answer. I can spend time telling you the average open rate based on your industry, but yours could be completely different. Open rates are going to fluctuate and will be different for everyone. You should be looking to improve your open rates overall, but more importantly it is the fluctuations that your attention should be on. I believe the open rate is not something that you will base the success or failure of your campaign. While getting your email opened by your subscribers is the first challenge, it does not do you any good if your subscribers don't take any action. To that end, next up will be understanding clicks...
Close to the end of April I created a poll on twtpoll asking what area of email marketing is the most difficult to find information about. It was not a big surprise to me, or to @jacaldwell (another fellow email marketing guru that RT'ed my post) that the clear winner was information about how to analyze your data. A close second was strategies for testing, which I have written about as one of the first posts I wrote for this blog.
I believe there are some basics that need to be understood as a good foundation for all to build from when it comes to analyzing the data you obtain through email marketing. Understanding and acting on the data to improve your results is one of the major keys to long term success with email marketing. For the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts on the basic data points and what to look for in each area when you are analyzing your results. First up...
Understanding Open Rates
Open rates are not used to understand just the effectiveness of your subject line, they can help you to discover many things about your email's overall effectiveness. Once you have gotten a subscriber to opt-in to your emails, the next hurdle is getting them to open the emails. Before you can act on the open rate to improve your emails, you need to know what exactly is the open rate and how is it determined.
The open rate is defined as the number of times a specific email has been opened or viewed by the subscriber. The stat is found by adding the number of times the images from the specific email have been downloaded by the a specific subscriber id that is unique to each subscriber. Every time an HTML email is opened, your email browser with "call' for those images and provide the server with the information needed to record an "opened email."
Here is where things start to get confusing...
The open is nowhere near a perfect number. Emails can be opened by the same person several times. Emails can be forwarded and opened by friends which will "look" just like the original subscriber. Emails can be read completely and deleted without ever being noted as opened since the subscriber decided not to download the pictures. Images might automatically get downloaded when the subscriber views the email in the preview panel in an email browser. When is comes to open rates, the waters can quickly become muddy.
Unique vs. Total Opens
The unique open rate is the number of subscribers that opened your email. The total open rate is the number of times your email was opened regardless of subscriber. For example, If I opened an email 5 times over 2 days time it would record 1 unique open and 5 total opens. Simple enough... right?
The difference between these two numbers for each email you send is important to understand. There is a trend among email marketers to start looking only at the unique open rate, believing that the total open rate is too clouded with junk and uncertainty that it will not bring value to review. However, there is a lot that can be found by looking at the total open rate numbers.
It is true that if one subscriber's data shows the email was opened by this person 10 times it could just be that the person opened the email 10 times. But what if that person is actually forwarding that email to 9 friends? Wouldn't you want to know that? What if that happens with that subscriber often? Is that subscriber an advocate for your company? Would you want to message to that subscriber differently? Well of course you would! Dig into the data and find the trends. What if one subscribers total opens were 50 or more for one email? What was it about that email that caught the subscribers interest? You can learn a lot from this number.
It not a bad thing that your campaign became viral...
One of the best things to happen to an email campaign is for it to go viral or spread quickly to friends not currently on your list. Knowing the difference between the total and unique opens is one way to know that your message is hitting home and beginning to spread. The larger the difference the larger the potential that your email was forwarded and read by more then just your subscribers.
Quick question... When your email is forwarded to a friend, does the friend have a way to subscribe within the email if they like the email and want to receive more emails in the future? If not, you are missing out... Capture the new subscribers when they are interested!
What is a Good Open Rate?
That is all you really wanted to know from this post, right? Is your open rate good or is it horrible? That is an all too common question without a good answer. I can spend time telling you the average open rate based on your industry, but yours could be completely different. Open rates are going to fluctuate and will be different for everyone. You should be looking to improve your open rates overall, but more importantly it is the fluctuations that your attention should be on. I believe the open rate is not something that you will base the success or failure of your campaign. While getting your email opened by your subscribers is the first challenge, it does not do you any good if your subscribers don't take any action. To that end, next up will be understanding clicks...
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Protecting Your Investment by Maintianing Your Email List
Building your email marketing subscriber base is only the first challenge. Maintaining a clean, responsive, opt-in list of subscribers is the next hurdle. In my last post, I spoke about how to effectively grow your list. Now you need to understand how to make sure your list continues to remain effective and producing results.
