The From Line
Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email
I know it has been a while since I posted something (we all had such a busy summer) and I've been meaning to update this with thoughts on how clients can improve their campaigns. I'll continue to share my ideas here. This particular post is about Google Analytics -- something that is simple to set up, free, and enhances your investment in email marketing programs.
After conducting some research it became apparent that many emarketers are using web analytics for their websites, but few are integrating it with email. It really is a shame -- Google Analytics is free and it provides great insight into your email campaigns effectiveness.
If you’re not using web analytics with email you might find the info below very helpful. If you are, kudos to you! Let me know if I missed anything below.
In order to get the most out of email/web analytics you need to move beyond basic visits, page views, and other standard measures and customize your reporting to generate a better understanding of subscriber behavior and how it leads to revenue.
Here are some questions to consider:
1. Where are my subscribers located and which ones are making reservations?
To answer this question you must implement conversion tracking, an easy to do task with Google Analytics. Subscriber location coupled with reservation activity you can come up with a retargeting plan and better segmentation.
2. What are the most popular paths subscribers take from your email through your site and which ones generate reservations?
If you planned correctly, you’re probably directing subscribers to landing pages that are possibly ecommerce enabled. If this is the case you should add tracking and conversion code to these pages as well. Your entry page will not be your homepage.
3. How do I know which email campaigns contributed most to my website reservations?
Google Analytics allows you to tag all email campaigns under the “campaign” variable. If your campaigns can be placed into larger categories, make sure that category is inserted into the campaign tag along with the name of the campaign such as Discounts-Fall Promotion. From there Google will report the conversions attributed to each campaign.
To answer this question you must implement conversion tracking, an easy to do task with Google Analytics. Subscriber location coupled with reservation activity you can come up with a retargeting plan and better segmentation.
2. What are the most popular paths subscribers take from your email through your site and which ones generate reservations?
If you planned correctly, you’re probably directing subscribers to landing pages that are possibly ecommerce enabled. If this is the case you should add tracking and conversion code to these pages as well. Your entry page will not be your homepage.
3. How do I know which email campaigns contributed most to my website reservations?
Google Analytics allows you to tag all email campaigns under the “campaign” variable. If your campaigns can be placed into larger categories, make sure that category is inserted into the campaign tag along with the name of the campaign such as Discounts-Fall Promotion. From there Google will report the conversions attributed to each campaign.
Gold Lasso's eLoop allows users to integrate Google Analytics with campaigns. First, sign up for a free Google Analytics account and follow our simple instructions (We emailed the steps to all eLoop users a few months ago. Let us know if you have any questions about how to do it.)
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When most people think of mashups and automation with regards to email marketing, the thought of data sharing and intertwined applications usually come to mind. However, these terms can easily apply to messages even though most email marketers rarely take advantage of such mashup technologies. In fact, a large portion of email marketing budgets and time are spent performing message assembly and managing content. Dynamic content features have helped to alleviate some of the complexities of message assembly but it falls short in bridging the gap between desperate content sources and precision timing for delivery. This is one of the reasons why SMS and Twitter have cannibalized some of email's footprint for mobile delivery of commercial messages.
The answer to help unwind some of the vagaries of message assembly is incorporating RSS feeds into email messages. This process is somewhat ironic since a few years ago RSS pundits were pronouncing the death of commercial email with the medium's popularity. Sad for them however, RSS never took off as they had hoped and marketers never took too much stock in the medium's ability to capture eyeballs. Yet RSS as a delivery medium on the wholesale side of email marketing provides much promise that has been overlooked.
Web Publishing to Email
Many email newsletters today are comprised of articles from a website with four or five line teasers and a link back to the actual article. With the simple incorporation of an RSS feed to a pre-defined template, an email marketer can save countless hours cutting, pasting and configuring text automating the majority of the message assembly process. The RSS feed not only includes text but can also include images as well as the "Read more..." link.
Web Publishing from Multiple Sources
For the email marketer that needs to work with multiple web sources the same thing can be done as with a single source. An example of this is the Smart Brief news updates provided by many trade associations that compile news and information from a number of sources. As valuable as this service is, it is simply a daily compilation of RSS feeds from different news sources delivered via email.
Automated Item Stock and Price Alerts
Some very large retailers who provide automated item stock and price alerts from their website have laboriously spent hundreds of programming hours to provide this service. Using a simple RSS to email feed, a small or mid-sized retailer can easily affordably provide an automated email updates to subscribers every time a hot item is in stock or there has been a price drop.
Redistributing Social Media and Web 2.0
In addition to RSS feeds from websites, you can include Twitter and other types of social media feeds with automated timed delivery as soon as the feeds are updated. This process helps to reach parts of your subscriber base that's not always in the social media loop. Aside from Twitter updates, you can also automate the inclusion of blog and feedback content using an RSS to email process widening their reach and saving you time during the message assembly process.
For all the great things RSS has to offer, its lack of market penetration and end user understandability prevents it from being relied on as a true marketing medium. However, from the examples above there's a big place for RSS in the email world and the technology can be vital component for automated content assembly. Just about all content management systems (CMS), blog software and social media accounts come with some sort of RSS or XML feed so half of your message automation battle is already won. Now you just need to get it into your email.
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