1/24/2015
As most of you know, my background is in data mining, predictive Analytics and combining these skills to enhance the operating efficiencies within my organization. Analytics has many applications that can add significant value to a company, i.e. improving marketing ROI, reducing churn rates, improving customer engagement, increasing conversion rates, etc.
In the field of marketing, specifically to Digital Marketing efforts, Analytics is extremely useful for a company to use in maximizing the return from the invested funds into the marketing campaign. Key Analytics techniques that can be applied are
1. A/B tests - where a marketing team tests a new campaign's effectiveness on a randomly selected sample population who would receive the campaign's messaging and is divided into 2 (or more) groups - 1. Control Group and 2. Test Group. The value of this allows the marketers to determine if a new campaign provides an Up Lift in whatever metric being tested (i.e. increased sales, conversion, etc.) compared to the Control group that receives the standard messaging. A statistically significant result in the test campaign over the control indicates to the marketing team that they should then use the test campaign to the entire population.
2. Segmentation - segmenting the population in specific smaller buckets of mutually exclusive customers (i.e. by Income Levels, by Geographic Region, by Age, by Gender, or even by multivariate segmentation). From segmentation, it is possible to determine the appropriate channels to reach different customer channels, the type of messaging that appeals best to each customer segment, etc.
There are many other types of Analytics that can be used to enhance a company's marketing campaigns.
I found an article online that highlights some of these methods, please read the article below for further insight into How to Use Analytics to Refresh Your Email Marketing:
December 31, 2014 BrandViews / AWeber 2
According to Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics’ co-founder, growing your business
without tracking your analytics is like driving a car blindfolded. Sound
extreme? Maybe just a little, but he has a point. If your business uses email
marketing, you owe it to yourself and to your subscribers to track your
analytics.
Why use analytics?
If your goal is to grow your small business, analytics has your back.
Want your emails to make you money? Analytics will tell you your ROI. You’ll
glean valuable information about targeting to ensure you’re emailing the right
people. And if you’ve got content woes, analytics will give you insight into
the types of content your audience wants. Analytics is the key to becoming a
successful marketer – and who doesn’t want that?
What should I be looking for?
There are a lot of areas you can look at in your email marketing
analytics. You can use the tools within your email service provider platform,
Google Analytics (or both, if you’re an overachiever) to identify these.
·
Open
rates: Find out how many people opened your email and who they are.
·
Click
rates: Which of the links in your email are getting clicks and which
aren’t?
·
Unsubscribes:
If anyone unsubscribed from your list after you sent a particular email,
analytics will help you identify that email.
·
Traffic:
Measure the traffic emails bring to your website and get a better picture of
how effective emails are at driving readers to your website.
·
Bounces:
Are any of your emails being returned as undeliverable? Identify those email
addresses to get a cleaner list of engaged subscribers.
·
Location:
Where are your subscribers from? Do you have a sudden influx of subscribers
from a certain city? Location can play a big role in the type of content you
send people.
·
Device:
How are people viewing your emails? This should prompt you to test your emails
to ensure they look good on any device.
·
Deliverability:
Certain analytics like bounce and open rates may be affected by your
deliverability. If this is low, emails may not be reaching some of your
subscribers’ inboxes.
·
Sales:
Find out how much revenue your emails are generating.
Common analytics problems and
how to fix them
Now that you know what analytics to look for, here are some common
problems and how to fix them.
My open rates stink
Give your subject line some love. It should be attention-grabbing, it
shouldn’t sound spammy (avoid all caps) and it should be relevant to the
content inside. Remember that your readers can see the first line or so of your
content (this is called preview text), so make good use of that space too.
Also, focus on the timing and frequency of your messages. Through
testing, find the time of day that most of your subscribers open your emails,
then stick to it. On your sign up form, tell people how often they can expect
to hear from you, then stick to it. If you signed up for a monthly newsletter
and started getting daily updates, you wouldn’t be too happy, would you?
People are unsubscribing from my
list
Did they unsubscribe after you sent a certain message? Look at that
message and evaluate what you can do better next time. Frequency could be
another factor. Are you emailing too much, or so little that people forget who
you are? Unsubscribes might hurt initially, but they’re not necessarily a bad
thing. It’s better to have a small list of active subscribers than a big list
full of robots.
I’m getting bouncebacks
There are two types of bounced email addresses: a hard bounce and a
soft bounce. A hard bounce indicates a permanent deliverability problem, while
soft bounce points to a temporary issue. A good email service provider will
identify and mitigate bouncebacks for you. Any email addresses giving you hard
bouncebacks should be removed to ensure that everyone on your list really wants
to be there.
I don’t know if I’m sending the
right content to the right people
Let’s say you sent an email containing a customer feedback survey.
Those who didn’t open the email may need an extra nudge. Why not segment your list
based on open rates and offer a discount incentive to those who didn’t open
your email? This gets you more opens, the feedback you wanted and a sale!
No one is clicking through to my
website to make a purchase
What do you want people to do after they read your email? Make your
call-to-action (CTA) very obvious. You can also try an incentive offer for
first-time buyers.
My deliverability is low
Many factors influence email deliverability. The biggest reason is that
your emails are generating too many spam complaints. Ideally, you want your
spam complaints to be lower than 0.1 percent. To improve your deliverability,
ask yourself these two questions:
1. Are my subscribers
receiving the content they signed up for?
2. Am I emailing them
as often as I promised?
Should I split test my emails?
Test all the things! An A/B split test lets you test two versions of
the same email to find out which gets better results. Here’s how that works:
• First, decide what
you’ll be testing. Your subject line? Call-to-action? From name?
• Define your
hypothesis. Something like, “If I make my call to action button larger, more
people will click through to my website and make a purchase.”
• Keep an eye on those
stats!
• Adjust your emails
depending on your results
• Test again!
More analytics resources for email marketing
• Segmenting Your
Subscribers
• SCOUT Your Email
Stats
• Call to Action Guide
The only way you can start tracking your analytics is to start sending
emails! Don’t get discouraged if you’re not getting the results you want right
away. The whole point of analytics is to learn what you can do to refine your
emails for the future.
Read more at
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