Posts Tagged ‘marketing metrics’

How to Interpret Email Marketing Metrics

Marketing Practicality | February 4, 2010 in Email Marketing | Comments (2)

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Email Marketing Metrics

If you are a small business and looking for an affordable way to reach out to your prospects, email marketing is a great channel. Most email marketing service providers have built in analysis and reporting so you can view your email marketing metrics in an almost real-time environment. But do you fully understand what the reports are telling you? Here are some email marketing tips to help you better understand email marketing metrics.

Overview of Email Marketing Metrics

Most email marketing services provide the following common metrics:

  • Bounces – A bounced is mail didn’t get delivered to the intended recipient. This could be for a host of reasons – the email address was spelled incorrectly, the address no longer exists, the email was blocked by a firewall, etc.
  • Released (sent) – Released emails were sent and delivered to the recipient.
  • Unsubscribes – The email was delivered and the recipient unsubscribed from your email service – basically they have removed themselves from your email list.
  • Opens – The email was opened (more on this later)
  • Clicks – If there are links in your HTML email, any clicks are tracked.
  • Forwards – The recipient used your email marketing service provider’s forwarding feature to send your email on to another person.
  • Complaints or Spam – Complaints are registered when an email recipient reports your email as spam to their ISP (Internet Service Provider). It is usually done by clicking a Report Spam button in their email client.

The Most Important Email Marketing Metrics

The three most important email marketing metrics. When analyzing a campaign I initially focus on three key email marketing metrics:

Bounce Rate: the bounce rate is an indicator of the quality of your list. If you are emailing an in-house prospect list and you experience a high bounce rate, it’s time to perform some database hygiene and get your email addresses updated

Open Rate: The higher the better. If your email isn’t opened, your message is not conveyed. A good open rate is influenced by crafting a great subject line and how familiar the recipient is with your email address and company. It also indicates the relative level quality of your list; better prospects will yield a higher open rate. Interpreting the open rate can be tricky though, see my email marketing tips post.

Click Rate: These recipients are even more engaged than those who just opened your email and deserve special handling.

Email Marketing Metrics Wrap Up

Once you have a good grasp on email marketing metrics, you’ll be much better prepared to interpret the results of your email marketing campaign. Next step is to understand the basic nuances of email marketing which can be found under my 5 email marketing tips. Contact Marketing Practicality for expert email marketing help with your small business.

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Successful Web Marketing | Increase Website Visibility | Web Marketing Ideas

Marketing Practicality | January 31, 2010 in Internet Marketing | Comments (11)

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Successful Web Marketing

This is the third article of a three part series on Successful Web Marketing – this article provides web marketing ideas on how to increase website visibility. Because, at the end of the day, no matter how good your content is, what does it matter if no one can find your website (and your content)?

How to Increase Website Visibility

In order to successfully increase your website’s visibility you will need to learn certain tools. Like most things – you will be able to pick up a basic knowledge of these skills with a moderate time investment. If you want to develop expert-level skills, count on 1,000’s of hours for each of these web marketing tactics – or hire a qualified professional. The following 5 tactics can be employed to increase visibility to your website – generating more web traffic – and exposure to that valuable content you have already created.

Increase Website Visibility Idea #1 – Search Engine Optimization – SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of developing and managing your website so it ranks well for targeted search terms in the major search engines. An effective SEO marketing strategy will significantly increase traffic to your website. Search engine optimization consists of both on-page SEO and off-page SEO. I strongly recommend you perform search engine optimization within the search engines guidelines if you intend to build a website for the long haul. When done effectively, search engine optimization is the best tactic in your toolbox to increase website visibility – and a critical component of successful web marketing. Don’t overlook this web marketing idea. And use a proven, qualified SEO marketing consultant if you’re not sure how to do it internally.