As I mentioned in my last post, each year you can expect your list to erode up to 30% based on your subscribers changing their email address. This holds true regardless of whether your focus is on B2B or B2C. Bounce management will help you drastically reduce that rate.
If you are having challenges with your subscribers losing interest and effectively causing your list to become stale, check out how to turn that around by reading more about active vs. inactive subscribers.
BOUNCE MANAGEMENT
Most, if not all email marketing platforms provide tracking on the deliverability of your email sends. The report should give you a breakdown of which emails were delivered and which emails did not. In the simplest form, there are two reasons why an email was not delivered to your subscriber.
Soft Bounces - One general category for a bounced email is the soft bounce. This means that the email address is valid, however there was something that caused your email to not get through to the subscribers inbox. Examples of this type of bounce are the mailbox was full, the server was down, your email was blocked by a SPAM filter, and so on.
When you receive a soft bounce message several times consecutively (each platform has a different rule for this. The range can be anywhere from 3 – 5 times) on a subscribers email address, the platform you are using will most likely flag the email as undeliverable and it will be blocked from receiving additional emails.
You can stay on top of this erosion by reviewing this list every 3 to 6 months. Place a call to the subscriber notifying them of the issue and asking them, first of all if they are still interested in receiving your emails and secondly if they have added your marketing email address to their “Safe Senders” list. If you are using an email marketing platform that provides you with a detailed definition of the reason for the soft bounce, then you are able to more easily determine what needs to be done to solve the issue of your emails bouncing and if it is even worth placing that call.
For example, if the response you receive from a subscriber multiple times is “mailbox full” then it will not help to add your email address to their Safe Senders list. The message would be more along the lines of determining if the subscriber would like to use a different email address to receive your emails.
Hard Bounces - The other category is the basic hard bounce which means the email address is not valid. The exception to this definition is when an email browser or SPAM filter returns a “fake” hard bounce. Again, most email marketing platforms will either segment your hard bounced emails into a list, or just flag the emails as such and block them from being sent additional emails.
Staying on top of this list is a similar process, but can be done much more frequently and the conversation is always going to be the same. “We noticed that your email address has gone bad and we wanted to make sure you could still benefit from receiving our emails. Do you have a new emails address you would like us to send them to?” Update the record with the correct email address and get them back on the list.
ACTIVE vs. INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS
The basic objective with every email marketing campaign whether it is for brand awareness or to drive sales is to always drive the subscriber to take some sort of action. This is the only way you are going to be able to measure success or failure of your campaigns… right? I would disagree. Subscribers will not always unsubscribe from your list when they are not interested in your emails anymore. They will just stop reading them. To determine how effect your email marketing efforts are over the long run, you need to factor in how “inactive” your subscribers have become.
Define what active subscriber means to you. For example, I will define active subscribers as subscribers who will at least open your emails and click on a link once every 3 months. Depending on the frequency of your messaging and the content you are sending, this definition could be greatly altered. So, find the right set of rules to determine what an active subscriber is for your purpose.
Once you have defined what an active subscriber is for you, everyone else is now considered inactive. For one reason or another, they have stopped interacting with your company. You have lost your relevancy with them, you have annoyed them with too many messages, you have done something, or not enough to keep them interacting with you.
So, what do you do with the email subscribers who have become inactive? At this point you are wasting your time blasting away at them hoping for some activity. Inactive subscribers need to be segmented and messaged to differently with a campaign focused on reengaging with them. Pulling the inactive subscriber out of your main campaigns on a regular basis will also give you much cleaner reporting.
You can learn just as much from your inactive subscribers as you could from your active subscribers. One way to accomplish this is to let the subscriber rest for a few cycles and then send them a survey. Your message needs to be focused on the importance of your relationship with the subscriber. Let them know that you miss them and offer them some incentive to complete the survey. The survey needs to give them the opportunity to tell you why they are not engaging and comment on what they would like to see or what would get them interested again. Give them options to change their preferences including the ability to receive less email from you… even the option to opt-out all together.
Just like staying on top of the oil changes and scheduled maintenance on your vehicle, setting rules around how to handle bounce management and inactive subscribers up front (and of course, following those rules) will help to protect your investment. It also does not hurt to get a nice coat of wax on it once and a while… so, let me know how I can help you add that extra shine to your campaigns with future posts.
