Which success metrics are the right ones?
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on September 25, 2007
Let's round off a long-winded blog day with some brief links on email metrics...Melinda Krueger lists some of the important numbers you should measure to assess how well your email efforts are going and where you might need to take corrective action.
If you want to go beyond the basics, Russell McDonald has some detail on integrating email with web analytics. Both to get more insightful numbers on email performance (since tracking doesn't stop once the reader leaves the email to visit the website) and to allow you to generate data which can trigger more targeted emails later. Fascinating stuff.
Then EmailSherpa has a case study of how a minor league baseball team used a combination of HTML and text emails to sell tickets. I mention this to point out the dangers of taking metrics at face value.
The HTML/text combo was deemed a success because "The two emails sold 262.3% more single-game tickets than their average 2007 email campaign."
No arguing with that. Except the games in question were playoff games. So was it the new email strategy or the nature of the event that lifted results?
More statistics and case studies | Tags: email marketing statistics, email marketing metrics
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2 Comments:
The Web Analytics article you linked to is a good introduction to the possibilities that WA unlocks. One point that I thought was misguided was McDonald's comment that this 'obviously' only applies to HTML emails. While this is definitely the case for tracking opens, text emails can still contribute to WA data.
While you can see some information about email viewing from some WA tools, you often times can't include javascript or page tags in emails, which means that many WA tools won't really show much at that level.
Where much of the value of WA / email integration resides is in URL decoration. This allows you to track email viewers as they enter your site and, hopefully, as they convert. There is no reason why text emails cannot take part in this URL decoration, aesthetically you may not want to have gnarly urls in your text messages, and that is something to consider.
Also, if you redirection software supports WA integration those extra parameters may not even show up in the email. So I wouldn't say WA integration in text emails is a no-brainer, but I also wouldn't say that the objections are 'obvious'.
By 
Adam @ Bronto, on
26 September, 2007
Adam - thanks for clearing up that point!
So web analytics can treat the html email as an entry page in its own right(assuming the embedded tracking code work) or treat either HTML or text email as a referring page (based on following clicks)...
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
26 September, 2007
