Do your math

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Citing general statistics will provide the framework, but it's the calculations on your own projects that will complete the picture for your CMO.

Simms Jenkins, founder and principal, BrightWave Marketing and EmailStatCenter.com, provides the following guideline:

Establish upfront what your goals from an email marketing effort are, including revenue, page view, in-store traffic, conversions, retention, subscribers, et cetera.

Then, create a monthly scorecard. What good are your email metrics if they live alone on a spreadsheet? A monthly scorecard provides an opportunity for the email/interactive team to monitor the key email performance indicators in the context of company goals (email specific and non-email specific) and industry benchmarks. Since email campaigns are so fluid, these goals in your scorecard are best evaluated and revised as an ongoing exercise. If anything, it prevents surprises and ensures the email team knows the score at all times.

Make sure to benchmark against the industry. Benchmarking internal stats against comparable industry metrics can be both valuable and an exercise in futility. The key is context. You want to make sure you are in the same ballpark as your industry on specific metrics like deliverability and open rates, but you should not make drastic changes to campaigns based on one research report that touted Tuesday as the best day to send emails.

Finally, focus/budget/judge on end-game/ROI. Go beyond CT/Open. Too often email marketers obsess over open and clickthrough rates. However, who cares if your open rate was high but no sales were generated? Your email program's ultimate goal is what matters. Many email teams can't even define that. If you fall into that camp, do yourself a favor and call a meeting and set your big picture goals. Worth considering are revenue, page views, sales leads, conversions, in-store sales, email subscribes, PR, cross promotion; the list can go on. Make sure your list is concise and clear.

With this information, make sure you see open and clicks as a means to an end, the end being your overall campaign goals. Otherwise, you may be flying blind.

Note: Company Current/Desired States are purely examples.

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