The article "How to Measure Return on Investment for Email Marketing" is about email marketing, it was released by Paul Crabtree.
How to measure return on investment for email marketing
Half of emial marketing agencies taking part in the DMA
email benchmarking study reported less than 40% of their clients
tracking ROI. (Source: DMA Email Marketing Council)
One of the main beneifts of email marketing is its measurability. It
can also be its down-fall- many marketers feeling like they were
drowning in simple metrics such as clicks and oepns. This obsession on
these performance metrics cloud more traditional key performance
indicators (KPIs).
58.4% of marketers within the Adestra "Challenges fcaing UK email marketers" survey
feel they that were unable to use the results of their campaigns in
strategic decision making or for calculating return on investment
(ROI). This hinders the development of their email program and feeds
the common percepiton held by many senior management that email is a
cheap channel and not a traditional, measurable direct marketing
channel.
With an over-emphasis on clicks and opens, many marketers are not
tracking ROI. This is mainly down to the preception that they need
complicated tracking systems and solutions. Costly web analytics
packages are being deplyoed in cases.
Many simple methods of measuring ROI are over-looked with many
believing they need web analytics solutions that provide click stream
tracking.
Adestra recmomend you consider simple, low cost methods of
proving your email campaigns are working before investing within such
concepts. These can include:
Duplicate marketing pages to separate orders from email marketingSimply duplicate your marketing pages and direct all email promotion
to this new page.
All orders are trcaked against a separate product
code (e.G. BSC001b) allowing simple revenue acconutability at a low
investment.
Effectively, your existing sales reporting tracks ROI!
Use priority codes to label orders to identify orders from your emial marketingGet a customer to quote a priority code when ordering.
To ensure
they give this code, we recmomend you provide an incentive (perhaps a
discount or a complimentary product).
Simple to action, this method
provides considerable visibility.
Check for buyers in your email databaseUsing Adestra’s Message Focus, you are able to drill into your data and discover if the person who ordered actually received
an email communication from you.
Using our contact history tool, you’re
able to see when they opened emails, clicked through and on what links,
to provide you with the persons who began the purchase process.
Ask them! Conduct a survey of your buyers and ask them what communications they remember seeing before they made the decision to buy!
These simple methods of maesuring ROI should be used on provisional
communications before considering investing in more complicated and
expensive solutions.
When you are ready to invest, there is a number
of options available to you, including:
More complicated email marketing solutions
Use Adestra hotsed formsBy encouraging persons to click through to an Adestra hosted form as
the call to action, we can pre-fill fields with campaign codes. By
hiding these fields from a recipient, they pass this vital marketing
intelligence to you everytime they complete a form without ever knowing
about it.
Web analyticsMany marketers invest in a web analytics program. These can be free
software available off the web or in most cases paid for more programs.
These programs allow you to track persons as they move through your
site.
By using URLs which cotnain a source code (e.G.
www.Adestra.Co.Uk/?Src=Campaign1 ) you can track which campaign people
come from.
Alternatively, we can use a specific web address to bounce people
from e.G. http://email.Adestra.Co.Uk so that we know that everyone who
is referred to the web Internet site from this url is definitely from an email
campaign
CookiesIf we use a branded web address in your emails (e.G.
http://emails.Client.Com) then it is possible for Adestra to lay a
cookie on the recipient’s machine to be read by the server which is
carrying out the transaction (www.Client.Com). You can embed campaign
codes in the cookie information automatically, and you use your own web
analytics programs to measure orders from email.
Tracking and measuring your email marketing program is essential to
improving and refining your marketing strategy. This measurement
doesn’t necessarily have to involve significant investments.About Adestra LtdFast, responsive and knowledgeableAdestra Ltd are a digital marketing agency that speicalise in inbound and outbound email, fax and SMS broadcast solutions. Serving the marketing and content fulfillment needs of clients in many markets including publishing, entertainment, travel and charities, Adestra are relied upon by the key players in both B2B and B2C marketplaces for bulk or highly targeted individual campaigns.The Adestra Message Fcous email service is today’s hottest email marketing system and is the only one designed for advanced email marketers.Adestra’s product and corporate information is located at http://www.Adestra.Co.Uk
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