Email Success: Testing, Tracking and Optimization

Many direct marketers use 3rd party email lists with mixed results. This article is for those who have had some experience with using 3rd party email lists. If you are not getting the response you want, take a look at how you are testing and tracking your email campaigns. Most email list companies provide basic campaign data like opens, clicks and possibly conversions. This is only the beginning of what you can do to increase your response. The following are some things to think about:

1. Use a Robust Tracking System
Your online tracking system should provide a web-based management console that provides real-time data on each flight of each campaign. You should be able to see open counts, clicks (each link in each email) and ultimate conversions on your website. This data may be redundant with what your 3rd party email provider may give you, however you will see the results in real-time and you can check your results against theirs.

2. Test Everything
Many marketers don’t test all the variables that can impact results. Depending on your overall campaign budget, you may spend as much as 25% on email flights that are designed to provide optimization information. You may want to use various A-B strategies to test creative messages, subject lines and list selection (and you will want to have multiple lists with different selects). It is important to track each tested element all the way to conversion. Additionally, it can be very effective to test multiple conversion landing pages to find out which one converts best.

3. Optimize on Test Results
Your test results should reveal some winners relevant to creative message, subject line, lists, list selects and landing page. The key to optimization is to go with what is working best relative to cost-per-conversion. It is not uncommon to find a list that gets great opens and clicks, yet fails to convert. Conversely, you may have tested variables that do poorly, yet the click-to-conversion rate is high. After you determine your best pulling variables (creative, subject line, conversion page), you can choose your lists and possibly the selects in those lists. Most of the decision is a function of price per conversion. A list at $80 cpm may cost less (per conversion) than a list priced at $3 cpm. Armed with your own real-time results from testing, you have the ability to negotiate with your list providers based on actual cost-per-conversion results. Most list providers have room to negotiate and will do so when you can provide hard numbers related to results with their lists.

4. Media Purchasing
When testing and then re-purchasing from a vendor, make sure you confirm the “recency” of addresses in your email flights. The recency of any list is defined as the time period since list members opted-in. 90-day recency means the list members opted in within the last 90 days. Generally speaking, a shorter recency list will pull better than a list with a longer recency. Some 3rd party list providers may not mention the recency related to your first purchase, but you can bet it is short in order to maximize your results so you come back for more. This is not such a bad thing as you want the best return on all of your investments. Just be aware of what you are buying in the beginning and what you are buying later on after you’ve tested. You may have to go up in recency in order to access more potential customers. This is all part of the game; just stay aware and understand that recency will likely impact response.

Improving the way you conduct your 3rd party email campaigns can yield improved results. Having the right knowledge, a good tracking system and quality list providers are the needed ingredients to put your best foot forward to success.

For more articles by Steve Herring, visit onealstrategy.com.