We are definitely in a Halloween-y mood here at ClickMail. Maybe it’s because we have so many kids of trick-or-treating age who are getting antsy about the upcoming event. Or maybe it’s because Halloween is popping up all over as people change their Facebook profile pictures to the creepy ones taken last year, and every kind of store seems to carry the season’s decorations. (Or maybe we just want candy?!)
Regardless of the reason, this October I keep thinking in terms of ghosts and goblins and the unseen things that can haunt an email marketer. So please indulge me in another Halloween-themed post as I talk about the monsters under the bed and how important it is to expose them and chase them away—both for your kids’ sakes and your profits’.
Spotting the monsters under the bed…
Last year, we introduced the email analytics tool eMVision to the world. Although there’s nothing new about email analytics, there was something completely new about eMVision: It’s based on Tableau Software’s visualization capabilities. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, consider the difference it makes when you can visualize information rather than stare at numbers: Studies have shown our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster than text.
Essentially, eMVision takes the email reporting of ExactTarget and turns it into easily interpreted graphics and visuals that you can process 60,000 times faster compared to looking at just the plain data. The result? With eMVision, marketers can do in minutes the kind of email analysis that used to take hours or sometimes days. And when visualizing information enables us to absorb that information much faster, we can see things we didn’t see before: the monsters under the bed.
…and getting rid of them
With eMVision, email marketers can literally see what is happening in their email performance. They can easily spot trends both good and bad. The good trends can be maximized, and the bad ones (i.e. the monsters under the bed) can be exposed and dealt with. The scary thing might be inactive subscribers or a poorly performing subject line. It could be a negative trend in a bounce rate or a sudden spike in unsubscribes. These red flags aren’t the monsters in and of themselves, but they indicate monsters exist, and that’s where eMVision can help you spot the signs that you have a problem, so you can identify and fix that problem.
If you’re using ExactTarget or considering a new ESP and ExactTarget is on your short list, keep in mind the capabilities of eMVision to expose those monsters. It might be that kind of ghost buster is just the kind of functionality you need, not just at Halloween, but all the year through.
About the Author: Sharon
