Analyse your way to better email response

You’re no doubt practising some sort of website analytics… but are you analysing your email marketing efforts? Sally Lowery, online marketing manager of Bronto Software, an email marketing solutions provider, suggests tracking the following:

* audience segmentation. “Segment traffic from your email campaigns as well as your website, not just on the initial visit but for every visit,” Lowery writes in the white paper “Impactful Email Marketing”. “Collecting this data allows you to know the value of each customer as well as their interests.”

* conversion analysis. Look at conversion rates as well as abandonment rates by campaign. If a significant portion of email recipients are abandoning on a certain page or data field, it’s time to re-examine and alter that page or field.

* path analysis. Compare the number of pages visited and the average order value of your email recipients versus other site visitors. Also see if email-driven visitors are steering clear of certain navigational paths popular with other visitors; perhaps you should then incorporate those pages into a future email.

* behaviour tracking and metrics. “Measure all behaviour associated with an individual or group to determine their reaction to campaigns or behaviour once they are on your site,” Lowery advises. “Behaviour to trend can include purchase, registration, or acquisition data.” You can then segment these recipients by their behaviour for follow-up emails. For instance, you could send people who clicked through to product pages but are not yet customers an offer to encourage that first order. To those who did make a purchase, you could follow up with emails notifying them when similar or complementary items arrive or go on sale.