As I mentioned in my last post, each year you can expect your list to erode up to 30% based on your subscribers changing their email address. This holds true regardless of whether your focus is on B2B or B2C. Bounce management will help you drastically reduce that rate.
If you are having challenges with your subscribers losing interest and effectively causing your list to become stale, check out how to turn that around by reading more about active vs. inactive subscribers.
BOUNCE MANAGEMENT
Most, if not all email marketing platforms provide tracking on the deliverability of your email sends. The report should give you a breakdown of which emails were delivered and which emails did not. In the simplest form, there are two reasons why an email was not delivered to your subscriber.
Soft Bounces - One general category for a bounced email is the soft bounce. This means that the email address is valid, however there was something that caused your email to not get through to the subscribers inbox. Examples of this type of bounce are the mailbox was full, the server was down, your email was blocked by a SPAM filter, and so on.
When you receive a soft bounce message several times consecutively (each platform has a different rule for this. The range can be anywhere from 3 – 5 times) on a subscribers email address, the platform you are using will most likely flag the email as undeliverable and it will be blocked from receiving additional emails.
You can stay on top of this erosion by reviewing this list every 3 to 6 months. Place a call to the subscriber notifying them of the issue and asking them, first of all if they are still interested in receiving your emails and secondly if they have added your marketing email address to their “Safe Senders” list. If you are using an email marketing platform that provides you with a detailed definition of the reason for the soft bounce, then you are able to more easily determine what needs to be done to solve the issue of your emails bouncing and if it is even worth placing that call.
For example, if the response you receive from a subscriber multiple times is “mailbox full” then it will not help to add your email address to their Safe Senders list. The message would be more along the lines of determining if the subscriber would like to use a different email address to receive your emails.
Hard Bounces - The other category is the basic hard bounce which means the email address is not valid. The exception to this definition is when an email browser or SPAM filter returns a “fake” hard bounce. Again, most email marketing platforms will either segment your hard bounced emails into a list, or just flag the emails as such and block them from being sent additional emails.
Staying on top of this list is a similar process, but can be done much more frequently and the conversation is always going to be the same. “We noticed that your email address has gone bad and we wanted to make sure you could still benefit from receiving our emails. Do you have a new emails address you would like us to send them to?” Update the record with the correct email address and get them back on the list.
ACTIVE vs. INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS
The basic objective with every email marketing campaign whether it is for brand awareness or to drive sales is to always drive the subscriber to take some sort of action. This is the only way you are going to be able to measure success or failure of your campaigns… right? I would disagree. Subscribers will not always unsubscribe from your list when they are not interested in your emails anymore. They will just stop reading them. To determine how effect your email marketing efforts are over the long run, you need to factor in how “inactive” your subscribers have become.
Define what active subscriber means to you. For example, I will define active subscribers as subscribers who will at least open your emails and click on a link once every 3 months. Depending on the frequency of your messaging and the content you are sending, this definition could be greatly altered. So, find the right set of rules to determine what an active subscriber is for your purpose.
Once you have defined what an active subscriber is for you, everyone else is now considered inactive. For one reason or another, they have stopped interacting with your company. You have lost your relevancy with them, you have annoyed them with too many messages, you have done something, or not enough to keep them interacting with you.
So, what do you do with the email subscribers who have become inactive? At this point you are wasting your time blasting away at them hoping for some activity. Inactive subscribers need to be segmented and messaged to differently with a campaign focused on reengaging with them. Pulling the inactive subscriber out of your main campaigns on a regular basis will also give you much cleaner reporting.
You can learn just as much from your inactive subscribers as you could from your active subscribers. One way to accomplish this is to let the subscriber rest for a few cycles and then send them a survey. Your message needs to be focused on the importance of your relationship with the subscriber. Let them know that you miss them and offer them some incentive to complete the survey. The survey needs to give them the opportunity to tell you why they are not engaging and comment on what they would like to see or what would get them interested again. Give them options to change their preferences including the ability to receive less email from you… even the option to opt-out all together.
Just like staying on top of the oil changes and scheduled maintenance on your vehicle, setting rules around how to handle bounce management and inactive subscribers up front (and of course, following those rules) will help to protect your investment. It also does not hurt to get a nice coat of wax on it once and a while… so, let me know how I can help you add that extra shine to your campaigns with future posts.
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