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In today’s recessionary economy, marketers are under enormous pressure to do more with less. According to industry research firm MarketingSherpa, 24% of B2B and 34% of retail marketers said their budgets were cut this year.1
But email, with its relative low cost in and remarkably high return on investment in comparison to traditional marketing channels, is particularly well suited to weather hard times. The US Direct Marketing Association reported that for every pound you spend on email, you get approximately £30 back.2 Also in email’s favour is its measurability. By examining the data available surrounding each mailing, marketers can quickly and effectively measure who is responding to messages, and which promotions are working best. They can then tailor subsequent messaging based on these insights and improve response rates, increase brand loyalty and lifetime customer value.
Yet despite the clear benefits of utilising metrics, marketers still find it difficult to take full advantage of email’s measurability. Indeed, according to Forrester Research, 48% of interactive marketers say they struggle to prove the return on their efforts, and 69% say they are understaffed.3 But despite the challenges, simple steps can help marketers improve their programmes. Here are three common barriers to using metrics and ways around them.
Sheer volume of data
For many marketers, gaining control over the massive volumes of data generated by their marketing and customer platforms can be overwhelming. The key is not to try and evaluate every possible data point. Instead, select and focus on a measurement you believe would have an impact on your programme.
For example, you could examine your deliverability data with an eye toward improving results. By actively monitoring your deliverabilty and using metrics that call attention to problematic mailings, you can quickly investigate and resolve deliverability problems before they seriously harm your ability to get messages through at the major internet service providers. Ultimately this will improve the percentage of your email that is successfully delivered and boost your results.
Once you’ve addressed one area, such as deliverability, add another.
Lack of perspective
If examining data for a single message is valuable, imagine how much more you can learn by looking at how a campaign performs over time. For example, let’s say you view a deliverability report for a campaign over the previous 12 months, and it reveals a peak during one month relative to the others. This peak reveals a high percentage of returned email. Examining your data more closely may reveal the anomaly that caused the bounces. Did you use different email creative that got caught in spam filters, or send to a different list? By viewing data trends over time, you can account for outliers and anomalies and fix any problems before they can damage your programme, or conversely, build on any pleasant surprises or successes you discover.
When it comes to providing accountability for your marketing return on investment, trending data also helps you to make a compelling case for the value of your marketing investments and initiatives.
Not enough time or budget
Of course, marketers would love to adopt the sophisticated strategies and tactics they read and dream about. But the real-life challenges of overseeing day-to-day programmes leave little time for poring over reams of data and laying the groundwork for programmes down the road. Fortunately, today’s sophisticated marketing solutions are changing all. With the technology readily available, marketers can quickly and easily get a grasp on complex data and incorporate into their email marketing campaigns.
But marketers must use measurement tools in order to provide personalised messaging. In a 2008 Merkle study, half of email recipients said good email influenced their decision to make a purchase, and 38% said they tend to spend more money with a company that sends emails they read regularly. 32% said they stopped doing business with a company because of poor email marketing practices.4
Considering how much valuable time people spend deleting irrelevant emails from their inbox, they’re entrusting you to use good judgment when they give you permission to communicate with them. The key to rewarding that trust is to provide value, which you deliver by paying careful attention to what they tell you and what they do. By adopting metrics, you can use each message to encourage recipients to open the next one, creating communications so interesting and beneficial that they will make recipients eagerly anticipate future messages.
Riaz Kanani
Director of Product Marketing, International
Silverpop
Resources:
1. “2009 Email Benchmark Guide,” MarketingSherpa 2009
2. “The Power of Direct Marketing,” Direct Marketing Association, 2007
3. “The Interactive Marketing Metrics You Need,” Forrester Research, May 2008
4. “View from the Inbox, 2008,” Merkle, April 2008
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