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.