Even though most email marketing and web host services include sales and marketing analytics that allow you to track how well an email campaign is going, many marketers don't take the time to understand the data presented or use the data to improve sales. Understanding how well your campaign is doing (or not doing) allows you to make the changes necessary to become more profitable.
Analytics you should be most concerned with include:
- Click through rates
- Open rates
- Visitor rates
- Sales rates
These rates give you a good idea of how successful or lackluster your campaign is.
Click Through Rates
Click through rates measure how many people clicked on the link to your website that you included in mass email messages. You can easily determine how well a campaign is going by comparing the number of emails sent to the number of click through rates. If this rate is much lower than the number of emails sent, then you need to figure out why subscribers are not visiting your website to buy things - because that is the point of any email campaign, after all.
You should also pay attention to click through rates on your website to pinpoint which pages prompt the most sales.
Open Rates
Open rates refer to the number of people who actually open your email. This is very important because if you have low open rates this means that subscribers aren't bothering to open your email. You may need to make changes to your "From" or "Subject" lines to entice and encourage subscribers to read your email content. Remember, you can't make a sale or even suggest a subscriber visit your website if they don't open your email.
Visitor Rates
Knowing how many visitors your website receives each week or month and where visitors are coming from (your bulk emails, web searches, other websites, etc.) can help you refine your email messages to encourage even more people to visit the site.
Sales Rates
Knowing which days are heavy sales days and which are not can help you determine which are the best days to send high volume email. You may want to send coupons or other discounts on low sales days to encourage more sales. Sales rates can also tell you which subscribers buy the most and which do not. You can encourage both groups to buy more through special promotions and other online deals.