Email Marketing Analytics Reporting - Email Journey Report

EMAIL Journey REPORT

The Email Journey report helps you understand how effective a given email journey is in engaging subscribers and achieving an email journey goal.

What is an Email Journey?

An email journey is a series of email messages automatically triggered to subscribers based on subscriber attributes, behaviors, or demographics.

Why should I have an Email Journey?

The reasons for having email journeys are nearly endless. The biggest reason to launch an email journey is that they truly allow you to have a one-to-one relationship with your subscribers based on how they engage with your brand. Your subscribers NEED personalized experiences from your email program - email journeys help you deliver these experiences at scale.

The great thing about email journeys is that unlike a single email campaign, you'll create the content for the email journey once and reuse the content OVER AND OVER AGAIN for subscribers who qualify for the email journey.

For example, if you were to launch a birthday email journey, you would create two email messages that target subscribers who have a birthday today. Every day, new subscribers who have a birthday today would qualify for your birthday email journey and automatically be on the path to receiving your birthday email journey content!

So, what do you need to create an email journey? Every email journey will have these four components.

Four Email Journey Components

1. Trigger: a mechanism used to allow the subscriber to receive your email journey content. This often is driven by a behavior a subscriber takes with your brand (clicked an email, purchased a specific product) but can also be driven by a subscriber's attributes (birthday, anniversary date).

2. Messages: the email content that the email journey will send to the subscriber based on the trigger. By definition, an email journey is a series of email messages (meaning a sequence of more than one message) so you'll have at least two messages to put in front of your email journey audience.

3. Subscriber Goal: a clearly articulated goal for subscribers to achieve after receiving your messages. For example, a birthday email journey may have the subscriber goal of ensuring the subscriber feels valued & special on their birthday.

4. Business Goal: a clearly articulated goal for your brand to achieve after a subscriber receives your messages. For example, a birthday email journey may have the business goal of driving incremental sales for your business, based on the inclusion of a special offer sent to subscribers on their birthday.

Once you have these four components created, you're ready to launch your email journey!

What are examples of Email Journeys?

• Welcome Email Journey: targets new subscribers with a series of email messages to onboard them to your brand and email program

• Birthday Email Journey: targets new subscribers on their birthday or birth month with a special offer, with reminders encouraging subscribers to use their birthday offer.

• Anniversary Email Journey: targets subscribers who have purchased or subscribed to your list exactly one year ago, thanking them for their loyalty. Often this includes a special offer and a recap of their activities with your brand, like Spotify does each year

Often times, email marketers get excited about launching email journeys because they can "set it and forget it" - meaning the email journey is set up once, activated, and never reviewed again.

I would NEVER recommend the "set it and forget it" approach

Why you should never "set it and forget it"

For a variety of reasons, the "set it and forget it" approach to email journeys is one of the most dangerous approaches you can take as an email marketer.

The challenge in avoiding the "set it and forget it" approach is that unlike your normal email marketing campaigns, you aren't regularly taking actions to deploy the journey content - the content is deployed on your behalf by your email marketing software based on the trigger you define.

Typically email marketers are looking at journey content once it first deploys. After this, email marketers typically go back to worrying about day-to-day campaign operations.

Here's a few Reasons to scare you off from this "set it and forget it" approach:

• Sending Out of Date Content: subscribers will expect your email journey messages to be up-to-date upon receipt. In my decade-plus email marketing career, I've witnessed first-hand the horrors of email journeys that included out-of-date content - everything from including products and services that are no longer sold by the brand to including branding that was from TWO re-brands ago! In short, make sure you regularly review your messages to ensure each email journey message has:

  • Up-to-date branding

  • Up-to-date products and services featured in the content

  • Up-to-date offer terms and conditions

• Sending Non-Functional Content: subscribers will expect that your email journey messages to have all content be "functional". Again, I've seen some horrific scenarios where brands are sending messages with broken images, broken links, or even worse, including offers that no longer even work or are valid to use! Make sure you regularly test your email journey messages to ensure each message has:

  • All images render properly

  • All links load and lead to products you still sell / service

  • Offers in messages are valid & available to use

• Missing the Opportunity Cost of A/B Testing: most email marketers don't think about this one, but email marketing is the BEST channel to A/B test and make continuous improvement. I could go on for days about the importance of A/B testing, but the simplest way to understand A/B testing is that it helps you achieve continuous improvement (made famous by James Clear, author of the excellent Atomic Habits). Continuous improvement is all about making small, incremental gains in anything you are working on - even just 1%. Now, 1% seems small. But, in the context of email journeys, even 1% better on an email journey is 1% MORE impact in recurring business impact. Now, imagine A/B testing over a long period of time - all these tiny gains really add up. This visual (credit to James Clear) really puts it best. If you're not A/B testing, you're missing a massive opportunity.

Building the Email Journey Report

When building an Email Journey report (or any report), there are four key components to ensuring you are able to get value from your report.

Report Components

Every report has four key components to drive you to take action in your email marketing program.

