EMAIL METRICS - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - Nov 15 2016

I am a metrics person.  I believe that if you don't know where you are going you won't get there and if you don't measure your successes you can't win.  Email marketing is one of those areas of marketing that you would think would be easy to create metrics for.  However, I believe we generally do a SOUR job of this based on my experience.

Since these are internal measures, my commentary will be around what these are and should be, what we all should care about and how to set up some good dashboards and metrics to allow for understanding and continual improvement.

First, what are some of the standard metrics that are bandied about in email marketing?

Sent Emails
Delivered Emails
Open Rates
Click Through Rates
Unsubscribe Rates
Bounce Rates (hard and soft)

Other less used metrics include:

Inbox Placement
Earnings Per Email (click or open)
Conversion Rate
Complaint or Abuse Rate
Forward Rate (sharing rate)
Churn Rate (or list growth rate)
ROI

Seems like a lot and some of these are not very well understood and are treated differently in the ESPs.  Let's take a brief look at each.

Sent Emails - When you hit the "send" button, the number of attempts or the number of emails in your list.  While this metric is important, it is of limited value in understanding the performance of your campaigns and can be problematic if you have poor list hygiene or sign up processes.  For example, if you have invalid formats or old email addresses in your list, this metric could be misleading.  However, it is needed to calculate a delivery rate and warn you of any problems in that area.

Delivered Emails - This is the total number of emails that actually land in someone's inbox.  It does not tell you where in the inbox and without the "send" figure to calculate a rate of deliverability, it is of limited value. It should be tracked and trended however to insure you are not getting caught in spam filters or black listed.  Be sure to dive deep and look at this metric by ISP as it can help you diagnose if and where you might have deliverability problems and how to fix them.

Open Rates - While important to measure and trend, this metric can be misleading mostly because quite a few people read emails in preview pane and never open them.  Different ESPs may also measure open rate differently, for example based on images downloaded, but if these are done automatically, it may record an open even if the reader didn't look at the email.  Text emails may be excluded from open rates also.  It is a good directional indicator of engagement and awareness of your communications however.  Be aware and be sure you understand exactly how your ESP measures and reports this.

Click Through Rates - This metric is often spoken of as a highly important one, however, it is totally in the marketers control and without context really tells you nothing.  If you measure click through rates, be sure to include a metric on click through opportunities.  Any one email could have no click through opportunities or ten.  If you do not have an understanding of that, you won't have a true measure of success.  When creating reporting templates, be sure to include a field for the click opportunities in each email and then you can categorize click through rates based on that percentage versus just an overall percentage that does not speak to if the reader could have clicked.  Also look at where the click through was - did they click on your logo, on a particular piece of content, or on more than one occasion.

Unsubscribe Rates - This is a must have metric that does a good job confirming you are not a SOUR emailer.  ESPs typically do a good job of capturing this as it is triggered by a direct action from the email recipient.   This can be manipulated as well by you based on how you handle the unsubscribe process.  If you make it difficult for people to unsubscribe (as I have addressed in an earlier post), you may be under representing the sentiment.  Also, if you have failed processes, you may be over counting.  For example, my favorite SOUR emailer Younkers, as I mentioned in a previous post, has received numerous unsubscribe requests from me as it didn't appear to be working and I continued to receive their emails even though I asked them not to send.  I will report that I have finally quit receiving their emails (for now).  I wonder if they saw my post and finally did something about it!

Bounce Rates (hard and soft) - This is another metric that could be different based on how your ESP handles it.  Some will count a hard bounce after a send has failed three times, but some may allow you to control how often the fail has to happen to count as a hard bounce.  Soft bounce means the delivery was temporarily not available, but again can be altered.  Be sure you understand exactly how your ESP handles these and measure appropriately.  If you have a high hard bounce rate, you can also put yourself in a position of having your emails blocked by ISPs as being SOUR and on the verge of SPAM, so be sure to watch these rates closely to stay on those white lists and not be a SOUR emailer.

Secondary Metrics:

Inbox Placement - This is a lesser used metric, but as the ISPs get more aggressive at filtering and automatically moving incoming emails (especially Gmail), your well crafted message may never even receive the opportunity for the recipient to see if it is placed into a sub-folder without the email owners knowledge.  It is difficult to combat this as well since like SEM algorithms, it can be ever changing and different based on the ISPs practices.  At least be aware of this and attempt to understand if you are doing things that are making your emails more likely to land in the wrong place.

Earnings Per Email (click, open, delivered) - Getting to the heart of why we email, we should be measuring what we get out of these programs.  While for some, this may be difficult, if you can, try to tie your actual revenue creation to the email function.  Use the base metric that works for you (delivered, opened or clicked), but do attempt to do so. This may require extra work in Google Analytics and your CRM system to properly tag and add parameters to your campaigns, but it will be well worth it.  Also consider what role emails play in the customer journey and how to tap into that.  One thing I saw in my last role is that Google Analytics was showing us huge numbers of "direct" traffic to our website.  We knew we didn't have that high brand recognition to warrant this and after digging in realized that we were not fully capturing the impact of our email programs to reactivate and engage our prospects in our products and ultimately purchase.  Having the proper attribution allowed us to better prioritize our overall efforts and leverage our resources more effectively to the highest return activities.

