Email campaign analysis – defining success
With email marketing campaigns, success could be anything you desire – as long as it is a measurable goal. Immediate goals also do not need to be sales-derived; for example, you may consider a marketing campaign a success if you manage to increase your Twitter subscribers by 500 people.
Make your goals tangible and quantifiable
“More sales” is a common goal for companies, but are you sure that you can measure the direct effect of your email marketing campaign? A company’s marketing is usually multi-layered for best effect – spending money on email marketing, SMS marketing, SEO, press releases, Google AdWords, paid links, promotions, even TV and radio.
Without the correct analysis tools, at the end of a successful campaign you might have made 10,000 sales but you are completely unable to ascertain where those sales came from. This is why measuring campaigns effectively is imperative.
Examples of quantifiable goals for your campaign
Increased email delivery % – A low percentage suggests your email list needs re-working.
Increased emails opened % – The percentage of delivered emails that are actually read.
Increased click-through rate % – The percentage of emails opened which result in a user clicking through to your website/offer.
Decreased unsubscribe rate % – You’ll always get some turnover, but you want your campaign to have a low number of unsubscribers.
Increased average time spent on site – In most cases, the longer a customer stays on site the better.
Increased number of sales/signup – Your sales goals will be specific to your business, but it ‘s perhaps the metric you will most keep an eye on.
Increased engagement from a demographic – Your goal for a campaign may be to entice a particular demographic, so be sure to measure whether it has accomplished its goal.
Measure your email’s success with ActiveTrail
ActiveTrail offers its own suite of advanced reporting tools, which offer you real-time email campaign analysis on how your campaigns are progressing.
We can’t overlook the power of Google Analytics though – by far the most powerful website monitoring system out there. ActiveTrail’s complete integration with Google Analytics affords you a fantastic view of how visitors are browsing your site after they come in from your email newsletter.
See where on the globe people are coming from, compare campaigns, or monitor a specific recipient to see where they go on your website. Using ActiveTrail’s AB split testing, you can see which marketing emails are performing better than others in very specific ways. For instance, you can measure open rates, click-through rates, or the number of unsubscribes each email receives. You can even track which link or button performed best, allowing you to tweak your email marketing on a micro level.
Use the data to best effect
So, instead of “more sales”, a better goal would be “50% of customers will read the email newsletter, 25% will click through to the website, 10% will continue to the payment processing page, and 5% will purchase the product.”
Of course, your mileage will vary depending on your customer base, product, and goal. But one goal that you should always have in mind for your email newsletter is to perform better than the last, and with ActiveTrail’s email campaign analysis you can find the chinks in your marketing armor where you are losing the customer’s interest. As your marketing matures, the number of times you’ll hit each of your goals will steady, and eventually rise.
Now it’s time to beat your last email campaign. Get started here!