Email campaign – So, you are in the trenches of e-mail marketing and you are developing content, accompanying that content with great imagery, collecting contacts, importing them into the system and sending out your e-mails on schedule. Bravo! Now, how often are you reviewing your reports and digging into the data from your campaigns?
Immediately after your send a campaign little helpers begin to collect data like who opened your email, when they opened it, what links were clicked and what email contacts bounced. Generally speaking a few hours after you send your email a picture begins to develop – one that showcases the success or failure of your campaign.
Generally speaking I like to check my campaign sometime during the day it was sent just to see how things are going, but I don’t pull a full report until 48 hours after the email was sent. Why 48 hours you ask? Well, after years of preparing and scheduling emails I find that 48 hours provides adequate time for your campaign to run it’s course –your contacts open the email, click on the links, forward to a friend and the data is collected.
Now that I have the data what do I do with it? The number of opens will allow me to see how many contacts opened the email. Compare the open number to the number sent and it will provide me with a good understanding on the overall success of the campaign. The bounces will allow me to see how my lists are doing. Are they up to date? Do I have some clean up to do? How many of the contacts had a bounce with a ‘non-deliverable’ message? Are these contacts outdated? Depending on the campaign and the number of contacts in this ‘non-deliverable’ category I will reach out and email the contacts directly to see if the contact is in fact not a good email anymore. There is also an area for hyperlinks that will allow me to see how many contacts clicked on any links contained in the email. This is one of my favorite features as it allows me to see if the call to action was a success. Are you providing a special offer, a coupon, a downloadable PDF or perhaps an RSVP to an event?
Make your email campaign data work for you. Use the data to improve your future campaigns and your list building techniques.
If you have questions or would like a free consultation on how e-mail marketing can be used for your needs, send me an email at pedro@nuevoadvertising.com