MDR's Free Webinar Series
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Metrics That Matter: What You Need to Know to Improve Your Email ROI

Q&A Summary:

Q:  If you are finding people are coming back and reopening the emails a few times (i.e., opens are exponentially bigger than unique opens), what does that say to you?

CZ: A dramatic difference between Gross Opens and Net Opens can signify a number of things about your campaign.    

1. Your message has resonated with educators such that they are coming back to the message to review it after the initial read, presumably when they have more time.
2. You have offered something of value to your reader. They are reassessing your message to get at this value and/or forwarding this on to their peers, which is increasing the gross open rate as all forwarded email opens will be attributed to the original email address. For example, if your email struck a cord with a principal and he/she forwards it on to his/her entire staff, your gross open rates could be dramatically higher, as any subsequent opens will only count toward the gross open rate of the original principal.

Q:  Do you recommend sending emails out from your own server or to use a service?

CZ:  It really depends on your company’s capabilities. Deploying your own email, especially to your house file, offers the greatest flexibility and options but also has the greatest potential for damage if your IP addresses are for whatever reason tagged as sending spam. Utilizing an ESP can offer you protection for this, as ESP’s sole job is to identify spam complaints and resolve them so that their delivery remains very high. Additionally, you can take advantage of third-party email services, such as MDR’s Campaign Analyzer reporting that can offer some robust reporting features you may not have available in-house.

SDT: It depends. You definitely want to communicate with your in-house list on a regular basis. If you have the capabilities to deploy and track your own emails, then go for it. But if you cannot track the emails yourself or if your in-house database needs some cleaning, then you should consider a service. Also, you want to be careful of “list fatigue.” If you are sending to your in-house list too often, response might decline. In this case, you would need to augment your in-house list with a rented list.

Q:  How do you account for multiple links in a single email?

CZ:  Most email deployment reporting (including MDR’s Campaign Analyzer reporting) will show you individual tracking by link, with both gross and net numbers. You want to analyze how many people have clicked on a link, how many have clicked on multiple links, which links they click and which ones they do not. This will give you insight into your use of links and their effectiveness in delivering your reader to your Web site.

Q:  Do you recommend special landing pages that are specifically set up for the email? We often send customers to our regular product or solution pages.

CZ:  I absolutely recommend creating specific landing pages and/or micro sites for every email campaign it warrants, and you have the resources to do so. Dedicating resources to creating these specific landing pages can so dramatically increase the overall response rate of a campaign. This is generally considered one of the most effective things you can do to increase the ROI of your e-marketing efforts. These landing pages should focus on the continuing conversation that was started in the email; stay focused on converting the reader, but offer additional information and copy to help with this effort.

SDT: Yes! Unique landing pages allow you to continue the conversation and point respondents where you want them to be. The latter ensures that they are not confused or frustrated by what they find when they click through. If you do not have the time or resources to create a unique landing page, you should create a unique link to your regular product or solution page so that you can still track response.

Q:  Would you provide some average open/click numbers for MDR lists?

CZ:  MDR’s average response rates for email campaigns analyzed in our most recent Educational Email Trends report are as follows:

Average Open Rate for Customer email campaigns:  14.9%
Average Click-to Rate for Customer email campaigns:  3.5%

Average Open Rate for Prospecting email campaigns:  14.2%
Average Click-to Rate for Prospecting email campaigns:  2.8%

Q:  Please address the concern that school and college lists get too much commercial email and may not be very responsive. 

CZ:  Educational email marketing in comparison to B2C or B2B email marketing is in much better shape with respect to saturation and in-box crowding. In our 2006 Email Trends report, we asked educators about how many educational-related email messages they received on a daily basis. The chart below shows that educators on a whole are not being inundated with email yet.

SDT: It is our experience that educators are looking for solutions and welcome communications that make their search easier. As with any audience, it is important to let them know you respect their time and attention by being relevant and to the point.

