Enabler provide best practice advice around choosing the right email service provider for your B2B and B2C email marketing communications.

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Email authentication – what does it mean?

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Whatever email provider you use, whether it be Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo, part if its job is to protect you from emails that are potentially harmful or at the very least not authentic. Typically, this means checking the authenticity of the sender, so when an email hits your email server, the client will ask itself three key questions:

  1. “Is this email from who it says it’s from?”

  2. “How do I check that?”

  3. “What do I do if it’s not?”

 

For a minute, I’d like you to imagine that you receive an email from a friend of yours which says: “Hey you, I know we haven’t seen each other in a while but why don’t we meet for a coffee and catch up soon. How about in the middle of the woods at midnight?”

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I got a message like that I’d want to check that my eccentric friend really did want to meet for coffee in the woods, and that their phone hadn’t been stolen.  The first three thoughts I’d have would be:

  1. Is this the sort of behaviour I’d expect  from this friend?

  2. How to I check it’s really them?

  3. How do I deal with this if it’s not them?

As email marketers, we are particularly interested in how the email client goes about checking if the email is authentic, as it can really impact whether we’re able to get into customer inboxes. As per our first three questions, you’ll see that they take a fairly similar route to us humans in deducing if the message is authentic.

 

So How Does An Email Provider Work Out An Email Is Legit?

Step 1:

First, the receiving mail server looks for specific items of information in your email and in the DNS records, (domain name system – basically the phone book of the web), of your domain to try to determine whether the email is legitimate, safe for its users to receive and whether the email is being sent from an authorised source.

 

Step 2:

It will then look for something called an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record, which basically means the mail server is making sure that the email has come from a place (IP) that it’s allowed to come from. So for example, if you’re sending an email from coffeefriend@inthewoods.com from an IP such as 84.126.18.127 you would need to make sure that an SPF record was set up that allowed emails coming from that IP to send from that email address. This prevents those tricksters from using spoofed email addresses and fooling us all! If the email is sent from a sending host or IP that is not in the SPF record, the receiving mail server can determine that the email is not coming from an authorised IP, and that the email could be illegitimate in nature.

 

Step 3:

The next thing the server looks for is DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) – a method of authentication that is based on adding an encrypted signature to your emails. Now this isn’t just the normal email signature that goes at the end your email, it’s a special signature found in the email header. Once you have DKIM in place in the DNS records of your domain, your emails will be much better positioned to reach the inbox and you will also be helping protect yourself and your users against spam and phishing attempts.

Here’s a quick summary of how that all works:

  1. DKIM records are put in place and verified – all emails will have a DKIM encrypted signature added to the email header upon sending

  2. This encrypted signature is generated based on the DKIM key that you have added to the DNS records of your domain, and includes a hash string based on elements of the specific email being sent. This means that each individual email you send will carry a unique DKIM signature

  3. The receiving mail server can then decrypt the DKIM signature using the public key that is hosted in your DNS records

  4. It will also simultaneously generate a new hash string based on the same elements of the email that were used when the email was sent

  5. If the decrypted signature matches the newly generated hash string then the email successfully passes DKIM authentication

 

Basically, what that all means is the server can do these two key things:

  1. Safely determine that the owner of the domain where the DKIM key is located was responsible for sending the email

  2. See that the contents of the email were not modified in transit between the sender and the recipient

So, essentially what your mail server has done is checked you are who you say you are (SPF), no-one has stolen your identity (DKIM) … determining that your friend really does want to meet you for midnight woodland coffee.

With all the steps being taken to ensure email is coming from where and who it says it is, it’s more important than ever as marketers to prioritise authentication actions. By putting email authentication in place you are mitigating the potential for email fraud targeting your brand whilst simultaneously helping your emails reach your customers.

Of course, there are other factors which will determine whether your emails are actually reaching your subscribers inboxes such as spammy subject lines, but from a technical perspective, making sure your emails are passing authentication is key.

If your email campaigns are not already authenticated, the time has come to make it happen!

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GDPR – what is it and how does it affect email?

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One of the things we really strive to do in the Enabler team is keep our clients up to date with the latest goings on in the world of email. Sometimes this is a really fun job, and we get to send around well designed emails or provide updates on the latest coding techniques. Sometimes however, we need to make sure everything we and our clients are doing is in line with the current laws and regulations
– *cue sirens*.

In March 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into effect, and I’m here to tell you what it is, why it affects you, and if there’s anything you need to be doing before GDPR comes into effect.

What is GDPR?

GDPR is a regulation intended to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU). It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. The GDPR aims primarily to give control back to citizens and residents over their personal data, and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulations within the EU.

When the GDPR takes effect, it will replace the data protection directive (officially Directive 95/46/EC) of 1995, and, unlike a directive, it does not require national governments to pass any enabling legislation, and is thus directly binding and applicable.

When is it happening?

The regulation was adopted on 27 April 2016 and becomes enforceable from 25 May 2018 after a two-year transition period.

Who decided it should be a thing?

The European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission.

Why does it affect you?

GDPR will affect every company that uses personal data from any citizen within the EU. If you are collecting email addresses and sending emails to subscribers in the EU, you’ll have to comply with GDPR—no matter where you’re based.

The UK, Germany, France, and other European countries represent valuable markets for many brands. But it’s not just the strategic importance of the market that makes GDPR important for all marketers, it’s also the large number of citizens that the new privacy law will protect.

Information on the specifics of GDPR

I’m going to be upfront with you here, a lot of what the GDPR states is pretty much identical to the current Data Protection Act (DPA).  Just like the DPA, GDPR refers to two types of data: ‘Personal Data’ and ‘Sensitive Personal Data’.  The main difference being that the GDPR’s definition is more detailed and makes it clear that information such as an online identifier, for example an IP address, can be personal data.  By expanding on this definition, it means that GDPR can identify a much wider range of personal identifiers that constitute as personal data.

The main reasoning for this change was that it reflects changes in technology and the way organisations collect information about people.
For most organisations who keep HR records, customer lists or contact details etc, the change to the definition should make little practical difference. You can assume that if you hold information that falls within the scope of the DPA, it will also fall within the scope of the GDPR.

Unlike the DPA’s definition, the GDPR applies to both automated personal data and to manual filing systems where personal data is accessible according to specific criteria.  This could include chronologically ordered sets of manual records containing personal data.

