How to Find Out the Truth about Your Emails

Do you remember back when our mailboxes were stuffed with holiday cards? A few of them might have been from dear old aunt Edna or your pen pal from Greece, but a lot of them were from people we barely knew. They might have been from the guy we bought a car from three years ago, or the manager of the hardware store wishing us Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas or greetings from whatever holiday was coming up. If you’re an entrepreneur trying to drum up business, you might have even sent a few of these cards yourself.

We don’t see those cards as much anymore, and the reason is pretty simple. Email marketing is now the standard, and for good reason. Email marketing is faster, easier, cheaper and more efficient. We can separate, categorize, and even automate our mailings so we don’t have to lift a finger to send them out. (In fact, you can even automate your direct mail - ask us how.)

But are we getting the results we want from it? If not, email marketing really isn’t any better than those holiday cards that clog up our mailboxes.

There are several analytics tools we can use to find out, some better than others. To find accurate results, we not only need a good tool, but we also need to understand what we’re measuring.

What statistics will tell us what we really want to know? The first thing that comes to mind might be the open rate. It’s actually a mediocre place to start because it might (or might not) tell us if someone saw the email and thought enough of it to open it. But a statistic like open rate doesn’t go nearly far enough.

After all, we want our recipients to not just open it, not just read it, but take action on it. Action is what translates our email campaigns into sales and revenue. It’s the difference between being heard and actually being listened to.

One great email analytics tool you can use to tell whether your emails are actually being ‘listened to’ is Wicked Reports. These reports allow you to see the customer’s journey from first click to final purchase and afterwards. It also lets you track their progress, helping you increase your customer satisfaction and your retention rate.

You can track the results by social media ad or by email, so you can tell which ones did the job and which ones need a little more tinkering. It gets you to the most basic question any marketer wants to know: what’s making money for me and what isn’t? And because it tracks the entire customer journey, Wicked Reports can also tell you how and where you found your customers, so you know which areas to target in the future.

With tools like Wicked Reports, you can take the guesswork out of marketing, and save those old-fashioned greeting cards for those friends, family and customers who are truly special.