Q: For the analytics section, does “total” opens or clicks refer to “total unique” opens or clicks or everything, even if that means users click more than once?

CZ:  There are number of stats you want to look at when it comes to clicks. Total Clicks show the absolute gross effectiveness of the campaign in terms of clicks, the higher the better. Total Clicks count multiple clicks on a link as well as multiple links within the message being clicked. Unique Clicks per URL is a way to measure how many people are clicking on multiple links in a message. Each link in a message can only be counted once per email address, so a high Unique Clicks per URL indicate that people were drawn to clicking multiple links in your message. This could be a good thing or a bad thing; you should review your gateway/conversion effectiveness as well. Unique Clicks per email is a way to understand the pure effectiveness of your email campaign in terms of click-throughs to your site. For each email delivered, they either clicked or they did not. The only problem with this metric is that it will not capture any clicks that were a result of a pass along/forward of the email, as one single click counts per email address. This should not be a big deal if you use a trackable forwarding service, like Send-a-Friend, that accurately captures these forwards.

Q: Can we use Google Analytics code for tracking in your emails?

CZ:  While I am not an expert on Google Analytics, I do know that it can be used to track referring traffic sources based on domain. So it can be used to track links in email if your referring domain is something you can distinguish. For instance, since MDR email solutions utilize third-party email deployment vendors, you could view the traffic referred to your site from these servers (traffic from .XMR3.com, for instance) as traffic generated off the links in your mail marketing. This is because when the reader of your email clicks a link, they are first sent to the ESP’s servers in order to record the click and then redirected to your site. Beyond this level of tracking, there are other Web site analytic packages (and Google may do this as well) that can track traffic down to the exact referring URL. In this case, you can even imbed an ID into the end of the link and then report on it based on the Web site breakdown of referring URLs.

Example: 1234 visitors from www.referringsite.com/&linkID=1231
              3872 visitors from www.referringsite.com/&linkID=1234

SDT: You can use Google Analytics for tracking on all of your unique landing pages to augment the MDR tracking.

Q: Is link tracking an MDR service only, or are there other link tracking services as well? 

CZ:  Link tracking is not unique to MDR’s E-Marketing Services. There are email service providers that will track your links on things like number of clicks, time of click, frequency of click, etc. MDR’s Campaign Analyzer reporting is unique in that it also reports these links against a set of institution-level and individual-level demographics that are specific to the education industry. Campaign Analyzer reporting will automatically report your clicks by things at the rooftop level, like student enrollment, metro status of school, school type, etc., and at the individual level, such as job title and courses taught. This very detailed analytical view of your campaign is only available via MDR’s Campaign Analyzer reporting.

Q: Can you suggest any desktop packages that generate the statistics mentioned? 

CZ:  I do not know of any desktop packages that can generate the statistics on email campaigns that MDR’s Campaign Analyzer reporting can due to the database behind the reporting that is necessary. MDR’s campaign reporting is able to report results against a number of key institution-level and individual-level demographics because MDR has all of this data. They compile all of these data attributes about the schools and the educators, so there is a rich set of data points to report your campaign results against. If all you have is an email address and maybe a name and address, you have a limited view of the responses when they are reported.

Q: What kind of message testing do you recommend?

CZ:  You should test your subject and message content to optimize open, click-to, and conversion rates. Things to test are relevance versus promotional type of content and a solutions-based message versus a value-based message. Try not to test too many variables at once in any given test, as you will have difficulty in understanding what moved the needle.

SDT: Time of day, day of week, offer, subject line, headlines, artwork, product/service, frequency of emails (i.e., once a month, once a quarter, etc.).

Q: Why does MDR call any opened email versus a clicked-through email as a “hot lead”?

