Budgets are tight. Passion and intuition run deep. Strong opinions; strongly held. Continued improvement and funding for email marketing requires more than delivery, open, click-through rates or astrology.
Email broadcasts and their aggregated campaigns need to be aligned and measured with business terms like unifying goals, meaningful objectives, strategic projects. This requires a solid understanding of the company’s strategic plan and the role email marketing plays in accomplishing that plan’s goals and objectives. Meaningful objectives, like driving more consumer prospects site traffic and creating more non-endemic partnerships drive company profits and should also drive email marketing’s ROI.
Two different classes of metrics should be applied to email markting:
- Systemic Metrics–Bounces, opt-outs, spam complaints, unsubscribes, forwards, click-throughs, design engagement, subject line effectiveness, and conversion rates
- Indirect Metrics–Incremental revenue, cost reductions, average conversion, lead generation, site traffic.
As you might imagine, these two sets of metrics require collaboration and coordination with other departments. The email marketing team needs to venture outside their department and find ways of collecting data that demonstrates the effectiveness of their offers and campaigns. They also need to design and execute side-by-side tests that generate results that can be used to make small and continuous incremental improvements that product results.