Personal data that has been pseudonymised, for example coded, can fall within the scope of the GDPR depending on how difficult it is to attribute the pseudonym to a particular individual.

The main overall difference is that the GDPR requires that personal data should be:

“(a) processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals;

(b) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes;

(c) adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed;

(d) accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay;

(e) kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed; personal data may be stored for longer periods insofar as the personal data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes subject to implementation of the appropriate technical and organisational measures required by the GDPR in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of individuals;

(f) processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.”

It also requires that:

“the controller shall be responsible for, and be able to demonstrate, compliance with the principles.”

What do I actually need to do from an Email Marketing perspective?

GDPR touches on several crucial aspects of email marketing, especially regarding how marketers seek, collect and record consent. So without further ado, here’s what you need to know:

Collecting consent will work differently

  • You will only be allowed to send emails to people who’ve opted-in to receive messages. While this has already been the case in most European countries under the EU Privacy Directive, GDPR takes this one step further and specifies the nature of consent that’s required for commercial communication. Starting in May 2018, brands have to collect affirmative consent that is “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” to be compliant with GDPR.

  • The signup process must inform subscribers about the brand that’s collecting the consent and provide information about the purposes of collecting personal data.

  • Some of the processes previously used to collect data will not be compliant anymore, for example if someone entered their email address to download a whitepaper or provided their contact information to enter a contest? If you didn’t tell them you’d use their personal data to send marketing messages, and if they didn’t actively agree that it is okay to use their data for that very reason, it won’t be legal to add those email addresses to your mailing list.

Recording consent will work differently

  • Under GDPR, you will need to prove and show reasonable evidence that you have complied with the GDPR if challenged. This means GDPR places the burden of proof around consent being given with the company itself.

  • This means you will need to be storing consent forms.

Existing Data

  • If your database includes subscribers whose permissions haven’t been collected according to the GDPR’s standards, or even if they have but you can’t provide sufficient proof of consent for any contacts, you might not be allowed to send email to those subscribers anymore.

  • If you can’t provide this, I would highly recommend running re-permissioning campaigns before March 2018.

Changing existing email programs

Sadly, unless you want to stop engaging with the European market (which we in no way recommend) then you will need to review some of your current email programs. Here are a few ways you can tackle the issue:

  • Set up separate signup processes for subscribers coming from different parts of the world. Customers coming from the EU would have to go through a GDPR-compliant sign-up process, while for United States citizens, everything could remain the same. This is a highly complex and costly solution but would definitely do the trick.

  • Bring your entire database up to GDPR standards and adapt all of your opt-in processes to match the EU requirements. (This is in bold because it’s what we recommend.)

Whether we like it or not, changes to opt-in processes and re-permission campaigns will likely slow down list growth in the short term, however they will help you to make sure that you are only sending emails to subscribers who really want to hear from them, which really will improve your overall list quality.

Umm…what about Brexit?

Yeah I thought you might want to know about that. Just incase you’ve been living under a rock recently, on 23 June 2016 the UK held a referendum to decide whether or not to remain in the EU and the majority voted to leave it.

After the negotiations around how exactly the UK will leave the EU have finished, we will (hopefully) be left with a clearer idea about the extent to which the UK continues to comply with and/or keep up with EU laws and requirements and remains within or outside the European Economic Area.

Either way, it’s most likely that the UK will still be in the EU by March 2018, however, there are some ways you can prepare from a Brexit standpoint:

  • Start to consider which parts of your business operations are established in the UK and may be affected by GDPR.

  • Identify any of the personal data flows from the European Economic Area to the UK. (If the UK also leaves the European Economic Area at the time of leaving the EU, the flow of personal data from the European Economic Area countries to the UK will become prohibited without new adequate safeguard measures being adopted).

  • Monitor the UK data protection authority’s statements on Brexit, GDPR and how to remain compliant – current ICO guidance is to continue to prepare for GDPR.

What if I just do…nothing?

In short, don’t do nothing… which I know is a double negative, but hopefully you get the idea. With the introduction of GDPR, also comes some hefty fines for not being compliant. Fines come in the form of up to €20 Million or 4% of a brand’s total global annual turnover (whichever is higher).

I mean sure, the authorities probably have more on their hands than going after every company who breaks the law, but they will rely on customers to report any breaches as well. Basically it’s best to comply and not put yourself and your company at risk.

Resources on GDPR:

Any legislation change can be daunting, but fear not, we’re here to help! If you need any help with sorting out email practices before March 2018, get in touch and we’ll get one of our email consultants to help you out.

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What is marketing automation, and why you should be using it

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With so much going on in a Marketing team, you will often find you don’t have enough time to get everything done.  You will have had days where you’re in back-to-back meetings, and still have a whole hoard of tasks to do by the end of the day.  This is where an automated system would be super useful!

Luckily, there’s a little thing called Marketing Automation that can step in.  The basic idea of marketing automation is to set up a system to perform actions based on triggers (i.e. if a customer clicks an email link it triggers a second personalised email being sent several days later).  Once the email automation is set up, it then runs in the background without any additional work required, making your life and workload a lot easier.

There are many people that would benefit from having a Marketing Automation solution, but from a sales perspective, here are the top three reasons to start implementing automated emails campaigns right now:

  1. You can have pre-defined marketing programmes cultivating leads for you, while you’re off doing tasks that require more face-to-face contact.

  2. It allows you to optimise your time efficiently and achieve your goals without missing a beat.

  3. It allows you to be at the forefront of email marketing trends, bringing your business into the 21st Century.

 

So how would you put a Marketing Automation plan together?

Here is a useful Marketing Automation Workflow for you to refer to when setting up your campaign programme:

 (Click image to download)

 

What you need to think about:

Planning is exceptionally important in the world of marketing automation, for many reasons. Firstly, the term ‘marketing automation’ has, unfortunately, become somewhat of a buzzword, where marketeers seek out automation software under the misguided impression that it provides them with the digital marketing wizardry to automatically generate new leads. This misconception leaves many marketeers with sophisticated tools to automate the middle of their campaign funnel, but no solution that actually generates new leads at the beginning of the funnel.

In your planning phase, you should get to know the system you’re using and plug any holes in your lead generation funnel, allowing you to get your automated ducks in a row.

