Blue Tent marketing

If you're main focus in analyzing your email reports is still stuck on the "unique open" and "unique click" rates, then you're getting an out-dated and partial picture of your program's effectiveness at best. With image blocking so prevalent in so many email clients these days, and with so many at-work email subscribers either reading messages in their preview pane or skimming messages without loading images, it's become necessary to evolve the way we guage an email campaign's effectiveness.

Here are a few important steps you can take to get a clearer picture of how well your email marketing program works:

Implement action tracking
Action tracking allows you to track users through your site from the email campaign. Essentially, you place a small snippet of code on each page that you would like to track. The idea is to place the code on "key" pages such as your contact us confirmation or reservation confirmation pages. This way you'll be able to easily see how many contact forms were completed or reservations booked online as a result of each campaign.

Integrate Google Analytics into your campaigns
Tagging your email campaigns with GA code has many benefits. You'll be able to see the long-term results of your email marketing programs by analyzing data over longer periods of time. You'll also be able to see how your email referrals interact with your site and see such metrics as "time on site" and "number of pages viewed." Most importantly, you'll be able to track conversions and compare your email programs to your other online marketing channels such as SEO, PPC and online advertising.

Calculate the Click-To-Open-Rate metric
This metric is the ratio of unique clicks as a percentage of unique opens. Essentially, it's a measure of how effective your message is in motivating the recipient to click a link once they have opened the message. The main idea is to look at the ratio of unique clicks in reference to the number of unique opens rather than in reference to the number of messages sent. Ultimately, the CTOR metric is a better measure of the relevance of the message content, the effectiveness of the special offers as well as the overall layout and design of the message. More on the CTOR metric ...

Use a unique phone number on your campaigns
The reason for this is obvious. It allows you to track the leads and revenue that are generated as a result of your email campaigns. However, there is still the problem of tracking those users who receive an email, click-thru to the site, and then call the number listed on the site to complete the transaction!

If you're interested in implementing some of the above suggestions in order to take your email program to the next level, contact us or contact your dedicated email program manager directly today.