Increase Website Visibility Idea #2 – Pay per Click Marketing – PPC

But like most things, you don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket, so if you completely rely on SEO for website visibility, you may be very disappointed if a search engine that sends you a large amount of organic traffic changes an algorithm or otherwise stops sending you the website traffic you were accustomed to. Pay per Click Marketing (also called paid search or PPC) involves targeting certain keywords and paying for search engine listings. This is a great tactic to increase visibility to your website, but of course costs money. So carefully evaluate your marketing metrics and monitor your PPC campaign performance. It only makes sense to carry out a PPC marketing campaign if it produces a positive ROI.

Increase Website Visibility Idea #3 – Social Media

Social media continues to gain momentum as a tool for increasing website visibility as well as developing online relationships with your customers or prospects interested in your products and services. Social media also ties in with search engine optimization as it provides a medium where your website can garner inbound links, thus increasing your website visibility.

Increase Website Visibility Idea #4 – Referring Websites

When I say referring websites, I mean websites that link to your website and direct traffic to your website by means of an inbound link. This also ties in with SEO, but if you build up a network of quality, referring websites that are synergistic with your website, you can increase visibility to your website and quite likely, improve your conversion rates. Generating a network of referring websites takes work; it’s best to reach out to other webmasters and establish a level of trust before simply asking someone for a link.

Increase Website Visibility Idea #5 – Networking

Old fashioned networking and personal relationships can go a long way for small businesses trying to increase website visibility. Think about who could link to your website – starting with your personal network. Vendors, customers, suppliers, business contacts, friends, consultants – there are likely a host of people you already know that have a business website. If you already have an established level of trust, and it makes sense, why not ask that person for a link in to your website?

Successful Web Marketing – A Blend of Old and New Marketing

In today’s competitive landscape, successful web marketing really requires a blend of old and new marketing tactics. Staying on top of rapidly changing technology and how it impacts your business market efforts is critical to successful web marketing.
Ask yourself:

  1. Are you getting the most out of your search engine optimization?
  2. Have you fully tested pay per click marketing?
  3. Are you effectively using social media marketing?
  4. Do you know the top ten websites referring traffic to your website?
  5. Do you routinely discuss web marketing with your network?

If you take these 5 web marketing ideas and deploy them effectively. you will see positive results. In order to increase website visibility, you need to work at it, or hire someone who will. Successful web marketing depends on knowing what to do, how to do it and then putting in the hard work to ensure success. So get going!

View the first article in the “Successful Web Marketing Ideas” series:

Web Marketing Ideas

View the second article in the “Successful Web Marketing Ideas” series:

Creating Valuable Content

By Marketing Practicality

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Essential Small Business Marketing Metrics

Marketing Practicality | December 8, 2009 in Small Business Marketing | Comments (2)

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Essential Marketing Metrics for Your Small Business

Tracking marketing metrics is a key element of successfully managing your marketing process.

Of course tracking a bunch of numbers does nothing for your business (except consume resources – if you are not tracking the right marketing metrics.  Also, you need to act on your metrics – tracking data is pointless if it doesn’t lead to action.

Which Marketing Metrics are Right for Your Business

This of course depends on your business model, but let’s say your business relies on new leads (as well as existing ones) to generate sales.

The first thing I recommend you do is ask yourself – what a the three pieces of information to run my business (or marketing department).

I prefer to know what the quantity of new leads are, as well as the quality.  You can learn a lot by tracking those two things over time.

In marketing metric format, this could be represented as:

New Leads – the number of leads coming in per day (quantity of leads)

Cost per Lead – the specific cost associated with acquiring these leads (always track costs)

Conversion Rate – What percent of these leads translate into sales (quality of leads)

What Gets Measured Gets Managed

It’s true.  If you discipline yourself to track these metrics on a daily basis and evaluate the trends over time you will gain significant insight of your small business’ performance (month over month, year over year, etc.).

You can also place parameters around them once a baseline is established – for example if your marketing metrics vary +/- 5% over the previous month and take appropriate action.

This also allows you to better manage marketing expense and control cost as well as increase profitability.

Tracking essential marketing metrics can be done as simply as using a spread sheet or you can use a CRM system to help automate the process.  But keep the metric data visible!  You need to watch, review, analyze and take action upon what you are seeing.

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