NewBees got questions? We’ve got answers! Ask here!
Getting started in email marketing can be pretty intimidating and you’ve probably got a flock of questions you’d like answers for! Even those of us who’ve been in it a while have questions that we’d like to get answers for and sometimes those answers can be elusive. The eMail Guide is here to help you get answers!
We get questions such as:
What spam laws affect my email marketing campaign?
What are the do’s and don’ts of social marketing?
What email marketing best practices should I follow?
What are the best times for email opens?
Post your questions here and we promise you fast and helpful answers from our experts!
 |
|
|
Other post by this Author
|
|
Hello Jeff/Jim/Garin,
I want to know more about how companies and ESPs are approaching segmentation and personalization. It would help if you could give a feature comparison or a case study on segmentation. A lot of information about visitors is in either Analytics programs, CMS systems and/or CRM systems. Email marketing needs to move towards better integration with these systems if we need to get the most out of our post-click data. How are companies doing it?
Cheers!
Email marketing and web analytics go hand in hand, but the easiest segments are found right within your email delivery system reports.
For example, we segment to our most engaged or least engaged customers. We run filters and send targeted messages to people who are our most active customers.
The flip side is that we take our least active (people who have not opened or clicked on the last 180 days) and add them to re-engagement campaigns that try to evoke a positive response. If we can not get these subscribers to open or click we filter them out from our regular communication. (This has increased our open and clickthrough rate substantially, while decreasing our delivery costs. WIN WIN)
If you are able to link your web analytics to your email program you can begin to re-market to shopping cart abandonment. Programs like Webtrends and Omniture can help you segment single versus multiple purchase clients. With this information you can then run campaigns to up-sell your single purchase subscribers.
Here’s an excellent post from Amy Garland about segmenting: http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/if-content-is-king-your-database-is-queen-using-segmentation-for-more-effective-campaigns/
There are great case studies at http://www.omniture.com/en/resources/case_studies
Keep in mind, you need to consider what data you will ask for when people subscribe. Only ask for information you will use in your campaigns and try to combine clickthrough and analytic data that will increase your understanding of what subscribers are doing.
Hello.
How can i track was the e-mails i send have been read.
Thank you.
Hello Vladimir,
Without delving into the actually technicalities…Any ESP (Email Service Provider) will provide this reporting for you. It’s very important that you understand what is being reported because being clear on the definitions is key to your success. This article by Andrew Kordek should help:
http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/the-importance-of-getting-email-marketing-reports-right/
Regards,
jim
Hi Vladimir…
2 suggestions.
1) You do like the ESP’s do and put an image in the message. In your web analytics tracking you could then pull a report that shows you how many times the image was loaded. Although this is not tied to the unique individuals, it should give you a reference point as to how many people viewed that image.
2) You could also append a person’s email address to the end of a link: http://www.google.com?emailaddress
By using this method on your own server it will let you know who clicked on this link (almost more valuable than who read your message).
At the end of the day there are may ways to tack opens and clicks within a message. My first suggestion is to hire a reputable ESP that will have all of this tracking inherent in their software.
Great idea to have this open forum with readers. I will add one just to play along.
What are some best practices to further improve deliverability rates?
Hi Michael,
Good question!
1 — Using a good ESP
2 — No spammy content or all bolded words. See more here: http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/the-legend-of-spamalot-and-the-nobility-of-words/
3 — Check your message against deliverability tools such as Return Path http://www.returnpath.net or Spam Assassin http://spamassassin.apache.org/
When all else fails, turn to insightful (not to mention frenetic) videos from our friend Kieth @ Robomail with a video explaing authentication:
Anyone else have anything to add, please type in!!!