Secondly, planning helps to prevent you from making mistakes when you set your programme live.  It will ensure you have fully thought through every possible step / action your customer may take, thoroughly planning out what components you will need in order to make your campaign run successfully as an automated system.  Sounds complicated, but its far from it (and if you get stuck you can always check with us).

For example, email templates, forms, surveys and website content – make sure the right links are in place, and test that the right automation is being trigger when an action occurs (i.e. a link is clicked).  There’s nothing worse than getting a beautiful automation programme set up, only to find your customers aren’t ending up where you want them to go because you’ve missed a step in your automation set-up.

You might think that I’m going overboard and stating the obvious when I say you need to plan out every step of your marketing automation, but if you really want it to run successfully with seamless automation, then planning really is the key.

To help you along, I’ve set up an example workflow of a functional marketing automation programme.  The example below demonstrates a ‘Welcome Programme’ for a new customer being added to a contact database, taking you through every automated step for every action or inaction the customer may take within the programme, including time delays.

 

 

Now you have had a look at how a Marketing Automation programme could work, I’m going to take you through some does and don’ts of the automation world:

Does:

  • Integrate your inbound marketing strategy with your marketing automation. Inbound strategy is all about providing valuable, aligned content, and this should not change at all if you start using marketing automation.  If anything, it should be enhancing your communications, as you will be able to provide the content your customer’s need, at the exact time they need it, without any manual input during the process.

  • Send relevant content to your customers, and make sure you are providing them with what they are looking for.  People make the mistake of trying to drive business objectives without actually considering the customer who is going through the journey.  This is arising trend within the industry, with many companies providing workshops detailing how to achieve a customer driven strategy.

  • Set up engagement and retention campaigns to keep your current customers coming back for more.  After all, it’s much easier to sell to someone who has previously bought from you.  Content marketing is an essential part of making sales, and automation can help you do this.  Make sure you’re keeping on top of your content and constantly improving it, making sure it’s more relevant to your customer’s as they progress on their automated journey.

Don’ts:

  • Set up Automation without planning first or thinking about what you want to achieve. There is no point setting up a complex automated programme without getting the strategy right first.  Don’t be that person.

  • Mass email customers.  This is literally the worst.  I have unsubscribed from so may brands over the years because they are emailing too much, and none of the content was relevant.  If nothing else, you will end up having your emails marked as spam, so just avoid bulk emailing.

  • Start before planning.  So I know I harped on about this, but it’s seriously important.  Don’t spend days or weeks of your life setting up an automation programme before you have taken the time to properly research and plan every step and action.  Plan – you won’t regret it!

I think you’ve got enough there to start you on your Marketing Automation journey.  If you want to discuss how Marketing Automation could work for your business, our Enabler team would be happy to chat you through our Automation software and how it could help deliver you deliver on your goals.

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The drag’n’drop revolution

Drag and Drop does exactly what it says on the tin.  It enables users to move a particular element from one location to another by simply selecting the item, dragging, then dropping it into it’s new location. Most Internet users have probably used it in some capacity by now, possibly without even realising it!

For example when:

  • Uploading images or albums on social media platforms

  • Placing files in relevant folders on your PC

  • Placing products in a basket when online shopping

  • Rearranging tasks in project management programmes

 

If any of those sound familiar, then you have already partaken in a spot of drag and drop fun.

Over the years, this handy feature has successfully dragged its way into email marketing, and with it dropped the ability to create sophisticated email campaigns with ease. Rather than having to rely on programming languages, marketeers (and your regular Joe) can now build email templates in just a few minutes by dragging structure and content blocks into place to form your email layout. Depending on your campaign, there are a multitude of clever content components that can be dragged into your structure, including text, imagery, video, social media buttons, CTA buttons and dividers, helping you build slick-looking, interactive emails without needing to know a single line of code.

 

Due to its simplicity, this method of building is used on a daily basis by businesses around the globe. No longer does one need to be an expert in HTML or CSS, instead drag and drop templates gives users the freedom and convenience of going off and preparing an email campaign without necessarily needing anyone else’s help.

One of the main advantages of using drag and drop templates is that the user can instantly see what’s been created, and amend the content and design layout straightaway if required. That means building a template using drag and drop functionality is much quicker and (almost) hassle free.

Another advantage is that the drag and drop template can be prepared in a relatively short period of time in comparison to any HTML template. In order to prepare such a template, all the user has to do is think about how they would like their template to look, and start dragging and dropping relevant building blocks into place.  Not sure about the way you’ve laid it out?  No worries!  Simply drag the content around until you get a result you’re happy with. Once all the blocks are in place, the user simply has to save the design and voila, you’re ready to send!

If you prefer coding elements of your emails, never fear as some drag and drop systems, including Enabler’s email marketing software, give you the option of adding in HTML content blocks, allowing you to build more complex components of your template with a developer. Once the code is dropped into the HTML container within your template, it will seamlessly work in conjunction with the rest of the drag and drop template.

There are, however some limitations to Drag and Drop templates. One of them is the fact that there are a limited number of modules to choose from and so the template layout is limited by the software provider you choose. For that reason, drag and drop templates may be more useful for a small businesses without a with limited coding resources rather than corporations that deploy complex email campaigns.

Another limitation of the feature is that even though, in theory, drag and drop templates are mobile responsive, the software will either stack the content modules or just shrink the template down when displaying on mobile devices. When stacking content modules, the software usually places the modules on top of one another, taking the email content in a sequence from left to right and stacking it to enable the recipient to easily view all the content on their mobile device.  However, this results in giving you little or no control over how the email stacks the content on your mobile device, meaning some content that might not be suitable for viewing on mobile still gets stacked, and you’re unable to swap content around within the stack itself. For more information on the different ways you can make your templates mobile responsive, take a look here.

Working with a designer has the potential to both help your work with drag and drop templates, however they can be a hinder if your designer is not fully briefed on the expectations and limitations of the drag and drop software in use. For example, in the Enabler team, we make sure our designers are fully versed in the functionality of our drag and drop system, but this won’t be the case everywhere, so the best thing to do is to check with the designer before starting work to find out how familiar they are with the drag and drop system you’re using.

Let’s face it, drag and drop templates won’t work for everyone; and that’s fine. These templates are best applied when used as an alternative way to build your emails, for instance when you don’t have the luxury of an in-house designer or experience in HTML or CSS. If you need to prepare and deploy emails with good functionality, ease of use and quick turnaround, then drag and drop is a great solution for you, especially if you are a small businesses with limited resources and have only just started to explore the world of email.

