Evaluating Metrics for Email Marketing Campaigns
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Tracy Stevens
Email marketing is a classic and essential part of any marketing strategy, but to capitalize on its potential you need to be looking at the right metrics. Email marketing is an effective way to stay connected with your existing customers and prospects. Much has been written on how to write a compelling and powerful email or newsletter; however, this article will discuss specifically drip email marketing and tips on how to evaluate the performance of emails through metric analysis.Drip marketing is the process of connecting a company with customers and prospects on a regular basis. Keeping your company name, products or services front and center will encourage customers to take action. Emails can be scheduled on a weekly, bi-weekly or any other schedule that works best for your campaign. When choosing an email service provider, be sure that they offer reporting on web analytics with the metrics listed below.
Email Marketing Metrics
Metric analysis, if performed correctly, can reveal critical information to improve your marketing campaigns, acquire more customers and increase conversation rates. Many are available for analysis, but I will discuss a few of the most crucial ones:
- Delivery Rate - This measures the rate at which your emails actually get sent against the number of emails that get bounced back. This rate may indicate that you need to cleanup your mailing list and update it with correct email addresses. Formula: [(emails sent - bounced back emails) / (emails sent)]
Open Rate - This rate is important for measuring how successful your subject line is. Is your subject line compelling enough to be opened? You may have great content, but if the email doesn't get opened, it's time to revisit your subject topics. Formula: [(emails opened) / (emails delivered)]
Click Through Rate - This rate measures how successful your content is. Each link in your email is tracked, and these analytics can provide extremely useful data to analyze the behavior of your customers and prospects. Are text links being clicked on more than others? Are video links improving your 'call to actions'? Analyze the data based on a customer's location to determine where sales were made based on the promotional offers. Modify your marketing campaign based on these statistics. Formula: [(# of clicks) / (emails delivered)]
Bounce Rate - When a customer clicks on a link, where does it take them? Is there a landing page that has a 'call to action'? Did they follow through on the 'call to action' or did they leave your website after only visiting one page? This measurement will help to evaluate the effectiveness of your landing pages. Perhaps they need tweaking to encourage higher numbers of 'call to action' and conversion rates. Formula: [(promotional email visits to one web page) / (# of promotional email visits)]
There are many more metrics that should be monitored and analyzed to improve your conversion rates, build brand awareness and keep your customers coming back. They include: 'Depth Of Visit,' 'Actions Completed,' and 'Average Revenue Per Email Sent.' These metrics will offer insight into how successful your marketing campaigns are and can provide valuable data to improve on them.
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