I don’t know about you, but I love to analyze things. This probably comes from my direct marketing background, where we lived and breathed response rates. I can remember cranking for hours on my calculator, slicing and dicing any minute bit of information that could be turned into a statistic and something relevant.
Things are a little bit different in the electronic world and for an analytical mind like mine, it’s even better. Things like open and click through rates are just the tip of the iceberg.
Because this issue is all about analytics, I’ll tell you what fascinating and deep information you can learn from your email campaigns by using iMakeNews February issue as an example. As it turns out, I wrote an article, The Keys to Conversion, that issue and, well, gosh darn, it turns out that my article was the most popular article in the whole newsletter! How do I know that, you might ask? Well, grab a cup of coffee, get comfortable, and join me as we look at some pretty impressive bits of information.
Who are my readers?
Having worked with iMakeNews for a while, I knew that they were very proud of their analytical capabilities. What I didn’t know was exactly what you could learn from them. When they say you can get down to the subscriber level, they mean it! For instance, if you happen to read my article, I know it. And if you read other things in that February issue, I know that too! Sound a little bit like big brother? I say it sounds more like a marketer’s dream! Here’s a glimpse of what you can learn:
¡ iMakeNews offers a variety of reports, the first of which is Total Page Views. We all know that pages viewed in and of itself is not that interesting. But I clicked on this statistic and I got a list of the “most popular articles.” And wouldn’t you know it, there’s my article, at the top of the list (note: benevolent smile on my face)! Now, here’s where it really gets interesting – I clicked on the article name and I’m provided with a list of exactly who read it. It’s quite a flattering exercise to go through and see the hundreds upon hundreds of people (in the form of email addresses) who clicked to my article, including those that were there repeated times. [Marketers take note – are you seeing the possibilities here? These people are screaming their interest level at us!]
¡ Next up on the report list is Identified Visitors. Here you get a list of the number of unique subscribers who have viewed your newsletter and – here’s the fascinating tidbit – the number of pages they’ve viewed. Those with the highest page views are once again standing up and shouting, “I’m interested in what you have to say.”
¡ Then we have the Open Rate. Ten percentage is often considered to be a decent rate in electronic marketing, but because iMakeNews is diligent about their opt-in lists, their rate tends to be much higher. This particular issue was opened up by 36% of the unique subscribers who opened it up in an HTML format and yes, I can view exactly who those readers are and once again, how many times they opened the newsletter.
¡ Tell a friend is also a very cool feature – this is your referral business. What better way to get new business?
¡ Paths is the next category of reporting and this too is a cool one! Though not available yet to users, it is coming soon, so let me give you some background. Site paths tell me all the people that followed the same path to get to my article, as well as the other most popular paths throughout the newsletter. Through this feature, you are essentially getting a very specific microscopic view of what your subscribers read first, second, and so on, through their whole reading of the newsletter. [Marketers, don’t you think, from a segmentation point of view, the possibilities are endless?]
¡ Other fun information includes how many bad addresses are on the list, which can automatically be cleaned out of your list. And I also could see how many people took a vacation when this issue came out (how dare they!) and how many were so busy that their mailboxes were full!
¡ And one last nifty tool – survey results. I now know that, of those that answered the survey question “What do you find is the most effective e-marketing tool for conversion?,” 54% of you think it’s email newsletters (and hopefully all of you who responded are using reports like this to support that belief!). Second to that at 18% is email promotions, with search engine marketing following close behind at 16%. Online sponsorships are not popular among you all, coming in at only 1.6%! I learned something there myself…and of course, I know who answered the survey and even HOW they answered. Now wouldn’t it be interesting to find out which of those 54% were not iMakeNews customers yet? They’re believers in newsletters, avid readers of iMakeNews, took the time to answer a survey – I’d say this adds up to what we call “a potential prospect,” wouldn’t you?
The Bottom Line?
Here’s what I learned from this little analytic exercise:
¡ Through a few key reports like this, marketers can learn what is important to their readers. Not only from “the most popular articles” point of view, but also from the number of times a topic is opened and viewed.
¡ Information like this is key to a company that has different product lines. No longer does one newsletter need to fit your entire database. You can, through the data you glean from a couple of issues, segment your database based on your readers’ priorities. What a novel idea that is!
¡ You can see very clearly what’s working and what’s not working with your newsletter. And you can get this information immediately, in time to make changes, if necessary, to your next issue.
¡ And finally, a newsletter with survey and polling capabilities will provide you with critical, timely feedback to any topic that you need customer feedback on.
Well, my coffee cup is empty and when I told a client yesterday that she could send out a newsletter and know who EXACTLY opened it up, who read what, and how much time they spent with the issue, she was sold. So I guess I better start on writing some copy for that newsletter, don’t you think?
Nancy Langmeyer is the principal of The Write Words, a copywriting service that links businesses to people through the use of strategy, research, and creativity. For more information, email her at thewritewords@attbi.com or click here.
