Most of the data that is standard in email marketing reporting is of little value to executives. Very few executives give a hoot about opens and clicks. In fact, very few marketers even look at their email system reports (I can't make this stuff up!). Precisely because they aren't helpful in telling a story about how and where we can engage more deeply and earn higher return.
This base level of response data is what we have to work with, however, and so open and click data is important not for itself, but for the behaviors and revenue that it helps drive. If you want happy executives, more budget, higher email ROI -- and to keep your job! -- start measuring what really counts.
Here are the business metrics that most of us are or should be measuring:
- Revenue per email campaign
- Revenue per subscriber (and subscriber segment)
- Conversion Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
- Average Order Size
- New Subscriber Growth Rate.
To improve performance, we need to understand the drivers underneath those metrics. We need to see the data at the subscriber level, (or at least subscriber segment level) and not just in aggregate. The "average" is the curse of all marketing optimization - as it flattens out the curves and nuances that help us identify key subscriber behavior and opportunities.
I encourage every email marketer to start asking their email vendor or IT administrator for better reporting. Are you seeing trend reports? Are you seeing response and revenue linked? Are you seeing if email messages actually reach the inbox - by domain and campaign? If you don't have that level of longitudinal reporting and transparency into the key drivers of email marketing and deliverability success, then you don't have what you need to be a smart email marketer.
There is no time to waste. The inverse of your open and click rates is not neutral. If you get a 4% click through rate, that means 96% of your file was not interested in your offer or content. Even baseball players need better performance than that!
If even half of your subscribers have not opened any message from you this month, that is a sign of real fatigue. Best to get started now to re-engage, as it's very hard to connect with someone over email if they've been ignoring your email messages for the past 12 months.
Here are four of the top metrics to learn about your program this quarter. Start to track these over time so that you can make informed, intelligent decisions about content and contact strategy, and identify and isolate key segments.
- List Churn Replacement Value. Know that it costs to replace a subscriber, and then figure out how many subscribers you have lost in the past quarter due to complaints, unsubscribe requests or fatigue. (This last group is what we call the "emotional unsubscribes." They don't bother to actually unsubscribe, but they ignore every message we send.) Even if you spend less than a dollar to acquire new customers, the math adds up fast. Use this sum to help educate internal audiences who want to abuse the email file with additional, irrelevant messages. Every time we do that, we cost the business both short term and long term sales.
- Channel Message Response Rate. The same message in Facebook, catalog, email promotion and postal mail will earn differing response rates. Track the Message Response by channel and match back to specific personas or demographics. Do younger audiences respond better to radio and Facebook than email and catalog? Do women prefer an email-postal double reminder? Tailor messages where they will have the most impact.
- Sender Reputation. This is one of the few "leading" indicators we have as email marketers. Our sender reputation .... like the Sender Score .... tells us the likelihood of our messages reaching the inbox in the next 30 days. Check it often! This score is a sum of all your practices .... over the long term, and is the same data that ISPs are using to make decisions about which messages get in and which go missing. Free sources for this data include www.senderscore.org, www.dnsstuff.com and www.senderbase.org.
- 30-day Subscriber Response Rate. How many days/messages or touch points does it take before subscribers start to ignore your messages? Does sending catalogs in the first 30 days improve or reduce email response? Break this down by subscriber profile or source to measure the effectiveness of your segmentation. If it's low, consider expanding from a single welcome message to a full engagement series. To improve it, test the cadence and messaging of the first 30 days .... are new subscribers overwhelmed? Under-educated?
Email may not yet be the true 1:1 dialogue that we were promised, but it is infinitely stronger than the batch-and-blast broadcast medium that most email marketers employ. Your goal: Earn a response from most of your subscribers most of the time. Defining "most" depends on your business. Your mileage will vary, but consider that a product purchased 12+ times a year (e.g.: apparel, books, gadgets, informational content) needs email engagement 2-5 times a month to get a sale. A product that is highly considered and a six figured investment may see email engagement of 5-10 touches, but only in the 4-6 months prior to purchase. Without these kinds of reports and metrics, you have no opportunity to gauge your lifecycle impact and improve performance and synergy with other direct and digital channels.
If you are tracking something interesting, I'd love to hear about it, and perhaps feature you in a future column. Comment here or email me at stephanie[dot]miller[at]return path[dot]net or @StephanieSAM.
