Wizemail explains value of campaign management

Wizemail has considered the importance of campaign management once an e-mail campaign has been released to its target audience.

After all the work in creating the e-mail campaign, you might feel that you are entitled to a bit of rest and recuperation and the local pub is your well-earned destination.

But you would be wrong.

In any argument with regard to the benefits of e-mail marketing compared to the use of post, once the subject of measurement arises, the dispute is over.

Measurements in themselves are of little value unless they are interpreted, the conclusions used to modify the current e-mail campaign and considered when planning subsequent ones, whether these are for collecting e-mail addresses or selling goods and services.

Before interpretation of the figures can be considered, the life of an e-mail when used in a direct e-mail marketing campaign needs to be understood.

There are set stages once it is sent: it reaches the recipient's inbox; it is opened; the offer is viewed; and it is acted upon.

The calculation of percentages of each stage as compared with previous e-mail campaigns and the baseline - how many e-mails were sent for this campaign?
It has to be accepted that a number of e-mails will not be received.

The percentage of returned e-mails - sometimes called 'bounces' - is the attrition rate.

It is a simple calculation: number of bounces as a percentage of the number sent.

There are two kinds of bounces: hard and soft.

Soft bounces are due to problems with the recipient's e-mail server and are of no real concern.

Most e-mail clients will continue to resent the e-mail until it is successfully received or until it becomes a hard bounce.

Hard bounces are more of a problem as they indicate that the address does not exist.

E-mail addresses have a life expectancy.

Retail customers tend to keep one e-mail address for an extended period, but research has shown that in the base of business-to-business (B2B) the time is considerably shorter.

Promotion, re-organisation, rationalisation and such make the change of e-mail address quite common.

Research is inconclusive as to annual rates but 20 per cent seems a reasonable estimate.

Hard bounces can be a temporary phenomenon, especially with B2B.

A re-organisation might well have coincided with your time of posting and the e-mail client could well be low on their list of priorities.

It is worthwhile sending the e-mail a couple more times, although after three hard bounces it is best, perhaps, to face the inevitable.

If you have a postal address for the person then, if your product merits the investment in time, a letter or postcard might well prove productive.

Hard bounces might be caused by incorrect addressing.

Again, how much time you are willing to invest in this is a consideration, but an incorrectly placed full-stop is easy enough to see and correct.

Remember that once you have deleted that e-mail address, it is gone forever.

Problems such as this indicate that your data entry system needs assessing.

What is an acceptable rate of attrition depends to a certain extent on how you came by the e-mail addresses.

If it was a bought-in list, then the bounce rate should be compared with that mentioned at the time of purchase.

Another consideration is the open rate.

With html e-mails it can be ascertained whether a certain graphic has been downloaded.

The calculation as to the open rate is simple enough: e-mails opened as a percentage of the e-mails sent minus permanent bounces.

In this country, most recipients have preview panes and it is felt that this increases the open rate as the customer can, to a certain extent, assess the content before deleting.

It should be remembered, however, that many preview panes do not show images as default.

Furthermore, many e-mail clients block images in order not to notify tracking software that the e-mail address is live.

There is no acceptable rate of opening, no universal percentage whereby you can go down the pub satisfied with your efforts.

So you can experience difficulty in calculating whether the creative aspect your e-mail was a classic of the art of merely a classic of its kind.

Various authorities quote opening rates of between 10-30 per cent as acceptable but it has to be accepted that a factor of three tends to indicate that there will never be an evidenced figure.

Bought-in lists, for instance, have a lower opening rate than many other sources of e-mail addresses and although many suppliers can arrange more targeting, this will be reflected in the price.

You might spend hours dissecting the e-mail only to realise later that for B2B, 16:00 on a Friday is not the best time to send them.

Click-through rate is the vital statistic - it indicates the effectiveness of the e-mail design.

The recipient has shown enough interest to read the e-mail.

This can be considered the same as a passer-by looking in through a shop window, examining the display and then coming into the shop to find out more.

The biggest hurdle has been overcome.

While a reluctance to click through can indicate a lack of targeting of the e-mail itself, it is much more likely that the problem lies with the creative side.

The recipient has, metaphorically, strolled around your shelves, picked up an item or two to examine, then replaced them and left your shop.

Calculating the click-through rate can be complicated if there is more than one offer or dedicated hotlink on the e-mail.

Another consideration is conversion rate.

The landing page, or pages, will have some function built into it.

This might be, for instance, a subscribe mechanism for your newsletter, the request for a catalogue or a purchase.

It could also include an alternative offer, such as a request for further information.

Most will contain a form or an application that includes the request for an e-mail address - the ultimate goal.

Therefore it can be appreciated that the conversion rate is the ultimate figure.

Here we have the measure of the campaign: the collection of addresses for direct e-mail marketing.

It is, unfortunately, not quite that simple.

There is not just one conversion rate.

If you were trying to sell your company's methods you would, of course, quote the percentage of conversions to click through, this being the highest figure.

But there are others.

The percentage of conversion to the e-mails sent, minus the hard bounces, might be seen as more applicable if you are funding the campaign.

You might have included on your landing page a system to collect postal addresses for, perhaps, catalogue delivery, or even a free sample of the product you are trying to sell.

This can be seen as a failure of the campaign, but is at least a lead and open to development.

Statistics in themselves are of little use - they must be used.

But therein lays the problem - they need interpreting and then must be acted upon.

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