One reason email marketing is more effective than most traditional methods is that virtually
every aspect of your campaigns can be tracked and measured for success. This is a luxury that has been made possible by the seamless integration of
web analytics, a breakthrough technology that enables the efficient reporting of internet data that can be used to analyze and optimize performance. However, the data your reports provide will be of no use if you do not understand what they are telling you and, more importantly, if you don’t put that information to good use.
You can learn a lot from reading your reports, and all of it can be used to improve the execution of your marketing strategy. For example, your open rate can tell you which subject lines are compelling people to open your message or whether timing is a problem. If this rate is low, it can be a sign that you need to tighten up your subject lines or send on different days or times to encourage more people to open your message.
The click-through rate is another vital measurement as it tells you how subscribers are interacting with your message. If this rate is extremely low it is usually an indication that your call to action or the message content itself needs to be fine-tuned to generate better responses. Because opens and clicks are critical steps in the customer cycle, these are two areas that you want to pay close attention to when analyzing your reports.
Understanding your reports is vital, but what you actually do with that data is even more important. A good resolution to make in the New Year is one that involves printing out these reports and sharing the info they contain with your marketing team for strategy purposes. It also includes segmenting that data as a way to determine what strategies work best in terms of
targeting customers based on their geographical location, which keywords are boosting traffic through the search engines, and what type of content appeals to individual segments. Efficient use of your data makes for a strategy that results in better responses and increased conversions.
