Measuring email open/ctr rates is like counting door opens at a retailer. The data matters, but not on its own. You need more data about the path to the cash register at the retailer. And it is no different in your marketing.
Do you know the path to the cash?
Although there is a correlation between how many times a retail door gets opened and sales, the ‘door open’ stat alone is not very informative. And it certainly isn’t an end goal.
And email opens/click throughs are not end goals either.
The secret that the email marketing platforms never tell you is that the marketers seeing the most success can track from an open/click all the way to the buy.
What must be identified is which individuals (by name) who opened emails went on to register for the early bird rate and what was the path they took once they clicked over from the email. Did they register directly after clicking over from your email? What else did they look at on your site?
Were they already looking at registration information recently? What behaviors do the people who registered have in common?
Connect your email marketing with your website behavior analytics
To connect from your email marketing all the way to the buy takes more than an email marketing platform. It requires your email marketing to be integrated with your analytics, blog and your entire website. That requires an integrated marketing platform, which always include email marketing tools. In fact, it could be argued that these platforms offer the most sophisticated email tool in terms of functionality, yet the easiest in terms of use of any email marketing platform.
Only with an integrated marketing platform can you know patterns like these, which are critical to identify to conduct successful marketing:
- After they clicked on an email and came to our site, then what.’ That ‘then what’ is much more important than the open or ctr.
- 40% of those who open our “Tuesday Update” email, who have attended at least one conference in the past, and who spend at least 2 hours on our site a month have a 35% higher self-renewal rate. If you double the people who fit this pattern will you double the amount of people who will renew through an automated workflow, which has a far lower cost of acquisition?
Next week on this blog we’ll discuss some best practices and tips in association email marketing. But the biggest tip is this:
Integrate your marketing.
Why? That is the easiest and seamless way to integrate your data so that you can truly uncover the behaviors of your most engaged members and identify the pattern of your buyer. Why? So you can influence more people to follow the same pattern. Why? To get more buyers.
Whether you call them members or attendees, the whole point of your marketing is to do the least to get the most. So integrate today and lower your cost of acquisition.
By Monica Bussolati
@bussolati
