If you’ve already sent an email marketing campaign, chances are that you are at least familiar with the process of email campaign tracking, and have analyzed the statistics you got from your campaign.
However, the analysis of acquired data doesn’t stop with open rates or the average clickthrough rate (CTR).
Overall analysis
When a campaign has concluded, take a look at the obvious data: the open rates and the CTR. The open rate can be somewhere from 20 to 40 percent, but we can’t give an exact number for the CTR, hence the CTR relies heavily on the composition of your content, how well you write, etc; as a rule of thumb, CTR is best measured relatively to other campaigns.
If the open rate is well below 20 percent, the campaign has failed, and you should review the fundamentals: are the “Subject” and “From” fields in order? Is your audience targeted enough? Is every single e-mail delivered or are there broken e-mail addresses?
Then have a look at the unsubscribe amount; if the number has soared without no apparent reason, you might be sending e-mails too often, or need to re-think the branding of your e-mail campaign.
The CTR is a bit controversial: if it’s high, it’s good, right?
Ultimately, you want to pay attention only to the clicks that go to a landing page. A big clickthrough rate is good, because it shows that your readers pay attention to what you have to say, though you might want to adjust the layout or the content of your e-mails if people don’t click what you want them to click.
The sending time is also crucial: are your subscribers located in a single time zone? Are they spread out? What sending time generates the most opens?
As a rule, you shouldn’t send e-mail on Monday mornings and from Friday to Sunday; around those times e-mails are more likely to drown in the already full inbox. As for the “ideal” sending time, determining it is entirely deductive–just follow what works for you and experiment a bit.
In-depth analysis
Analyzing campaigns doesn’t stop at the obvious.
Good analytics software will let you know other important factors. For example, the average time spent on the site (or not spent), is a good indicator of how well your landing page integrates with your email campaign.
If the time spent on your site is too small (or many users bounce), you might want to adjust the design and content of your landing page to look more like your e-mails do.
If the time spent on your landing page is large, but there are still few conversions, you might want to add clearer calls to action. The email call to action should create a sense of urgency within the reader; long time spent on the site indicates interest, but also shows that the readers can’t make up their minds (hint: it’s you who has to make up their minds).
What to do with your data
An email campaign report is merely a guide, from which you have to extract useful information.
You should divide your users into segments according to the data you analyzed. You could, for example, create a separate email marketing landing page for users who spend a lot of time on the landing page, and include urgent calls to action in the page.
Here you decide what you need to correct, and why. Be careful, though, and pay attention only to the “big picture”, as individual statistics are what they are: mere numbers.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, you’re finally ready to send out your new campaign. Go ahead, send it. Then learn from the results once again. E-mail marketing is a long-term process; it involves long-term thinking and focuses on long term results.
By continuously improving your campaign, you’ll be able to achieve the long-term results everyone is longing for. Each time when you analyze email campaign, you’ll become better at recognizing all the subtle things that make an e-mail marketing campaign successful.