Most of the time, drag and drop is the easiest way to build templates, so do get in touch with our Enabler team for a quick chat on 020 7099 6370 to find out how our email experts and designers can help your build more complex, mobile responsive templates and campaign management for your next email campaign.

Happy dragging and dropping!

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Winner at RAR Digital Awards for email marketing

We are delighted to announce that our Enabler team at Pancentric Digital won the RAR Digital Award for Email Marketing 2017.

The RAR (Recommended Agency Register) is The Drum’s industry renowned service that helps businesses and brands choose the best agencies within leading digital services, based on the highest-rated client recommendations.

The RAR Awards are unique within the industry in that winning can only be achieved through the outstanding high regard of clients and their testimonials.

We are absolutely thrilled that our Enabler clients rated our email services, software and support so highly, enabling us to win this prestigious award.  We continually work closely with our clients to ensure we are always delivering the best possible service.  Whether its email software support, template design or delivering targeted end-to-end email campaign management, our Enabler team at Pancentric do more than just meet the basic needs of the client’s brief – we always aim to go above and beyond to ensure you get the best results from your email marketing.

To our existing clients, we say thank you.

To any prospective clients, we look forward to working with you soon.

Don’t just take our word for it…

Below are some of our client testimonials that helped us win this fantastic award.

 

“Having worked with Pancentric for over 4 years, we have gradually increased our usage of their agency, and couldn’t be happier with both their products and their service.

From the technical knowledge of the specialist teams, to the dedicated account manager who looks after all our needs, to the excellent hospitality we receive with every visit from entering to leaving the building.

Pancentric challenge us as a business, but go above and beyond to ensure our goals are met – even when we don’t fully know what they are or should be. Highly recommend this agency.”

 

 

“Pancentric have been our email marketing partner for several years and I would highly recommend them to anyone who expects great service, a responsive and professional team with great depth of knowledge and expertise.”

 

 

“Pancentric have been our email marketing platform provider for several years and am pleased to say I’m delighted with their service. The service, platform and tech have grown with us. They represent great value for money.”

 

“Working with Pancentric is a joy.  Not only does their constant professionalism translate in our day to day impeccable execution of campaigns but their passion also enriches our emails from a creative standpoint.  I would recommend them to any person who is looking for professional, creative, passionate colleagues.”

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The new Nokia 3310 – what’s all the hype about?

The Nokia 3310’s official comeback conquered the news around the world last month, but what’s all the hype about?  My initial observations would say it is all down to one thing: nostalgia. People dreaming of simpler times when the mobile phone was only used for calls and texts, and you didn’t need to charge your phone more than once a week. Basically, a time when Zuckerberg was still at school and a tweet was a noise a bird made.

The Nokia 3310 seemed to be the perfect phone… in 2000. However, because most of us are NOT living in a hipster village where everything nostalgic is instantly better.  In 2017, what we do need is a phone that assists us in performing daily tasks in this fast-paced smart world. Here are some facts to consider if you are thinking of falling into this retro trend of nostalgia.

According to a report published by Radicati Group, on average business individuals receive up to 88 emails a day, and are expected to react to some of them immediately; an interaction which smartphones handle beautifully. The Nokia 3310, on the other hand, can only be used for making and receiving calls, texting, playing Snakes (yes, I loved it too!) and taking pictures (on a 2 MP camera and assuming you have an SD card).  So straight away, it means the 3310 user is out of touch with the online world, unable to check their emails, incapable of searching the internet and cut off from social media platforms.  All the dozens if not hundreds of daily online interactions you make, suddenly gone.

To illustrate the percentage of recipients who currently open email on their mobile device, we’ve run some browser analysis reports in our email marketing platform, Enabler*. The report reflects campaigns that have been sent in the past 12 months, between March 2016 and March 2017.

Here are the findings: 

(Enabler statistics from two separate insurance companies)

In just 12 months, emails have seen a 64% increase in opens on a mobile device, up from 31.7% (Figure 1) to 52% (Figure 2)… so imagine what the increase has been since the 3310 was alive and kicking?!

Interestingly, if we break down the Mobile Device Analysis further, we can see that 99.5% recipients opened the email via Apple iOS devices which includes iPhones and Tablets.*

(*Please note, this is just an example and devices may vary depending on the target audience and or industry.)

So, let’s assume that your customers have decided to stick with their handy smartphone rather than switching back to the stone ages of a not-so-smart phone (sorry Nokia).

 

What can be done to ensure emails are well received on any device, and that the overall user experience meets recipients’ expectations? 

The good news is that there are quite a few software providers that enable you to preview your email templates to see how they would display on a recipient’s’ mobile device, thus enabling you to optimize your emails for the apps and devices your subscribers use.

Example below illustrates how an email campaign displays across different devices. 

And now here’s an example of how that same email would display on Nokia….

Oh, wait… it won’t.

Joking aside, here are some more ways you can make sure your emails look great on a smart mobile device:

 

Stacked modules

Another important mobile optimisation tactic is stacking modules into single- column templates. If a desktop version email is simply shrunk into a smaller mobile version, a recipient would have difficulties reading email content, and this impacts engagement/clicks. Modules allow the email content to stack on top of one another so that the desktop version rearranges and resizes into a mobile -friendly version that delivers a better user experience.

However, you may find that the modules sequence is different to the one in desktop version. That’s when the developers step in with their programming skills, ensuring that the modules’ logical order is from left to the right, and the email width is decreased. There is also reverse stack order option where the columns go right to left, depending on content hierarchy.

For more information on stacking modules, see our blog on Top 10 Email Coding Tips.

 

Subject lines

The reports we ran in Enabler indicate that subject lines under 50 characters long get the highest percentage of both open and click-through rates. The reason for that is two-fold; firstly, as famous psychologist, George Loewnstein said once, the short subject lines generate curiosity. The second one is that most recipients’ mobile devices only display 50 first characters of the subject line. Here’s an example of what you’d see if you tried to see a subject line of an email on a Nokia.

 

Font sizes

Making sure your copy is legible is one of the main things to concern yourself with when creating emails for mobile. You’ve probably noticed that this experience varies from email to email. For instance if the font is smaller than approx. 13 pixels it will not display large enough on smart phones for anyone to be able to read it, especially not your tech-forward granny.

