Assess Your Email Marketing Practices YTD
It’s that time of year, time to take stock of the past year, assess your email marketing program, and plan for a better year ahead.
OK, really it’s not. It’s July. But halfway through the year is a perfect time to look back and learn. Six months gives you enough data to look for trends and react to them. Ideally you’re following email marketing best practices and conducting ongoing assessments. Spotting trends, however, requires a few months worth of information to look back on.
To help you take stock of your year-to-date (YTD), we offer some guidance here.
Start by analyzing your metrics for each month YTD. See which months did well and which months didn’t. Start determining why. If your ESP has an email overlay view of your email with “hot spots” of clicks, check for trends of clicks. Where do most of your subscribers consistently click? What type of information seems to interest them most? Tips? Offers? Resources? Articles? Downloads? Whatever it is, consider doing more of that to generate more click throughs.
If the information you want them to click on isn’t being interacted with, ask yourself first of all, why they aren’t interested. If your research shows this is information they want, then determine what you can do to ensure it’s the first thing that catches their eye. Does it warrant a new email template?
How is your deliverability? Does that trend hold steady or not? Are you losing a significant number of subscribers? If so, figure out why. How is your bounce rate? Any trends there? Is your in-house email list growing at a steady rate, based on the last six months worth of data? If not, what can you do to encourage more signups?
Finally determine if you’ve assessed every factor adequately. If you’re not sure, would you like a consultant like ClickMail to review your email marketing program and provide an assessment for email marketing best practices and email deliverability?
A year is such a very long time. If there are lessons to be learned now, mid-year, why not learn them and enjoy a more successful second half of 2011?
If you’d like help with your YTD assessments, call on ClickMail.
About the Author: Sharon
