Measure & Optimize
By Randall Litchfield
In a medium as fast-changing as email, things get stale remarkably fast. That's why it pays to constantly measure and optimize.
But first, what are the demons that conspire to blunt email performance?
- A big one is list fatigue. All email lists experience some decline in open and click rates, and this is simply the novelty wearing off for new subscribers. Not much you can do here but pay close attention to content and keep it fresh.
- Another is new anti-spam techniques. What worked in your creative last month may now be waving big red flags to the rules-based spam filters used by all ISPs. It is important to remember that these rules change at least daily, just like the updates on your anti-virus software. The programmers that write them simply observe trends in spam messages and create filters for similar traits.
- Consumer preferences also constantly evolve as surely as tastes in fashion and music. This applies not only to the design of your message, but the information it contains. Make sure you invite plenty of feedback in the form of surveys to stay on top of what your readers really want.
A simple optimization plan
This is something we recommend doing at least on an annual basis. It involves testing one change element at a time on a randomly selected sample of your subscriber base. You use the rest of your base - the majority - as the control group that continues to receive the regular communications. For example, a good way to evolve a new email template is to test various elements over several campaigns and carefully measure the opens and clicks to see how people are responding. And if your subscriber base is large enough, you may wish to create 2 or 3 test groups to measure different creative schemes and concepts. Inbox routinely conducts these optimization plans for clients. Typical results are a 50% improvement in click rates if optimization hasn't taken place in the past year.
Measure 'the relationship'
When measuring, it's important to remember that the real measurement is 'the relationship'. You are growing a community of involved customers and prospects. Consistent, applied measuring will tell you many things over time, such as:
- How rapidly the community is growing or shrinking
- The number of meaningful segments it consists of and how they change
- The level of commitment and involvement of individual members
- The average customer tenure
- The average success rate of converting prospects to customers
- Which email programs are most successful
- The relative appeal of various offers