1). Data Inputs

Raw subscriber, campaign, or message information used to calculate KPIs, create insight, and drive you to take action. Data inputs are the fuel that drive all email marketing analytics reports. Some examples may include:

• Email Unique Opens

• Email Unique Clicks

• Email Subscriber acquisition source

• Sales per email subscriber

2). KPIs

An acronym for "key performance indicator". Qlik does a great job in defining this -a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective. The important part about KPIs is the word "KEY". It's not just any metric you can track for your business - it's a metric that helps you create the most impact for your email marketing program - not just any metric that you could measure.

3). Insights

The outcome of analyzing KPIs. Insights create a deeper understanding of your subscribers and/or your email program performance than you had previously. Without insights, you're left to stare at a wall of data inputs and KPIs - unable to take action.

4). Actions

The steps you take to do something different with your email marketing program as a result of your insights. If you're not defining actions, you are not driving change in your email marketing program. Without actions, there's NO POINT IN CREATING EMAIL MARKETING ANALYTICS REPORTING. The problem I see with most email marketing analytics professionals is the inability to deliver recommended actions to take as a result of the insights generated from reports.

Email journey Report Components

1). Data inputs

What data inputs do you need to create this report?

• Sent Emails: The number of emails attempted for delivery to your subscribers' inboxes.

• Delivered Emails: The number of emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

• Unique Opens: The number of people (subscribers) who open your email campaign.

• Unique Clicks: The number of people (subscribers) who click your email campaign.

• Unsubscribe Volume: The number of people (subscribers) who unsubscribe from your email campaign.

• Conversions: The number of conversions from your email campaign. This typically means the number of purchases your email campaign produces, but is tailored to fit your business goal for your campaigns.

• Unique Conversions: The number of people (subscribers) who convert from your email campaign. This typically means the number of subscribers who make a purchase, but is tailored to fit your business goal for your campaigns.

• Sales: The volume of sales from your email campaign.

• Email Journey Message Version: a number which represents the unique version of a particular email journey. For example, if your brand launches its first welcome email journey, this could be version #1. You decide to A/B test an offer included in the welcome email journey and this becomes version #2 of the email journey.

• Email Journey Message Version Start Date: the first date this version of the journey message was deployed to subscribers.

• Email Journey Message Version End Date: the last date this version of the journey message was deployed to subscribers. For the latest version of your journey messages, if the journey is currently active, this often represents today's date.

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2). KPIS

What are the KPIs (key performance indicators) included in this report?

• 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

• Conversion Rate: The percentage of subscribers who made a purchase (or completed your desired campaign subscriber action) based on the number of emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

Conversion Rate = Unique Conversions / Delivered Emails

• Sales Per Email: The amount of sales generated per delivered email.

Sales Per Email = Sales / Delivered Emails

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3). Insights

What insights are created from this report?

Which Journey Messages Did subscribers find most engaging?

• Messages which produce the best open rates

• Messages which produce the best click rates

• Messages which produce the best click-to-open rates

• Messages which produce the lowest unsubscribe rates

Which Journey Messages Did subscribers find Least engaging?

• Messages which produce the worst open rates

• Messages which produce the worst click rates

• Messages which produce the worst click-to-open rates

• Messages which produce the worst unsubscribe rates

Which Journey Messages Did subscribers Convert FROM THE MOST?

• Messages which generate the highest sales

• Messages which generate the highest conversion rate

• Messages which generate the highest volume of conversions

Which Journey Messages Did subscribers Convert FROM THE LEAST?

• Messages which generate the lowest sales

• Messages which generate the lowest conversion rate

• Messages which generate the lowest volume of conversions

What are the common characteristics of Messages that generate the best SALES, conversion, OR ENGAGEMENT?

Messages with specific language and copy treatment

• Includes language that drives urgency

• Includes language that drives curiosity

• Includes language that conveys exclusivity

• Includes language that conveys importance

• Includes language that's personalized (ex: first name)

• Includes language that is action-oriented for the subscriber

Messages with specific type of content in the email

• Includes content based on a subscriber's behavior

• Includes content based on a subscriber's attributes

• Includes content based on a subscriber's demographics

• Includes a discount, coupon, or offer

• Includes seasonally relevant product

• Includes product reviews or testimonials

What are the common characteristics of Email campaigns that generate the WORST SALES OR engagement?

Messages with specific language attributes

• Includes language that doesn't create subscriber urgency

• Includes language that doesn't create subscriber curiosity

• Includes language that doesn't show exclusivity

• Includes language that's generic for all subscribers

• Copy written like a novel

Messages with specific type of content in the email

• Includes content that's the same for all subscribers

• Includes no discount, coupon, or offer

• Includes no seasonally relevant product

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4). Actions

What are the actions you can take from this report?

Create Content that drives better engagement

• Create more engaging subject lines

• Create more engaging offers

• Display more relevant products and services to subscribers

Create Content that drives better sales

• Messages which drive to specific landing pages

• Messages which include more relevant offers

• Messages which target specific subscribers

Inform A/B testing ideas

• From Name testing

• Individual subscriber personalization

• Email template testing

• CTA (Call-To-Action) testing

• Subject Line testing

• Pre-Header testing

• Creative testing

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Next week, I'll be outlining the final ESSENTIAL report you need to drive MORE sales in more detail so you can get a grasp on how to take action!

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