Email marketing is great – it’s cost-effective and can be a lot of fun, but does it work?
Success isn’t just about how many emails you send out – marketing exists to generate leads, not just get the word out. So, how do you know if your email marketing is working, and, just as importantly, how do you know where it’s falling short?
Understanding Why You’re Email Marketing in the First Place
Define your purpose. Seriously, what are you trying to get out of your email marketing?
More money? Well, yes, we know that.
More customers? Sure.
More leads? Ah, we’re getting there…
Those are all very good reasons to do marketing, but they’re a bit vague. Let’s look at what you’re looking at specifically with email marketing.
How about:
Building trust with your audience
This is a personal favourite. Good email marketing builds trust over time, and that trust converts into sales. How? By providing them with content that actually engages and shows reliability. Great stuff.
Establishing authority in your niche
Authority is an amazing tool. If you’re seen as an expert then people come to you, making sales easy. How do you do that? You provide confident and useful content that actually means something, and you share testimonials and success stories.
Staying top of mind
This means that when someone wants something you offer, they think of you before any of your competitors. How does email marketing achieve this? By regular contact and engagement.
Think of these potential objectives and work out which ones are important to you. When you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can start thinking about tracking success.
Monitoring the Metrics
Email marketing is digital and generates a lot of data, which means we don’t have to look far to get the info we need. What helps us understand if email marketing is working? We monitor the metrics, tracking the data to see if things are doing what we want. Consider:
Open rates
Your email got to the target, but did they bother to even open it to read? Are your subject lines doing the trick? You can measure this, so do! If you’re getting rubbish open rates, maybe you need to consider those first impressions.
Click rates
OK, so they’ve opened your email, they’re even reading it, but then it stops – no click through. Why? Is your enticement not enticing enough? Are your calls to action all a bit flat? Analyse the data and see.
Replies
Are you getting any emails back? When you do, that’s some real engagement, so make sure that you follow up! But listen to what’s being said – feedback is everything. Plus, how many replies are you getting? Are they more or less than you expect?
Unsubscribes
Oh dear, they’re no longer interested in you. Don’t panic; unsubscribes aren’t all bad news as they help you trim your list and focus on the people who are more likely to buy from you, but track this metric and work out what you’re doing wrong (it may be nothing, or you may be putting people off).
The Difference Between Vanity Metrics and Good Metrics
We all like getting our ego stroked, and data, while completely impersonal, is really good at doing so. Unfortunately, in the real world of email marketing, metrics that make us feel great may not necessarily be the ones we want to listen to. You need to focus on the whole picture when looking at your metrics and not just be impressed with something superficial.
Consider list size. Quite often, I hear from people who tell me just how gigantic their list size is, but if it’s not generating any responses or leads, what’s the point? If you have a million people on your email list, but only one person ever reads your emails, then you might as well trim the other 999,999 because they’re doing you no good.
It’s important to track the metrics that align with your goals. Open rate is great if you’re trying to see if you can improve your subject lines, but fairly misleading if you’re aiming to see how well your calls to action are doing. Select the data that’s relevant to your aims and ignore just how well everything else seems to be doing – and focus on the outcomes, not just some nice big numbers.
Look for Measurable Results
It’s not enough to just grab a snapshot of data and say, ‘Aha, great, my email marketing campaign is brilliant!’ – you need to see results over time. Analysing data and improving your email marketing to make it work for you is a slow, incremental process.
Track the metrics and align them to your goals. Look for consistent engagement (such as opens, clicks, and replies) over the months to see if you are building trust. See what comments, shares on social media, and direct feedback you’re getting to see if you’re establishing authority on your subject and follow your overall engagement and list retention to determine if you’re staying top of mind.
Plus, ultimately, track those leads!
The Tools for Email Marketing Success
There are plenty of great tools to help you track and analyse your email performance. Your email marketing platform (for example, Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign) will have a bunch of great reporting tools to show you just how well you’re doing, but don’t stop there.
Consider integrating your data with your CRM to get some more in-depth stats and deeper insights into customer behaviour, look to some of the latest AI tools to delve into customer preferences and evaluate success, or work with some visualisation tools to convert the data into something meaningful that works for you.
Of course, you could also speak to me. I’m Nathan Littleton and I love email marketing – but more than that, I can work with you to set goals, crunch the numbers, and holistically develop a comprehensive marketing campaign that’s really going to boost your business. If you want to see email marketing success, why not leverage my expertise to make it happen?
Book a meeting with me today.
