Analytics is often confused for ‘collect all the data you possibly can so you can analyze it, one day’, That is definitely not the case, and even before we start collecting any data at all, we should be able to define what data-points we want to collect and what how they would fit in to a bigger picture and purpose which would be derived from our pre-defined campaign goals i.e
These will dictate which components we should track and how we should set up our analytics funnel via the means and metrics available, such as:
While are CTR is incredibly important at measuring the health of our list and our user engagement, it only indicates at how many people clicked a link, any link, in our email content. To understand our audience further we should take a look at how many have clicked on which of our links in an attempt to further capture their mindset & preferences.
In any and all email marketing platforms, the open rate is measured via a small transparent image which is embedded within the email content. This image, often referred to as a pixel, when loaded in the user’s email client trigger’s the email status as open.
Unfortunately, there are many email clients as well as email users that don’t allow image loading on either mobile, desktop or both, in such circumstance the pixel won’t load and won’t trigger the email status as opened, despite it actually been opened and read. With such users, you might see a click on a link despite the email not being opened.
In email marketing Bounce refers to an email which wasn’t delivered to the recipients.
These are split into types: Hard and Soft Bounces.
A Hard Bounce refers to a permanent issue with the email address which appears to be non-existent, either due to a typo, a false email given, the closing of the email account, or other.
A Soft Bounce refers a temporary issue with the email address such as a full mailbox, an auto-reply due to vacation or other, the recipient’s email server being down, the message being too large for the recipients’ inbox, or your email being blocked.
Using our email marketing platform’s available analytics integrations or even simpler by using UTM codes to direct our campaign audience through to our website we’ll be able to segment them to our campaign in most if not all of our existing analytics platforms, thus allowing us to view their subsequent behaviour on our website.
Whether your recipients open their email on mobile or desktop and which email client they use could tell you a lot of your user base as well as how your emails appear for each due to HTML rendering discrepancies from client to client. Thus instead of checking how your emails appear on every single client out there, you’ll be able to run QA only on those clients used by your recipients.
Sending to a list with various timezones can be cumbersome, with your email reaching some mid-morning, starting their day when they get to the office, and others in the middle of the night appearing as another of several emails received without context and seldom engaged on that day if at all.
Segmenting your lists depending on timezones & geolocations and optimizing on the best time-of-day and day-of-week to send certain types of emails to your specific user base is acute to your optimization process, campaign performance and list health.
While researching the web for best practices on how to design and phrase your marketing emails you’ll find a lot of general or industry-specific advice, performance data, and rules. Take notice that while these are indeed helpful and can offer genuine insight, they are not certain when pertaining to your product and email list.
When conflicted between two different email design or copywriting, the tests you conduct, and the data you gather is what you know about your audience. The rest are but hypotheses, even if appearing as conclusive evidence on a research already conducted by a different brand, it’s their brand and their audience, not yours.
Automation flow optimization isn’t available on every email marketing platform (MailChimp for example) and though there are workarounds such as conducting an A/B test which refers to two different flows, true automation flow optimization is a powerful feature, allowing you to test the different properties of each email, the flow and timing. ActiveCampaign is a great example of this features’ wholistic approach for campaign optimization.