Conversion Rate - Like earnings rate, this is another good metric that attempts to tie your end goals to the email function.  It can be measured in several ways, but the goal is to understand of those receiving your emails, who is taking the revenue generating action you desire, be it an e-commerce transaction, an appointment or some other metric.  It is different from the earning metric as it measures against people or recipients rather than a volume figure such as earnings.  Pick the measures that mean the most to your business results.

Complaint or Abuse Rate - Similar to unsubscribe rates, these rates are more problematic to your future as they are signals sent to your ISP about you that can cause you to become black listed.  Obviously if someone is at the point of angst that they are communicating to someone other than you about your SOUR email, it spells trouble.  ISPs also facilitate this differently, so look at it by provider to see differences and identify opportunities for improvement.

Forward Rate (sharing rate) - Another metric totally in your control as if you don't provide the opportunity for the forward, there is nothing to measure.  Ask yourself how you can use email, like you use social media, to engage your best advocates in continuing your message.  While this is another topic and subject for marketing improvement, if you do this, measure and trend to find easy wins.

Churn Rate (or list growth rate) - Are you adding new net prospects or is your list stale?  This metric will help you understand where you sit and what you need to do to continue to grow your opportunities and fill the top of the marketing funnel.  If you have a product with a long sales cycle time, this can be an especially important metric for long term forecasting and growth.  Measure how many new email addresses are added to your prospect list after you remove unsubscribes, complaints and hard bounces.

ROI - The ultimate goal of all businesses and marketers - how much did you put in and how much did you get out.  Email marketing has been proven to have one of the highest return on investments of all marketing tactics.  Are you measuring this and trending to insure you improve and grow with this valuable tool?  Again, dependent on your business, attempt to tie directly created revenue to costs which include ESP fees, expenses of content and list development and team costs.

Today's Tips for Better Email Metrics:

-  Be thoughtful and insure you fully understand the nuances of the metrics you choose to use
-  Select the metrics that will insure ongoing success (unsubscribes, ROI, etc.) and allow for insights and actions and relentlessly track
-  Be sure to trend metrics over time; watch for seasonality (retailers especially) and other market conditions that can impact these; most ESPs publish standards and averages at least for things like open and click through rates, so reference those to benchmark how you are doing.
-  Sub-segment emails by types and categories and understand what the trends are.  It is entirely reasonable to expect 90%+ open rates from certain transnational emails, but far less from others.  If you aren't creating segments of emails by type and tracking you will miss problems and opportunities to improve.
-  When looking at your statistics in totality, think about the blend of types of emails and take that into account. You may pat yourself on the back for a big improvement in open rates in a month where perhaps your volume of promotional emails was lower as a percentage of total emails.  It may be that you actually had a problem that was masked because your data wasn't granular enough to obtain a complete understanding.
-  Consider a deliverability audit for a deep dive into where and how your emails are being delivered to unmask any issues.
-  Watch for any red flags that can get you on a black list.  Once you are on, it is very difficult to get off, so make this a top metric.

Overall, email metrics can insure you invest wisely, learn as you execute, continue to improve and drive notable revenue from this valuable channel.  Take the time to build a strategy for you email metrics just like you do for marketing and email overall and put the tools and resources in place to support the channel.  Don't have SOUR email metrics and missed revenue!

UNSUBSCRIBES - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - SOUR eMail Oct 26, 2016

The unsubscribe process is another one of those elements of email marketing that just makes me SOUR!  Too many marketers do not take into consideration my desire to leave them and the difficulty of doing so can sometimes be infuriating.

First, the law actually prescribes how unsubscribes should work.  Here's the exact wording:

"You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request."

While this allows for some latitude, it is clear that the actions I need to take should be limited and brief.

Some do this extremely well and even brand it via the "SafeUnsubscribe" that Constant Contact users experience.

Others bury it in very small type or with other options to make it harder for you to find.  While I get that they don't want you to leave, I would suggest they do a better job with what they send.  Then I wouldn't be tempted to want to quit receiving these emails.  I'm leaving these the way they were in my email to demonstrate how small they really are.

It also makes me SOUR when they make me go to a web page and then I have to re-enter my email address.  Hello!  I just came from an email you sent me and dynamic programming allows you to easily pass the email address to the page, or even better just say thank you for unsubscribing and be done with it.  You have already made me unhappy to the point of not wanting to hear from you.  Do you really think it helps to make it hard for me to say good bye?  What brand value does that drive?

So here's a summary of 10 of the emails in my inbox today and what is good and bad.

Anything in Stained Glass - seems that smaller companies using Constant Contact have it made as they benefit from the platforms method for unsubscribing.  The unsubscribe is just one click and the platform thereafter insures you don't receive emails without the sender even having to think about it, so kind of idiot-proof.  Congratulations to Constant Contact!

