Seven action plans to take when implementing a metrics driven infrastructure for an email marketing program
1) Prior to starting with an email marketing program, an organization needs to consider what are the goals and the objectives. Once the goals and the objectives are decided, the organization needs to focus on these throughout the life of the email marketing program as they will help shape an organization business and marketing decisions.
2) Select email marketing metrics which can measure the goals and the objectives that were set out in as well as identifying the difference between email marketing procedure and results metrics.
3) Ensure that your current email marketing software is able to provide the types of metrics that will be needed within your organization. If this is not possible with the system that is in place at the present time, you might have to figure those metrics manually or perhaps pick an appropriate third-party system that is able to track and provide them upon request.
Another option is to set up an Excel spreadsheet which collects live data every time it is opened from a source database. Based on certain formulas that are programed into an Excel spreadsheet and the data that it obtained from the database Excel would then provide metrics as well as graphs.
4) Create and build up the required template for reporting based on the data that is being captured by the email marketing software. Reporting can include just numbers, graphs or both depending on the needs of those that will be analyzing the results.
5) Utilize charts as well as tables whenever possible to identify developments, tendencies and general trends of email subscribers. For examples, these trends can be an increase in the click through rate (which can indicate email subscribers are more engaged with the type of email newsletters that have been recently sent to them). Another trend could be an increase in the amount of money that email subscribers are spending on a particular product once they received an email newsletter (which could be an indication that the merchant should be offering more of this type of product.)
There are many trends that can be identified once data is analyzed which is why email marketing reports are very important.
6) Examine the data that is generated by email campaigns testing to see if the goals and the objective are met. For example, the popular A/B testing that can be done on each of the following:
- Subject lines of the email that is being sent out (“Summer wear is on Sale” compared to “Discounts on summer wear”).
- Written content from within the body of the email.
- Discounts on certain products or services (“Save 35% on all books” vs. “Free shipping on all orders over $25.00”).
- Holiday and seasonal promotions (“Santa’s party favorites” vs. “Treat yourself to something special this new year.)
- Landing pages that users view once an email recipient clicks on a call to action from within the email.
- Banners within the email (size and colors of banners. Avoid the flashing banners type as they have a low conversion rate).
- Colors (Background colors, color of text, color of any highlighted text, banner colors, image frame colors).
- Images (Large images, small images, different images of the same product, not including any images in the email body).
- The ‘from’ name which the email recipient sees upon receiving the email in their inbox as well as the ‘from’ email address.
- Call to action (“Buy Virus Protection Now!” vs. “Protect your computer”)
- HTML template design changes such as one column, two column, three columns or the placement of different elements in different locations within the email body.
Always observe the outcomes of testing email campaigns paying special attention to what specifically worked and what didn’t work.
7) Reaching the goals and objectives that were initially set out may not be easy and may take time but they can be achieved by constantly evaluating just about every component of your current email marketing strategy and always planning for improvement.
