That which isn’t measured isn’t managed
When creating a new email marketing campaign, it’s important to understand just how well (or not) that campaign performs and how the Target Audience responds to it.
Once an email campaign has been created, the recipients responses to the Subject Line, Special Offers and call to action(s) needs to monitored and analyzed to ensure that the business is providing what its Target Audience and converting readers into purchasers.
There are many variables that can be measured from an email marketing campaign including:
- Who opened the messages (who didn’t)
- Which links were clicked (and by whom)
- How much revenue your message generated
- How many people unsubscribed
- Location or region based on IP address of the Reader
- Viewed the emails in Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.
By tracking this information, a savvy business owner will not only be able to revise the campaign for better results, they will also be able to segment the email list for more targeted marketing campaigns.
One of the simplest ways to implement email campaign tracking is to use a Tracking URL.
This is something I’ve mentioned previously in Sales Campaigns: Testing, Tracking and Measuring and it’s certainly one of the more simple methods.
Create a separate url for each call to action within your email so that you can measure how many clicks that Call To Action receives and the number of return (or duplicate) clicks, among other things.
Email Marketing tools like AWeber provide the ability for all links within an email to be converted to a tracking URL. Do yourself a favor and click this option, even if you don’t think you’ll use it yet. It’s never to early to start gathering data.
Aweber also provides some phenomenal analysis of the tracking links.
At the very least, using a tracking link will provide a business owner with some basic statistics for each Call To Action.
2. Use A Coupon Code
For special offers, a coupon code could be used as a way of tracking the effectiveness of your campaigns. This approach requires your shopping cart to support coupon codes. These coupon codes may be a limited time offer, to provide a sense of urgency in the campaign.
3. Google Analytics
I always recommend that Google Analytics (or other analytics programs) be implemented on a website. Using the information gathered from the analytics will provide great insight into the effectiveness of a campaign.
4. Surveys and Feedback Forms
Whilst not a reliable, using a survey during a purchase process will provide a small business owner with some information on the effectiveness of an email campaign. The survey can be a simple question: “How did you hear about this offer?” and the options presented should include a direct reference to the specific email campaign.
Take Action!
The most important thing for a Business Owner to do is to measure the data collected, draw conclusions and take action on the results.
In doing so, a business owner will be ensuring a great Return On Investment for their email marketing efforts.
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