World Market - unsubscribe was buried in the footer and very small.  They did remember who I was so I didn't have to re-enter my email address, but they did make me check and uncheck preference boxes to keep getting some, all or none of what they had to send.  While this isn't necessarily bad, it should be part of a preference center and not combined with the simple act of unsubscribing.  Remember once I get to this step, I'm not happy - don't make it harder for me.

Eventful - they make me read to figure out where I even need to click to unsubscribe (the link is "click here" within a sentence that says "to unsubscribe from other deals...")  Once I click, they make me tell them again:  "are you sure you want to unsubscribe?"  Really?  I'm checking yes just because you made me even more SOUR.

Hampton Inn by Hilton - the unsubscribe link is one of several options.  Once I clicked, they gave me the option of what I was unsubscribing to - just these special offers or all of Hilton communications.  They also populated my email address for me - see I knew it could be done!  They also tell you how long it will take - good - by law, they have 10 days to discontinue sending you emails.

Coffeeforless.com - grouped with other options of "preferences" and "forward to a friend."  Once I clicked, I did have to reconfirm with a second click and they also gave me the option of changing my preferences with another link.

Hotwire - by the way, I love these guys and always use them for personal travel for hotels and cars.  Always get good deals where I want and I like getting to try hotels I might not otherwise find.  Staying at the Gwen in Chicago over Thanksgiving which I booked through them.  So, even though I won't unsubscribe, they again have the unsubscribe grouped with other options and are a bit busy once I click combining preference changes with the unsubscribe process.  They try to be a bit subtle and dray your eyes away from the "unsubscribe all" in an attempt to keep you on the list.

First America Home Warranty - I included this one here to make the distinction between transactional and promotional emails.  I received this email in response to a service request I placed for my home. Transactional emails do not require unsubscribe options and this one did not have one.  While some might include as a courtesy, it is not required via the CAN-SPAM law.

Younkers - the emailer I put at the top of my SOUR list.  They provide the unsubscribe option within a long list of choices, almost purposely to hide it from me. On the landing page, they bury the unsubscribe in a preference center, long form that asks if I want to change my frequency (actually good), change my email address (not sure why that is there) or select from a long list of content types that might be in my emails (also good, although I don't have any evidence that they are using this).  But most SOUR - I have actually unsubscribed from their emails many times over the past several MONTHS and they still keep sending me emails.  I did it again today, so after I scrolled down through all those choices and clicked to unsubscribe, they added insult to injury by asking me why.  I ask - if you were monitoring your database and had a good handle on your email statistics, wouldn't you know what was working or not?  Actually, I would really like to help these guys and even sent a LinkedIn message to their CMO.  Sorry you aren't listening!

CMO.com (Adobe) - I don't put many B2B email samples in my posts, and this is part of future conversations as in general I think B2B marketers do a better job at email marketing.  One click from the unsubscribe link at the bottom and I was done.  They told me who I was receiving the email from and once I clicked, I was done - no re-typing my email address, no questions, no preferences, just done.  Now I didn't really want to do that, so now I will go back in and resubscribe, but it should be really that simple.  The only improvement would be a link on the confirmation page to re-subscribe. 

CNN Breaking News - I'm surprised that an organization like CNN is doing such a poor job. Now, I like getting my breaking news emails, but the unsubscribe mechanism is just SOUR.  They actually don't include a link but only a long URL that I have to cut and paste into my browser.  When I do so, they make me type in my email address to unsubscribe.  All I can say is "wow." 

Unsubscribes

Today's Sample: 10 emails
Overall Grade: C
Top Performer:  Anything in Stained Glass (Constant Contact) and CMO.com (Adobe) - Grade A

My rating is based on the unsubscribe process itself and the ease of unsubscribing.  If you are doing a great job of email marketing, making your messages relevant, timely and of interest, very few of your subscribers will want to go here.  If they do, then you should happily and easily let them go and look at your practices to see how you can improve.

Today's Tips to Improve Your Inbox Anatomy and not be a SOUR eMailer:

-  Make your unsubscribe as simple and easy as possible with only one click required.
-  Allow people to manage email preferences for type of content and frequency of emails, but keep that as a separate option in a preference center.  AND make sure if you ask for this that you use it to make their emails more personalized.
-  Don't bury the unsubscribe with other options and in long sentences.  However, do place "preferences" in close proximity so they can see that they can change if they don't want to be completely gone.
-  Make the word "unsubscribe" be the link, not "click here" and certainly not a URL.
-  Use a preference center to allow people to select what they want and when; make this part of the subscription process (future post topic).
-  Make sure you abide by the law and honor the unsubscribe request within 10 days.  There are financial implications of not doing so - you can be fined up to $16,000 for every infraction.
- Don't ask for reasons why they unsubscribe - use your data to figure that out.
- On the unsubscribe landing page, thank them, let them know how they can opt back in (with a link directly there) if they want and how long it will take for the changes to take effect.

Use these unsubscribe process tips to make sure you meet CAN-SPAM requirements and to manage a process that is required but undesirable.  Don't be a SOUR emailer and you will minimize these clicks.