Marketers, agencies and ESPs reveal in a survey what they do and don't do with email campaign metrics.
Real time, deep campaign analytics is one of the several items that sets email apart from its marketing brethren. It is also what keeps many email marketing professionals up at night -- and not just because of the volume of metrics one can evaluate. Most companies struggle with how to interpret their email stats, how to benchmark them and most importantly how to put them to work to ensure improvement.
I set out to answer some of these questions and provide the email community a better understanding of how we use our campaign metrics. The results of that research, compiled as the First Annual State of Email Metrics survey, are published at EmailStatCenter.com.
The survey was hosted on EmailStatCenter.com and sponsored by Campaigner, a provider of web-based email marketing software to marketing professionals. The mix of respondents was excellent and representative of the email user landscape. Approximately 55 percent of respondents were from the client side and 45 percent from agencies or ESPs. Nearly all respondents said metrics were important but we sought to find out how much and why.
The results were interesting and revealing. So what do the numbers really mean?
What marketers do and say
Survey Finding -- More than 95 percent of the individuals surveyed said that they did measure the results of their email campaigns
Survey Finding -- 57 percent of respondents indicated that they measure results 24 to 48 hours after deployment
What it means
- Marketers are near unanimous in measuring their results and the importance they play in their overall efforts.
- Measuring campaign metrics frequently is essential to success but the frequency of measurement varies widely.
Survey Finding -- Clickthrough rate and deliverability ranked the highest with professionals
What it means
- Financial related metrics such as ROI, conversion and revenue fell in the middle of the pack, which is surprising since all email marketers can and should boast about the huge ROI that email delivers.
- Marketers continue to obsess over clicks, a very important metric but not the defining (or only) factor in most email campaign successes.
- High level marketing executives may be judging their programs' success on clickthrough and incentivizing their team to "hit their numbers" largely defined by CT rates.
Survey Finding -- Professionals cite list development and time constraints as their biggest challenges
What it means
- Time constraints and managing the email pipeline juggernaut appear to be the bane to all email marketing program managers' existence and not just a whining rally cry. It really speaks to the larger issues of executive level perception of the email channel; that email should be cheap, efficient and easy. Therefore, most email teams lack the ability to leverage metrics and need more resources to improve the program, much less sustain it.
- List development seems a bit contradictory to the item listed below ranking list growth as a low ranking metric in terms of importance.
Survey Finding -- Strategy/planning and metrics and measurement were ranked as the areas which were most important for nea- term focus.
What it means
- No surprise here. All good marketing needs defined goals and well thought-out and powerful planning. As email gets more complicated, not to mention more resources, strategy becomes a crucial piece of the puzzle.
- Measurement may be related to the timeliness and content of the survey but it appears all email marketing professionals aim to improve the overall measurement of how well their program is performing.
What marketers don't do or think
Survey Finding -- Only 18 percent of respondents indicated that they measured results on an annual basis.
What it means
- Most marketers don't go back and revisit or compare metrics on an annual basis. This should be added to the 2008 plan for your email program. The ability to do it exists within most ESPs and agencies assisting on the email program.
Survey Finding -- Total subscribers and forwards were among the lowest ranked metrics in terms of importance.
What it means
- Quality, not quantity, of house email lists is gaining importance and trending away from previous high level goals of list growth as a major metric and goal.
Survey Finding -- Only 50 percent of respondents use metrics for budgeting/forecasting purposes.
What it means
- Marketers are not putting their numbers to work to improve their internal standing or secure additional funding and strategic planning resources. This is a major missed opportunity as many email marketing teams could justify additional budget and resources by using their campaign histories as ammunition. Most other market channels don't even have the ability to do this.
I asked Luc Vezina, vice president of marketing & product management at Campaigner and the sponsor of the study what his takeaway was on all of this.
"One thing that I find noticeable is the lack of revisiting campaigns and their metrics on a more frequent basis," he said. "In order to truly use email metrics for the betterment of your campaigns and gather key learnings from them, marketers must continually evaluate and benchmark their campaigns, in addition to looking at them immediately after the send."
I concur and add that the other big picture item to add to the 2008 To Do List is to not look at these numbers in a vacuum. Everyone should utilize their metrics to improve their next campaign (and the next) and ensure that they can articulate the results based on the company's overall marketing objectives. Oh, and don't forget to use these to get more funding in 2008 as well as securing your place in the company's future.
G. Simms Jenkins is founder and principal of BrightWave Marketing, an Atlanta based email marketing and customer relationship services firm. Read full bio.