The Path to Holiday Email Optimization Part III: Measuring Your Impact

The holidays are coming up and you are feeling pretty confident about your campaigns. You have looked over your program, making sure everything was running smoothly, and you are tracking your metrics to know how your campaigns are performing. The final step before your program is ready for the holidays is to understand the impact of each element and how to track and report on it. Metrics to WatchGoing beyond a single message, these metrics provide valuable insight into your relationships with your subscribers. • Click-to-Open: Your click-to-open rate measures the effectiveness of your content and calls to action (CTAs). It is calculated as the number of clicks out of total email opens. Take this rate into account when creating and designing new emails. Looking at past performance of different formats and CTAs will help you create new emails that engage your subscribers. • This Is Not Spam Rate (TINS): Typically, emails that are sent to the spam folder are never seen by subscribers, which makes the rare nature of TINS votes so powerful. TINS votes are generated when subscribers open their spam folders and rescue an email that they personally felt was incorrectly delivered to spam. By clicking the "this is not spam" button, subscribers are notifying their mailbox providers that future messages like the ones they flagged should always be delivered to the inbox. If enough subscribers generate TINS votes, mailbox providers may take care to deliver those messages to others' inboxes, too. Your TINS rate is calculated by number of TINS votes out of email delivered to spam. • Forwarded Rate: A high forward rate is a strong indicator of subscriber engagement and viral content. The metric is calculated by the number of times a message is forwarded by your subscribers. Forwards are a clear signal of both engaging content as well as a trusted brand, as customers are volunteering to be brand ambassadors, notifying their friends and family of a brand, program, or message they might value. • Conversion Rate: Your conversion rate measures the number of sales (or other activities that constitute conversions) by the number of clicks. Paring this with your read rate and click-to-open rate helps you understand the impact of your emails starting from the initial decision to open the message, to the level engagement with the message, and through to the decision to make a purchase. Now What? 2 More Steps to TakeHere are two more steps to take to prepare your email program for the busy holiday season. 1. Test: You should already be tracking your latest campaigns against past performance, but timing will always be a factor on your results. The most effective way to create a message designed to entice your subscribers to engage is through rigorous testing. Test out each and every aspect of your program on a small (but statistically valid) sample before rolling it out to your email campaigns. 2. Track Your Competitors: Don't look only at your past content. Check out what tactics your competitors are using. Sign up for their emails and look at the different aspects of their program. What types of offers are they sending? Are they sending three times a week in the mornings, or twice a week in the afternoons? Incorporate some of these elements into your testing to see if they will engage your subscribers, or whether your current strategies are winning. And don't limit your competitive intelligence to companies just like yours. Your inbox competition comes from publishers, other industries ... virtually everyone vying for your subscribers' attention. With this final step, your program is ready for the holidays — but only for the holidays. Your email program is constantly changing. Over time (especially during the next few weeks) you will acquire new subscribers, create new offers, design new campaigns, along with many more factors that will affect your program deep into next year. To make sure your program is always optimized you should constantly track all of these metrics and re-do each of these steps to ensure your program is ready for your next campaign, next season, and next year.

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The Path to Holiday Email Optimization Part III: Measuring Your Impact

Tom Sather

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Tom Sather