In any well-run business, you need to keep track of everything.
However, since doing business in the “virtual world” seems unreal at times, many business owners tend to forget the fact that normal business principles apply. The medium though, actually lends itself to better tracking than you would be able to do if you advertised in a newspaper, for instance.
Email marketing can be measured down to a “t”, and as such you can test and experiment until you see what works best. Once you have figured out what works and what does not, the results of any future campaign will be reasonably predictable.
Making the Most of Your Email Marketing Campaign
1. First, take note of the percentage of people who actually sign up to your mailing list. How many of your visitors become subscribers?
2. Any decent auto-responder service will facilitate the tracking of how many people actually open and read your emails – this will give you an idea of which headlines work best. As a general rule of thumb, headlines that generate curiosity work well – as long as the actual content of the email delivers on the expectations created by the headline.
3. Any professional auto-responder service will facilitate the tracking of clicks on links in your email – whether it is a link to a sales page, or simply a link to a “contact us” page to initiate discussions.
4. If you actually sell products on your website, keep track of the number of visitors (responding to emails) who actually buy what you are offering. You will find that this number is a lot higher than the percentage of people who buy upon their first exposure to the product.
5. Experiment, and test, test, test. What works and what does not will differ from one industry to the next, and also depend on your typical customer. Keep in mind, however, that small improvements to any part of the campaign will quickly add up to make substantial differences in revenue at the end of the day.
There is no need to achieve huge singular improvements in one go. Set out to improve one variable at a time, and then move on to the next. Once you have completed the lot, start again.
Every small improvement made will compound on the total of all previous improvements. BUT… in order to improve, you need to know exactly what happens – so you need to keep track of every step of the process. Always track everything my friend.