In fact, some devices will automatically increase any font size that is below 13px. You can set the font size to display differently on mobile than it does on desktop in your code. Nokia is actually pretty good at letting you set font sizes… but unfortunately this is only on the phone itself… as it doesn’t support email.

 

Taking all the above into consideration, it seems a no-brainer that the Nokia 3310, or any other non-smartphone would not be of much use to the vast majority of mobile users in 2017. 

Obviously I’m coming from an email perspective here, but it’s not just email that suffers without a smartphone. The importance of receiving and reacting instantly to internet-based communications such as calendars, project updates, social media, apps, GPS and a good quality camera, to mention just a few, seem far more relevant than just having the nostalgia of a Nokia 3310 and Snakes. I predict that the Nokia comeback will only be as one-off addition to a smartphone, and will most likely be just a fleeting fad – but hey, what’s life without fun fads right (that’s right Flappy Bird, I’m talking to you).

There is, however, one plus-side to the Nokia 3310 that beats the smartphone hands down… you will probably need to take a sledgehammer to it to crack the screen!

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Looking beyond the clicks: analytics – chapter two

If you read our first Reporting and Analytics blog, you’ll already know the importance of tracking your email campaigns, and what key metrics you should be recording.

So now you’ve got the basics covered, we’re going to delve deeper into email reporting metrics, more specifically looking at link tracking and Google Analytics integration. Excited?

You should be, because these metrics could help you turn clicks into conversions… now that’s exciting.

 

Why do we look beyond the click?

Every good marketer knows that ‘click thru’ rates are an essential metric that tell you how many people clicked on the links within your email, giving you a good indication of how engaged your customers were with your content. However, click thru rates do not give you the full picture of what happened past the initial click… did the customer make a purchase… did they drop off your website?

In order to find out how your customers are behaving once they land on your website, you need to put some tracking in place within your links and on your website.  This helps to unlock your customers’ behaviour beyond the click, and for that, we need Google Analytics…

 

How to track your customers using Google Analytics

Now this might get a bit technical, but bear with us as it’s worth it…

Google Analytics tracking works using something called the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM). You will be able to see this in action in this link:

http://www.enablermail.com/?utm_campaign=march-marketing-email1&utm_content=group1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=enabler&utm_term=offer-link

Everything after the first “?” in the link is the UTM, and it can be broken down into the following:

  • utm_campaign: Refers to the campaign name (in this instance we would be referring to the March marketing email.

  • utm_content: Content is used to track an individual or segments response. This could be based on any field in your database, for example user-id. For this example we have used a rather generic “group 1”, because who knows what data you hold! (Your options are endless). It’s important to note that this, like term, is an optional field.

  • utm_medium:  Tells analytics the medium used for marketing, (in this instance we would be talking about email).

  • utm_source: This is usually the media owner, but for email marketing it can be used to specify the source of email list or type of email, e.g. houselist, welcome-email, abandoned-basket. For the purposes of the link above we are using Enabler (the greatest email product on the planet… of course 😉 ).

  • utm_term: In AdWords, term is used to identify the keyword used to trigger the ad, but it can be used in email marketing to identify individual links e.g. offer-link. It is important to note that this is an optional field in email campaigns if your email provider lets you set up trackable links.

 

 

How do you create your own UTM codes?

There are three main ways you can create UTM codes.

1. Through your Email Service Provider (ESP)

Many ESP’s will have in-system methods of creating UTM codes. Enabler, for example, does it through its Web Links section, allowing you to fully customise your the tracking of your links.

2. Manually writing them

This is the long way of doing it, but there’s nothing to stop you manually adding tracking to the end of your link. All you need do is take my little template here:

?utm_campaign=xxx&utm_content=xxx&utm_medium=email&utm_source=xxx&utm_term=xxx

Just update the ‘xxx’ with your own tracking information, then add it onto the end of your link. Simples.

3. Using the URL builder in Google Analytics

Let Google create a custom URL which you can track through Analytics.  The URL builder tracking is limited in that it only allows you to enter the values for the parameters, for example, the campaign name and keywords, but this useful tool is a handy of generating a custom URL quickly.

 

 

Is there any best practice advice?

Link tracking is there to best used to suit your reporting purposes, so there’s no wrong way to do it, but here are some suggestions which should help point you in the right direction:

  • Naming conventions: Consider standardising this. Remember, each URL will have multiple parameters, you will want to keep it as clean as possible, and having a standard naming convention across the board will make this easier to manage for reporting purposes.

  • Type case:– Keep it lowercase.

  • Remember – Customers can see the URL too! This is one that people often forget, whatever your parameters are, your customers will be able to see in the link in their browser. Make sure whatever naming you use, is something you don’t mind being visible.

  • Use what you need: only use parameters that are 100% necessary to your campaign.

  • Shorten it: UTM codes can make links incredibly long. It’s always worth considering using a link shortening service like bitly or goo.gl to manage this.

 

How can you tell which traffic came from emails?

The best way to do this is to set up an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics which will report solely on your email traffic.

To set this up, select the Advanced Segment option using the down arrow at the top left above the reports in Google Analytics, then choose “Create New Segment” and set the Medium to “Email”. The Advanced segment will now be based on all visits to the site with a medium of ‘email’ set, provided that this is how you have labelled your links by tagging them.

Before you send out an email campaign, make sure you’ve tested the tracking by sending yourself (and preferably a few colleagues) the email, and clicked through to your website. Then log into Analytics to check you can see that the clicks are being registered by your new Advanced Segment in Analytics.

 

 

Can you see who is converting based on my email campaigns?

I’m glad you asked!  There are a few ways you can do this, but the ways we have found most successful is the use of Event Tracking and Page Tracking in Google Analytics.

Event Tracking essentially works by embedding an image tag within your email with information that Google can use to track customers from email clicks through to conversion. (See Google Developers for more detailed information on how to set up your Events). Once you have your Event set up, you will need to add the URL into your email. It would need to be positioned within your email like this:

<html>

<head>

…some other head contents…

</head>

<body>

…some other body contents…

<img src=”URL GOES HERE”/>

</body>

</html>

and the link would look something like this:

http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-12345678-1&cid=CLIENT_ID_NUMBER&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&el=recipient_id&cs=newsletter&cm=email&cn=Campaign_Name

This link will tell Google everything it needs to know to track your conversions.

