It may not seem like it, but email is still very significant even today. Most of the digital revenue realized presently is attributable to the efforts made through email marketing. When you have an email marketing campaign, there are several things that your CMO will require to know such as how opportunities and sales were influenced, how you can improve them for an even better ROI, and the kind of impact made as far as revenue is concerned.
There are some practices that can be very helpful in helping you with your initiatives in email marketing.
Measuring and tracking
Usually, your CMO will not really care about the CTR or the open rate of the email campaigns conducted. There are some email metrics that you should have in mind to allow the campaign you are doing stand out as much as possible.
1. The engagement score: this is the standard way in which you can measure email engagement over a period of time, but not just like a standalone event which is isolated
2. First touch attribution: this is a metric that answers a very simple question in business and this is the campaigns that have generated the best leads into your database.
3. Multi-touch attribution: this one answer a very complicated question about the campaigns that is most influential in getting people to move ahead and through different cycles over a period.
The above metrics are very important since they remove any guesswork involved in the evaluation of any marketing efforts made. As such, they help you to come up with the resources and budget that is needed to make emailing a major part of your strategic marketing.
The stakeholders
It is important to get stakeholders to come on board as early as possible. You should target all the relevant stakeholders at the very beginning. Taking this step guarantees that everyone knows about the limitations and the benefits that are associated with the various initiatives.
One thing you should do is to set the expectations with all the stakeholders and determine a strategy to use, the attribution method, and the goals that you are looking to achieve. You need to agree on the metrics that should be followed and when they should be looked at.
When you handle the stakeholders early, you are really assuring everyone that you are all within the same page. This is what allows you to mitigate surprises that arise from miscommunication.
Control and test
Launching an email initiative may be something that you really look forward to. While that could be a great decision, it is always good to stop and think before you plunge in. This is because you need to test the initiatives first and it is very important to do so. You should be able to come up with a couple of messages first and test them with a control group that is well formed. In this way, it becomes possible to understand all aspects of the message and the audience that you are targeting.
You need to examine how frequently you make contact. You should also take time to test the subject lines and include images and calls to action. You should always use a variation with all these so that you can tell what works and what does not. By using a small and controlled group, you can scrutinize specific metrics successfully.
Fine-tune and make adjustments
It is important to apply email metrics insights for the strategic and the tactical. If there are metrics that indicate an effectiveness that is quite low, you do not have to get rid of the whole campaign. You can try making some tweaks with the campaign to be able to target the audience even better, you may get a pleasant surprise if you fine tune and make some basic adjustments. It may be the kind of boost that the campaign needs at the end of the day.
Make plans for success
Usually, the email metrics target improving ROI. It is not only about making a point. You should, therefore, get insights that do not only work, but the ones that actually work better. Create programs that can be measured and apply the insights you get from any previous measurements to make plans for the current cycle.
A very small number of the CMOs claim that the return on investment of the amount spent on marketing is a great indicator of the performance. This means that there is a learning process, but it is still possible to have a competitive advantage over a greater part of the competition.
If you are to apply all the best practices, you should not view them individually. They should be embraced as a part of the whole email marketing approach. Some of the practices that are popular actually tend to overlap with one another. When you approach the metrics and initiatives in a unified way, you will be able to develop a great analytics culture in the marketing department and the organization at large. The insights should be able to guide you on the tactical and strategic measures that can help you to improve your current marketing initiatives as well as future horizons.
Conclusion
In the current world, there are so many marketing avenues that can be utilized to get you ahead of your competition. Regardless of how many channels there are today, many marketers agree that email marketing is still one of the greatest strategies that you should try out.
Because there is marketing automation, there are people who are tempted to set everything and just let it work itself out. However, this is not the best way to go. It is important to understand that what you actually get from your email marketing will depend on what you invest.
To maximize the gains, you should pair the marketing automation system with a great email marketing strategy that is able to reflect on the needs of your customers as well as the buyer’s journey. The above metrics and best practices should be able to offer enough insight on what needs to be done.
Category: email marketing
Keywords: email marketing metrics, best practices, CMO
Tags: email marketing, internet marketing, digital marketing