4 reasons to START USING your out-of-the-box email marketing data first to drive value

At SalesEmail, I'm here to help empower email marketers to drive sales using data, insights, and actions as the foundation.

Data can be a scary term - and my north star is to rid you of any fear you may have of it and show you the actions you can take to drive positive outcomes for your email marketing program.

So, how does an email marketer go about using data to drive positive outcomes for their email marketing program? One essential method is to build email marketing analytics reports.

Email marketing analytics reporting helps you understand how your subscribers interact with your email program so you can achieve your email program goals. To get you started, I've outlined the five 5 ESSENTIAL reports you need to drive MORE sales.

Sure, that's a great start - plus I even give away some of these email marketing analytics tools for free, but still - I've heard all the reasons in the book for why email marketers can't use data to drive action for their programs.

• "I know data can help my email marketing sales but I don't have time to look at it."

• "I have limitless data about my email subscribers and customers - but I don't have any idea what to do with it to make my email marketing program more money."

• "I want to use my data, but it's so messy!"

• "I can drive sales by running big promotions or discounts so I just do that."

I understand your pain - and I'm here to help solve for it.

With all email marketers I work with, I like to start with building email marketing analytics reports and dashboards based on the data available out-of-the-box in the email marketing software (or commonly known as marketing automation platform).

Out-of-the-box data generated from marketing automation software can be any data that is generated about your program and start sending email campaigns and/or importing subscribers into the software.

Why start with "out-of-the-box" Data?

1). Easy Data Collection

The great news about nearly every marketing automation software (e.g. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, etc.) is that there are out-of-the-box tools which collect data about how subscribers engage with your email marketing program in a standardized fashion. What does that really mean?

• Email campaigns deployed will automatically collect basic information about how subscribers interact with your campaigns without you doing any work. Nearly every marketing automation software will tell you right out-of-the-box:

  • How many subscribers were sent a campaign?

  • How many subscribers were delivered a campaign?

  • How many subscribers opened a campaign?

  • How many subscribers clicked a campaign?

  • How many subscribers unsubscribed from a campaign?

  • How many subscribers are currently subscribed, unsubscribed, or unable to be delivered email marketing campaigns?

• Email subscribers collected or imported into your marketing automation software will have attributes automatically created.

  • Is a subscriber opted in or opted out of email marketing messages?

  • When did the subscriber opt-in / opt-out occur?

  • When was the subscriber created in the marketing automation software?

  • Is the subscriber able to receive email marketing content?

2). Clean Data Collection

Not only does marketing automation software collect data about how subscribers engage with your email marketing program out-of-the-box, it does so using the same methodology each and every time - creating consistent, reliable, clean data to generate insights and actions for your program.

Most marketers I talk to talk about the absolute piles of data they have on their subscribers and customers - but oftentimes, this data is messy and hard to take real action from. Let's paint a real example using a data point that marketers commonly want to collect on their subscribers - location data.

Let's say that Suzie Q (I'm a big Creedence Clearwater Revival Fan, I can't help it) built a new form to help collect new email signups for her program. As a part of the form, Suzie Q wants to understand which zip code her subscribers live in to help personalize their experience with her eCommerce store, Pets R' Great.

Suzie includes two fields in her new email signup form

• Email Address

• State

Suzie is excited to learn more about her subscribers location when they sign up for her email program - she's never learned this information before about her subscribers except for when they make a purchase from her brand - a small percentage of her overall subscriber base.

After a few weeks of having her new email signup form live on her website, she downloads all the new data from the form to see where her new subscribers live. She wants to know what percentage of her subscribers live in California since her eCommerce store, Pets R' Great, is based in California.

Suzie stares at the first ten subscribers and quickly realizes that using this data is going to be harder than she anticipated.

Suzie wants to answer a very simple question - what percentage of her subscribers live in California? Answering this question is filled with challenges based on how she collects the data from her subscribers.

• Suzie forgot to require new subscribers to completely fill out all form fields- so some subscribers chose not to share their state. After all, consumers are protective of what data they share with brands if they don't see the value in sharing that information.

• Suzie also forgot to put any data validation rules to ensure subscribers were only able to enter specific "State" values in the form. Some subscribers typed in the abbreviation for the state they live in, while others typed out the state value completely.

The great news?

The problems with this data can be solved!

The better news?

Data is available at your fingertips that doesn't have these problems!

The quickest path to success is to simply use the data you have available out-of-the-box from your marketing automation platform. Data about how subscribers engage with your email program will be collected in a clean, standardized format that you can quickly take action on - without any mess.

3). Easy-To-Understand KPIs

Since nearly all marketing automation software collects similar types of data using similar (if not identical) methodologies, translating this data into key performance indicators (or KPIs) is very straightforward.

Out-of-the-box, marketing automation software should be able to readily allow you to measure at least the following metrics:

• Delivery Rate: The percentage of emails that were delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

Delivery Rate = Delivered Emails / Sent Emails

• Open Rate: The percentage of emails that were opened based on the number of emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

Open Rate = Unique Opens / Delivered Emails

• Click Rate: The percentage of emails that were clicked based on the number of emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

Click Rate = Unique Clicks / Delivered Emails

• Click-To-Open Rate: The percentage of emails that were clicked based on the number of subscribers who opened your email.

Click-To-Open Rate = Unique Clicks / Unique Opens

• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of subscribers who unsubscribed from your program based on the number of emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

Unsubscribe Rate = Unsubscribe Volume / Delivered Emails

These should be your minimum expectations. As a bonus, some will even allow you to measure conversion rates and sales per email out-of-the-box too.

4). Take action - FAST

The greatest thing about out-of-the-box marketing automation software is your ability to translate the data into insights to take action! After all, without action, all you have is information that's nice to know.

Because you'll be able to measure delivery rate, open rate, click rate, and click-to-open rate, and unsubscribe rate, you can take action based on the insights you generate. Here's just a couple ideas for how you can take action on this rich data.

Create Content that drives better engagement

• Create more engaging subject lines

• Create more engaging offers

• Display more relevant products and services to subscribers

Inform A/B testing ideas

• Send optimization testing (day of week, time of day, etc.)

• CTA (Call-To-Action) testing

• Subject Line testing

• Pre-Header testing

• Creative testing

As with all content published on SalesEmail - I need your honest feedback! What did you find valuable? What do you have questions about? What didn't you find helpful?

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