Page Tracking works slightly differently, but is similar in concept. Each email service provider will have a slightly different way of doing this, but the idea is the same. On Enabler, your dashboard report will have a line in the report which feeds back information about revenue generated.

It does this by working in conjunction with your tracked links and your website. In order to track the pages that your audience visit after they’ve landed on your site, the site needs to send some information to Enabler. In this regard Enabler works in the same way as Google Analytics and requires that each page you wish to track contains a small snippet of code.

Some of this may sound complicated, but trust me when I say that the initial leg work is worth it.  So many of us have problems justifying the email campaigns we want to deploy, and in-depth tracking helps demonstrate how valuable a channel email really is.

Additionally, I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for watching the sales pour in after a campaign has gone out. That’s right, analytics is fun.  Happy tracking!

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Top five email tools

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As email marketers, we are always trying to find the best ways to make sure our emails are the very best they can be.  Gone are the days where you could send a test email to your inbox, sign it off and send it out.  Now more than ever, we have to be extra vigilant with our emails, making sure get into our customer’s inboxes, and that they look good when they arrive there. But with so many tools available and more cropping up all the time, how do we separate out the good from the… not so good. Luckily, the Enabler team are here to provide you with our expert opinions on the tools on the market now.

Our Top Five Email Tools to help you get the most out of your campaigns:

 

1). Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is design software that falls under the Adobe Creative Cloud – which means if you already have a creative cloud log in, you can access all of your assets and imagery from inside Photoshop. The programme itself is very intuitive and provides a host of different ways to achieve your goals. It enables email designers to produce beautiful creatives and maximise their potential.

Adobe are always updating the product (you can check out their update timeline here). Photoshop allows you to work across desktop and mobile devices to create the best looking emails you can, making it probably the best software out there for creating great email design.

Price-wise, you can get the full 20+ creative desktop and mobile apps in Adobe Creative Cloud for £45 per month or you can just go for Photoshop which is £17.15 a month.

View the full breakdown of pricing here.

Photoshop is a creative tool we highly recommend investing in if you want to create visually stunning, engaging emails that drive clicks.

 

2). Adobe Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is a fast, flexible coding engine designed to give developers the freedom to code emails that look brilliant on any size screen.  Dreamweaver is extremely intuitive, and is a suitable choice for any email marketer, whether you are new to coding or have years of experience.  The coding engine offers code ‘hints’ for new users and works with the developer to keep code clean, reduce errors and improve readability.  It has three main view screens, code, design and side-by-side.  This is incredibly useful as it allows you o see how your code is affecting the design.

A new feature we love is ‘snippets‘.  Snippets are sections of code (e.e. headers, footers or images with text) which you code once, then save for use later.  When you next have a template that needs that snippet in it, you can easily drop it in, making development faster and more accurate.

Dreamweaver has the same pricing structure as the rest fo the Adobe Creative Cloud, so you can own it for just £17.15 a month.

 

 

 

​​3). Litmus ​​

Litmus is an email testing tool which allows you to check how your emails will look across a wide variety of email clients and apps.  The main thing we love about Litmus is that it saves you from having to create test email accounts across all email clients, allowing you to test everything in one central place.

You can test everything from link tracking to email load time.  They even have a section of the tool called ‘checklist’, which is essentially your pre-flight check before sending your email.  It will help you catch broken links, optimise loading speed and check how your email works with images on and off.  This section is fantastic – especially as it allows you to choose which browsers and clients you want to see.  It covers desktop, mobile and tablet – we couldn’t recommend it more.

Litmus also has its Community Area, where you can ask questions to hundreds of other developers and share in each other’s  experiences to make your emails even better.  They also produce emails themselves which keep you up-to-date with the latest email trends.

Litmus does offer a free 7 day trial, but after that prices range from $79 a month to $399 a month (for the Brits out there, that’s approx £63 – £320 a month).  They do have a pricing option where can tailor your package, so it only contains what you actually need; like an email pick’n’mix.

 

 

 

 4). Send Forensics

Send Forensics is an email deliverability tool that focuses specifically on making sure your emails hit your customer’s inboxes. It’s very advanced, and works to safeguard your email reputation and boost engagement.

You can run a free email deliverability test that will score your email and tell you the percentage will end up in spam, however to get the full features it costs $49 a month.

Once you sign up to the full features version, the software not only gives you a deliverability score, but what elements of your emails are trigger spam – whether its due to your content or the technical makeup of your email, for example if there is no SFP set up.

(Here’s some tips on avoiding spam filters)

It will mark your vocabulary and copywriting, judging words you’ve used and highlighting any negative one that are hindering your deliverability, and offers you alternative phrases to use instead.  It also highlights any positive keywords to demonstrate the phrases helping your email deliverability.  Send Forensics will even rate your copywriting tone of voice in determining whether you are being overly promotional or conversational in your tone.

 

One of the really standout aspects of Send Forensics are all the technical checks it undertakes when examining your email.  Not only will it check the image:text ratio, and inspect the quality of the links you provide, it will also dive under the skin of your email set-up, domain authority and IP address to check your sending reputation, noting any sites that have blacklisted your IP or technical problems that might be hindering you reaching the inbox.

All this might sound very technical, but Send Forensics is anything but.  The software is exceptionally user friendly, and offers advice on how to undertake any actions it suggests, making it an ideal solution for email newbies.

5). Email on Acid

Email on Acid is another email testing tool that will help you make sure your emails look great across devices and clients.  It provides coding tips and marketing guides via their blog, and also has a forum where you can post techniques and questions to other email developers – however if this is one of your main uses, we would probably recommend going with Litmus as they tend to provide answers faster.

It comes in cheaper than Litmus at $45 – $295 per month, however unlike Litmus they don’t provide a custom tailored option, meaning you have to take everything in each package.  Both LItmus and Email on Acid’s basic package come with one user, but Litmus’ most popular package comes with five users, whereas Email on Acid only has the one user account.  E

Email on Acid is a cheaper alternative if you are a small business with only one users, but if you’re a bigger business, definitely opt for Litmus.

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Spam filters: what are they and how to avoid them

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Spam filter problems are something you’ll probably come across during your time as an email marketer.  At present just 79%* of permission-based emails actually reach customer inboxes, as ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and spam filters constantly try to find better ways to reduce the amount of irrelevant content in users’ inboxes. So with almost a quarter of emails being earmarked as spam, how do you ensure you reach the inbox? It’s therefore never been more important to understand how spam filters work, which is why we’re here to help build your knowledgebase so you that can confidently create and send emails that should avoid being flagged as spam.