CZ:  MDR considers someone that opened an email a “hot lead” as well as someone that records a click-through. Why? Because those that have opened your message (and recorded the open) have cleared the first hurdle to final conversion. Educators are as busy and time-constrained as anyone—B2B contacts, maybe more so. By opening your email and reading it, they have been exposed to your company, product, relevance play, and value proposition. Just because they didn’t take the next step at that moment doesn’t mean they should be dropped from the lead bucket. We have seen in many test cases that a phone follow-up to these responders yields very high connectivity/call-back rates and a general high interest level. It would be wrong to overlook this population in terms of leads simply because they did not take the next step of clicking through immediately. Generally speaking, if they truly were not interested, they would not have opened the email and downloaded the images in the first place.

Q: Is there any research on what should be included in the body of the email? Text versus images?

CZ:  There are a lot of schools of thought on this and shifting statistics over the years. I am firmly in the camp that HTML emails and graphics if used properly are far more effective overall than plain ASCII text messages. The added benefit of HTML emails is that they can be tracked and, therefore, make it easier for the reader to respond (hyperlinks). There are considerations you need to take into account in order to deal with image suppression. In some cases, some readers prefer a text-oriented message; however, both of these can be accommodated with HTML messages. There is no proven downside to sending HTML emails.

SDT: The more live HTML text you include, the better. That way, if image blockers strip out your images, recipients will still be able to receive your message.

Q: I know it is really hard to be specific with this, but in the education market, what is your experience with the best time of day or day of week to reach teachers?

What is your opinion on having a consistent time for emails? Does it really matter that your monthly email must go out every first Wednesday morning or every first week or just whenever? 

CZ:  I think that setting expectations with your readers and sticking to them is a best practice in email marketing. If you say you are going to email them monthly, then do not start to suddenly email them weekly. I do not think it is absolutely critical that you hit them at the exact day/time each cycle, as long as you meet any commitment you have made to them.

As to the question about what is the best day to deploy an email, here are the results by day of the campaigns conducted by MDR for the 2006 versus the 2007 school years.

SDT: As far as delineating a day of the month to send your prospecting emails, it is probably not necessary. You just want to make sure they are spaced far enough apart. If you send a newsletter or another regular communication, having a designated day is a good idea—if only to make it easier for you to schedule/produce the email!

Q: We provide environmental health and safety consulting and engineering services to schools and other clients. A lot of what you talked about is more for product. My goal for email campaigns is informational, i.e., exposure, etc. How can campaigns be designed for us?

CZ:  Email is a great tool for getting exposure for your company’s offerings. Email is a great way to get your name and services out in front of decision makers and key personnel at the school and district levels. Send out a broad-based email to identify those most likely to open/click. Follow up with those that open/click with another email campaign or phone/DM follow-up.

SDT: The examples that I showed from Black Duck are a good example of an awareness campaign. By not being too “salesey” and by offering valuable resources like white papers, case studies, etc., regularly, you can position yourself as a thought leader and stay top of mind with your potential customers. The Black Duck emails linked to a micro site that contained all of the available resources and gave a “preview of coming attractions.” Over the past two months, we have seen that traffic to the micro site has been fairly steady, even when we were not deploying an email.

Q: Have you seen the opt-out rate increasing over the years? 

CZ:  MDR has not seen a significant increase in opt-out rates over the years. Campaigns deployed via MDR’s E-Marketing Services run at a .71% opt-out rate on average.

SDT: We haven’t noticed the opt-out rate increasing. In fact, we find that people are more open to receiving product/service information via email.

Q: In the education market, are the emails typically personal email addresses, such as Yahoo, Comcast, etc., or are they school-specific email addresses? 

CZ:  Email in the educational space is overwhelmingly institution based. There are email addresses that are issued by the school or college that end in .EDU, .NET, .ORG, .US or .COM. Nearly all educators in a building have one of these types of email addresses, and MDR has approximately 72% coverage of all the educational institution-based email addresses, far more than anyone else. Additionally, MDR has over one million home-based email addresses that belong to educators. These email addresses can be used in conjunction with the school addresses or on their own; they are a separate database and not mixed in with our school addresses like other providers offer. We can help you decide which email address is most likely to respond to your product or service and help create the perfect e-marketing list for you.

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