Evaluating your email blasts with email metrics

EVALUATING YOUR EMAIL BLASTS WITH EMAIL METRICS

Jason Zanon, Senior Support Specialist

By the conclusion of this training, you will be able to:

• Understand/explain open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates

• Find and make use of these metrics in your Salsa headquarters

• Evaluate the performance of your email blasts• Identify strategies to improve your emails’

performance

Learning Objectives

Key Metrics

• Open and Click-Through Rates• Conversion Rates• Querying individual supporters based on

their email interactions.• Strategies for Improving Email

Performance.

Key Metrics

• Open and Click-Through Rates• Conversion Rates• Querying individual supporters based on

their email interactions.• Strategies for Improving Email

Performance.

Email Metrics: Definitions

)

)

) = 20.7%

) = 11.0%

Points of comparison

• Your history of previous similar blastso (Is it really similar?)

• Industry benchmarks

Image (cc) thebusybrain http://tinyurl.com/na4ubbh

Points of comparison

• Your history of previous similar blastso (Is it really similar?)

• Industry benchmarkso Annual M+R Nonprofits Benchmark study:

http://www.mrbenchmarks.com/

Email Metrics: How do they work?

• Opens are captured via an invisible image Salsa inserts into your HTML email. When the image is loaded, it pings our server.

• No open stats for text-only emails• No opens when the reader has images suppressed

• Click Throughs are captured by Salsa routing your links through Salsa tracking urls

Email Metrics: How do they work?

Recorded opens or clicks define one of four mutually exclusive statuses for every supporter who received the email.

• Send Failed• “The email address is so

malformed, we couldn’t even launch it.”

• Sent• The baseline.• “Non-openers” … sort of.

• Sent and Opened

• Sent and Clicked

Rate Stats by List Subset

Rate Stats by List Subset

Key Metrics

• Open and Click-Through Rates• Conversion Rates• Querying individual supporters based on

their email interactions.• Strategies for Improving Email

Performance.

Conversion Rates

Email Metrics: How do they work?

• Opens are captured via an invisible image Salsa inserts into your HTML email. When the image is loaded, it pings our server.

• No open stats for text-only emails• No opens when the reader has images suppressed

• Click Throughs are captured by Salsa routing your links through Salsa tracking urls

• Conversions are captured by a tag Salsa applies when a supporter clicks straight to a Salsa page and submits the page’s form

Key Metrics

• Open and Click-Through Rates• Conversion Rates• Querying individual supporters based on

their email interactions.• Strategies for Improving Email

Performance.

Queries: Finding the Folks You Emailed

Queries: Differentiating Engagement

Key Metrics

• Open and Click-Through Rates• Conversion Rates• Querying individual supporters based on

their email interactions.• Strategies for Improving Email

Performance.

Performance Enhancement I

CONTENT

IS

Performance Enhancement II

Get yourself here

• Be rigorous about list-building• Set up an SPF record

o http://tinyurl.com/spf-salsa• Use a consistent “from” email …

o … that’s not a free webmail service like @gmail.com or @yahoo.com

• “Emailing in a Spammy World”• http://tinyurl.com/spammy-world

Performance Enhancement III

(A few tips)

Performance Enhancement III

• Test, Test, Test• Cheat code: subscribe to the lists of some major

emailers and crib what they’re doing• Weekdays > Weekends• Holidays are rough (except when they’re not)• Mornings > Afternoons.

• Surprisingly early mornings may be best of all!• Clean, concise content

• Plenty of white space• One clear ask• Graphics/images few, emotionally compelling, and

severable

Performance Enhancement IV

The job of the Landing Page is to earn the Conversion

The job of the Content is to earn the Click

The job of the Subject Line is to earn the Open

CONTACT INFO

Read, learn, discuss – help.salsalabs.com

Training & Learning Team – training@salsalabs.com

Salsa Support – support@salsalabs.com

THANK YOU!