 

First things first…

To begin to understand how to avoid the spam-filters, we firstly need to tackle the question ‘What is spam?’. There are hundreds of different definitions of spam out there, but the most comprehensive one is that spam is unsolicited, irrelevant email, sent in bulk to a list of people. For example, if you bought a list of data and started to send emails to the people on that list, although you think you are sending these people content you believe to be relevant or beneficial to them, you are in fact contacting people who have not opted in to receive your emails. Because you have not been given explicit permission to market to these people, your emails would be considered ‘spam’ by these individuals. (Note to self – only ever email opted-in customers).

 

Being marked as ‘Spam’ – what does it mean for your emails?

Spam might seem like just an annoyance in the inbox, but when individuals actively start marking your emails as ‘spam’ or ‘junk’, Email Service Providers (ESPs) will start to take notice. Having your emails flagged as spam will negatively impact your reputation as a sender, and if poor sending practices continue Email Service Providers will start filtering your emails directly into the spam folder to ensure you never reach people’s inboxes. So to maintain good email deliverability and avoid being flagged as spam, it’s worth understanding the laws and regulations that ESPs abide by. Different countries have different regulations regarding spam, for example the UK uses the 2003 Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, USA has the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and Canada has its own Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), but every country / ESP has common regulations which all email marketers must abide by, including:

  • Always providing an unsubscribe link which work for at least 30 days post-send

  • Not using deceptive headers, from names and addresses or subject lines. 

(You can find a comprehensive list of laws by country at the end of this article).

Failure to comply with these regulations can result in costly penalties which differ per country. For example, violating the CAN-SPAM Act could see you fined $11,000 per offense… which translates to $11,000 for every email address you sent to. To ensure you don’t fall foul, it’s definitely worth having a read of the legislation before using any new data source.

 

Spam Filters – How do they work?  

It can be rather tricky when it comes to judging how spam filters determine how ‘spammy’ an email is. To put it simply, they’ll systematically weigh up each component of your email and assign each part a spam rating. For the purposes of this we’ll call the rating 1-10, 1 =‘not spammy’ and 10= ‘very spammy’. Once every email component has been rated the email will then be given a spam score which will decide whether an email can pass through the filter. If the score exceeds a threshold (let’s call it 5 for this example) then the email will get flagged as spam, will not pass go and heads straight to the spam folder or is completely blocked from being delivered.

 

 

Avoiding the filters

The tricky part is that each spam filter works differently, with some having stricter ‘pass’ thresholds determined by their server administrations. So while your email might receive a score of 4 for one spam filter, another one might mark it as an 8. The list of spammy criteria is forever evolving as email users continue to identify and mark new email content / senders as spam in their inbox. Spam filters often share this information with each other to help identify new emerging spam. Unfortunately for us marketers, this means there’s no easy or definitive checklist to ensure our emails don’t end up in the spam folder. We do, however, know that there are some key factors to keep an eye on when sending emails.

1. Coding in your campaign. Some spam filters will be triggered by sloppy code, tags which don’t need to be there or code that has been pulled in directly from MS Word. To avoid this being an issue in your campaigns, make sure you are using templates that have been reviewed by a developer, or have a developer build you one from scratch for you. Many ESP’s will provide tools such as HTML or drag and drop editors which will help you avoid these issues.

2. Campaign metadata. Spam filters want to see that you know the people you’re sending to. Personalising your emails is a great way to demonstrate this; it shows the spam filter that you hold information about the recipient other than their email address. You can also ask recipients to add you to their list of trusted mailers.

3. Your IP address. Some spam filters will block or mark an email as spam if it has come from an IP address that has been flagged as having sent spam in the past or been blacklisted, so you need to ensure the IP address you’re emailing from has a good sender reputation. Try to avoid IP pools with poor reputations, where you share sending IP addresses with other senders, as their poor sending behaviour can impact on your deliverability / sender reputation. This usually won’t cause problems if the ESP is taking correct precautions to make sure all emails have unsubscribe links etc, however if you see your deliverability rates drop, it might be worth contacting your ESP to make sure it’s definitely your emails that are causing the drop in deliverability. Sending reputation is incredibly important, so make sure yours is good by sticking to good sending practices.

 

 

Content is key

Why words are a big influencer in avoiding the spam filters

Although content and formatting can be a bit of a hazy subject because there’s no specific content that is always guaranteed to be flagged as spam in an email, I can recommend a few best-practices to make sure you’re doing everything you can to not trigger spam filters and get your email safely to the inbox.

1. Never stop testing.  It’s a great way to find out how different content in your email impacts your deliverability. If you don’t make it into the inbox, it could be something in your content i.e. a negative keyword, too many links or images, or overall tone that is trigger the spam filter. Test and retest the content.

2. Clear unsubscribe links are a must. Don’t try to hide your unsubscribe links within your email – it’s a sure-fire way to get marked as spam if people can’t find the link easily. Think about it from the perspective of the user, you receive an email and you think the content isn’t relevant to you. If you can’t find an unsubscribe link, what do you do? Some people might try and contact the company sending the emails, but most people won’t bother and will just mark the email as spam. Don’t let it happen to you!

3. Be consistent. If your customers are used to a particular type of content / branding from your emails, don’t make a sudden change without warning. Straying from the normal messaging of your brand could trigger people to mark it as spam if they don’t think it’s a genuine email from yourselves.

4. Avoid trigger words. Now although there is no definitive list of words and phrases to avoid, spam filters are already looking out for certain negative keywords which have been previously identified as spam and proven to trigger filters. Using any of these words/phrases in your subject line or email is almost certain to get you a higher spam score and trigger a filter. We can’t list them all, but some simple ones to avoid are:

  • the word Free

  • Exclamation marks (big no-no!), and other symbols such as $ £ %

  • ALL CAPS words

 

For a more comprehensive list of words to avoid, see HubSpot’s ‘Ultimate List of Email Spam Trigger Words’.  

So there you have it, some useful ways you can keep yourself out of spam. With any emails you send make sure you’re really thinking about your opt-in method, how you’re acquiring your data, setting customer’s expectations, where you put your unsubscribe link, and what keywords you use in your email content. By keeping on top of all these you should be able to maintain a good sender reputation and prevent your spam score from triggering any filters.

