Strength of e-mail is in statistics, says Wizemail

Wizemail has explained the importance of e-mail marketing statistics and how they can help fine-tune campaigns to provide the best possible return on investment.

The strength of e-mail marketing is the plethora and dependability of the statistics it generates.

While the fact that there is no hiding place can be a bit of a downer at times, what such detail means is that improvement in performance is difficult to avoid.

With a little bit of testing, if there is a fault in your marketing strategy then not only is it easy to identify but the way to eliminate it is equally obvious.

But there is no need to stop there.

It is possible to be much more precise.

Indeed, you can investigate each part of your e-mail campaign to see where you can fine-tune it to provide the best possible return on investment.

The only limitation is time.

It is easy to get carried away with testing: the promise of significant improvement and the comfort of proof are very tempting.

But testing takes time and money.

It can also cost responses so it is a judgment call as to just how far you need to go.

There are a number of variables that can have a significant effect on results.

The easiest way to work out what these are is to divide the process into its major parts: delivery rate; open rate; click-through rate and conversion rate.

There is little you can do with regard to delivery rate.

A hard bounce is a hard bounce and all you can work out is the effectiveness of a bought-in list as compared with a previous one from, perhaps, a different source.

It is either returned or delivered (spam testing will be looked at again later in the year).

But with open rate, things change.

This is normally the biggest stumbling block of any e-mail marketing campaign as if the recipient fails to open the e-mail then all the effort in the rest of the campaign is wasted.

The recipient has three things to assess when coming to the decision as to whether to open the e-mail: the 'From' field; the 'Subject' line and the first two lines or so of the e-mail (if using a preview window).

Each has its function.

The 'From' field is there to identify yourself and reassure that the e-mail is not spam, the 'Subject' line to intrigue and the first two lines to persuade.

If the recipients fail to open the e-mail then one, two or all three are not performing adequately.

Testing can tell you which needs changing.

Timing can also have a major effect on the open rate.

The click-through rate depends on a number of factors, including: the design of the e-mail itself; the copy content, length and style; the offer; targeting and positioning of the click-through hotspots.

A lower-than-anticipated click-through rate needs addressing as the recipient has shown interest but the e-mail has failed to convert.

However, given the number of features it might well be difficult to justify individual tests on each subject.

The cause of failures of conversion is generally more restricted.

These generally fall under the design or the offer.

With the statistics in and analysed you now have to work out what you are going to do with them.

Whether the investment in time and effort is likely to be worth it is subject to so many variables that the only person who can answer is you.

But you have options.

The most useful method is the trial before the direct e-mail marketing campaign goes live.

You send your e-mail out to a statistically significant number, often 10 per cent, and then analyse the returns.

For instance: you wish to ascertain the effectiveness of the offer in the heading.

You have a product that you have been listing at GBP80, which you are now offering at GBP40.

You break the trial into two and send the first group e-mails with the reduction highlighted at a 50 per cent reduction and the second group you run the banner at GBP40 off.

The trial will show which offer has the highest click-through rate.

You will be hoping that a difference of around five per cent might be apparent but even if it is marginal - perhaps one per cent - if your campaign has a large enough list, then it might well make the investment in the trial worthwhile.

In most trials, the golden rule is that you should only change one item at a time but this does not apply in the business of e-mail marketing.

Each of the four stages is separate so it will still return useful information if there are individual changes in each.

So, a modified heading, a different design of the body of the e-mail and a variation of the form and all of a sudden you have trebled your return.

A test sample run sufficiently before the start of the campaign proper will enable changes to be made so it is most likely to give the best return.

Unfortunately, it can add significantly to the cost and increase the workload at a time when there is a great deal of pressure on the team.

But there are others ways of testing.

You can vary specific items in the actual e-mail campaign and then collate the results when it is completed.

The rather obvious problem with this method is that, like experience, the information comes too late to be of use for that specific campaign.

However, you will have a database for the next one.

This method comes into its own with such things as timing of the sending of the e-mail.

From a recipient's point of view there might well be a significant difference between the e-mail arriving on a Friday and arriving on a Tuesday.

With all the possible variations in timing, a pre-campaign test would require so many addresses that it would probably not be worthwhile.

You could, perhaps, divide your list into 10 parts and then send them at different times.

You might find that there was no significant difference in the various times and you could then choose a time to suit your requirements.

But don't bank on it.

It is essential in such tests to pick the groups at random.

This does not mean picking the first 10 per cent on an e-mail list as this is not random.

The addresses could be in order of date, location or some other similar reason.

Testing can be expensive.

However, if you test just one or two specifics this can reduce the costs.

If, in the past, you have had a poor click-through rate then that would be a good place to concentrate initially.

The return on investment should be high.

Anyone who runs postal direct mail campaigns will look at the statistics e-mail marketing campaigns return with envy.

Analytics are there to be used.

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