• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 30, 2009

ERoi releases their latest survey, finding, in their words, that "... nearly 20% of email marketers have no clue how their email marketing campaigns perform." The study, highlighting trends and use of analytics in email, concludes that these marketers "are taking an extremely careless approach to email marketing."

Marketers tracking campaign results (% of Respondents, eROI, Inc., March 2009)

• Not tracking campaigns      18.06%
• Tracking campaigns                       81.94

The savvy email marketer knows that a truly targeted email campaign goes beyond simply segmenting by demographic and focuses on behavioral segmentation, enabling delivery of the most relevant, targeted messages. But intelligent email marketing requires different tactics for follow up and re-engagement based on previous actions, concludes the study.

Open rate, followed by click rate and open to click ratio, are shown to be the top three metrics when marketers were asked to rank them by importance. However, concludes the writer, Open rate is not a reliable metric. Click rate is better, but unless tied to dollars, campaign ROI can be tough to prove. However, the ‘‘brand engagement value'' of a click is extremely important and often discounted.

Another major opportunity is conversion tracking. A big surprise in this survey was the fact that about one-eighth of all email marketers are not tracking conversions. Of those, the majority don't track conversions because of time or budget considerations, and about  one quarter aren't tracking conversions simply because they do not know how.

Reasons Given For Not Tracking Results (eROI, Inc., March 2009)

Marketers that do not track normal site conversions  

• Don't know how     42.86%
• Don't have budget     4.76
• Don't have time     14.29
• Other     38.08

Marketers that do not track ecommerce conversions

• Don't know how     44.44%
• Don't have budget     38.89
• Don't have time     5.65
• Other     11.02

Drilling into click-through and open-to-click rates, positive vs. negative clicks is a much stronger indicator of campaign success, concludes the study. But sharing analytics results with all relevant departments may not be obvious.

Departments With Which Marketers Share Email Analytics (% of Respondents, eROI, Inc., March 2009)

• Executives     74.03%
• Corporate marketing     61.33
• Advertising, PR agency     42.54
• Direct sales     30.94
• Ecommerce     23.76

The study concludes that "... email metrics is the most trackable medium that exists, and these Email marketing metrics, site metrics and conversion tracking... all come down to a holistic view of the customer... "

You can download the full report here, or go here for more information about eROI.