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Tracking your email campaigns – the key metrics for reporting and analytics

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So much information is available about email campaigns now that it can be hard to separate out what’s useful and what’s not, and sometimes even harder to know how to use the data you have to inform and improve your future campaigns.

Don’t worry though, I’m here to help!  I’ll talk you through which metrics are important and how you can use these metrics to improve your results.

 

Firstly, tracking your email performance is super important. There are three key reasons why you should make tracking your campaigns a priority:

Three Reasons to Track Your Email Campaigns:

1. Moving on up

Without tracking your emails, you’re not going to know how they are performing or be able to compare what works and what doesn’t. This means that in future sends, you’ll have no way of making them better, or even knowing what content you should or shouldn’t be using. With tracking in place you can get to know your customers better and, in turn, give them more of what they want.

2. The proof is in the tracking

Marketing budgets can be tight, and the higher-ups in your business may be looking for areas to make cuts in. Having the stats which prove the ROI of your efforts can be the difference between you being able to send effective emails and missing out on a key area of digital revenue.

3. Focus pocus

You’re a busy person, you’ve probably got a million and one things on your plate. Having metrics available that show you where you’re performing well will help you drive more focus to the areas that need help, and allow you to nurture the areas that are already doing well. It gives you a comprehensive overview of how to split your time, and in the marketing world, it’s imperative to success.

 

 

Now we know why we’re tracking, let’s take a closer look at what we’re tracking. These are the key metrics that you absolutely 100% of the time want to focus your attention on:

Open rate

Open rate measures how many people on your email list opened up your campaign and is usually expressed as a percentage. Let’s say that you sent your email to 100 people and you got an open rate of 30%.  This means 30 people out of the 100 you sent to opened your email.

Open rates will vary hugely, dependent on anything from list size to method of data acquisition.  Here is a list of average open rates split out by industry to give you an idea of what to benchmark your open rates against.  If you’re an Enabler customer, you’ll be able to find your open rate quickly in the dashboard report.

 

Knowing whether you have a high or low open rate is a good gauge of how effective your subject line has been at engaging people and driving them to open the email.  If you have a consistently low open rate, it could mean that your email might have ended up in the recipient’s junk/spam folder, which hardly anyone checks.  If you have a low open rate, it’s worth taking a look at your email deliverability.

 

Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate measures how many people clicked on the links within your email and, like open rate, is usually expressed as a percentage. It’s calculated by the amount of people who clicked on your email, divided by the number of people who opened it. Let’s say you sent that same email to the 100 people. A CTR of 30% in that instance would mean that for every 10 people who opened the campaign, 3 went on to click a link.

Your CTR will vary based on a number of factors, including email content and list size. You can find a list of average click through rates by industry here. If you’re an Enabler customer, the click throughs for your campaigns can be found in the dashboard report.

Knowing your CTR is vital, as not only does it tell you how engaging your customers found your email content, but it will also show you want content they found the most or least engaging and if your calls-to-action worked.  This information is vital in making content improvements for future campaigns.

 

Unsubscribe rate

Unsubscribe rate measures how many people unsubscribed from your email list for a particular email or set of emails.  It’s expressed as a percentage (are you seeing a theme yet?) and is calculated by the amount of people who unsubscribed from your campaign divided by the amount of people who received it.  For example, a 2% unsubscribe rate would mean that for every 100 people who received your campaign, 2 people unsubscribed.

If your unsubscribe rate is below 2%, you’re within industry norms, however I’d always be looking to see an unsubscribe rate under 1% to truly know you’re sending the most relevant content to your customers. The only time I’d expect an unsubscribe rate to be higher is if you’re sending to a list you haven’t sent to in a while, or if the data is very new, as they tend to unsubscribe more if you haven’t been communicating with them regularly.

Now although no one like to think of people unsubscribing from their emails, it’s actually bad practice to not include an unsubscribe link – so best practice is to make it clearly visible (preferably at the top of your email).  Many email providers like Google could penalise your email domain for not having an unsubscribe link, and send (any future emails) to the junk folder – so always include the unsubscribe link.

 

Bounce rate

You might notice that sometimes when you send an email, the amount of people you send to isn’t always the same amount as the people who receive it. This is due to bounces. Bounce rate measures the percentage (here we go again) of email addresses you tried to send to, who didn’t receive your message.

Bounces can occur for any number of reasons, including the recipients email inbox being full, the email address no longer existing or because the recipients mail provider marked you as spam.  Generally speaking, a bounce rate is healthy if it’s less than 3%. Anything higher and I’d check your data for problems. If you’re an Enabler client you can see your bounce rate in the dashboard report.

 

Email Visits

Email visits will measure how many people visited your site by clicking through from your email marketing campaigns.  It’s a fantastic way of comparing how your email campaigns are performing against other channels like social media and search. It’s an especially important one if driving traffic to your website is important (and I’m going to go ahead and guess it is!).

Tracking your email visits helps you gauge how relevant the links from your emails were and how the site content performed.  The most important things to look at as well as tracking the number of visits is looking at Average Session Duration (time on site), Page/Session Views(how many pages they viewed) and Bounce Rate.  Bounce rate is especially important to note because if people are clicking through from your emails then leaving your site straight away, it could mean the page you’re linking to either isn’t engaging, relevant or isn’t correct.  Having a high bounce rate can affect how Google perceives and lists your site on search engines, so try to keep bounce rates to below 40% for all channels.

If you’re an Enabler client you can add Google Analytics tracking to each of your links in your campaign under the weblinks section. This will enable you to see each individual campaign and how it’s performing when you log into your Analytics and watch your stats build.

 

Email Conversions

Email conversions will measure the number of customers who converted, (e.g. made a purchase, signed up for a product, etc), that were directly driven by your email marketing campaign.  With the majority of marketers, the aim is ultimately to drive sales for your business – which makes this metric incredibly useful. It can give you quantifiable data with which to justify all your upcoming email marketing decisions. This very much goes back to the proof point of ‘why track?’.

 

So there you have it.  Three reasons to track and six metrics you should be tracking.

Each one of these metrics should help you to make decisions about the next campaign you do, and give you the data you need to make your campaigns as successful as they can be.

Happy tracking!

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