Using analytics to measure your email marketing gives you a fantastic opportunity to learn about your customers and improve your communications. However, to get the most from analytics you need to understand the real meaning of certain key terms and how they are calculated.

In this free 13 page ebook we look at how email marketing analytics are captured, what statistics you’ll see, what they mean, why they matter and how you can put all of this data to use to make your marketing even more effective.

You’ll learn about the real benefits you can get from putting email analytics to use, including:

• Identifying your best prospects to prioritise your sales efforts
• Finding the optimum time to send your campaigns for maximum results
• Fine-tuning your subject lines to boost your open rates
• How to use averages to benchmark your campaigns
• Maximising sales by studying goal data

The complete guide to email marketing analytics is available here as a PDF file for you to download and keep

A powerful email marketing list is one that generates real value for your business on an ongoing basis, either directly through sales or by generating referrals, increasing customer retention or raising brand awareness in your chosen niche. It’s a sustainable, long-term asset that becomes more valuable to you over time, not less.

That’s the complete opposite to a purchased, rented or otherwise poorly acquired email list, where the value is quickly lost as recipients stop listening to you, and start treating you as a spammer (which by definition, means you are one). With that kind of list you quickly get to a point of each email causing your business more harm than good.

So, how can you avoid this fate?

The key to a powerful email mailing list is never forgetting that behind every email address is a living, breathing person, just like you. This is about building relationships with your subscribers, not just managing data. Classic permission marketing.

It stands to reason then, that to build a powerful email list which will provide meaningful marketing results for your business, your need to act as you would if you were building a personal relationship with each person who signs up. That means following a few key principles:

Start things simply: make it easy for people to express their initial interest and sign up to your list. Start by creating a subscription form that asks for the minimum information you need (email address, possibly name and company if you must) and then promote that signup form wherever you can.

Give in order to receive: a relationship is a 2-way thing. You need to give people a clear reason to start a relationship with you, show why their time and trust will be rewarded. Perhaps it’s the fascinating insights they’ll receive in your newsletter, or maybe it’s a discount voucher. Either way, give people an incentive to start the conversation.

Be clear about the terms of the relationship: when you ask someone to join your mailing list, be clear about why, and what they can expect. If you want to send a monthly newsletter, tell them about why they’ll find it interesting. If joining means that a sales person will call them, make that clear. Don’t hide things away in the small print and expect to get away with it – that’s not how you’d like to be treated, is it?

Be true to your word: one someone has signed up, deliver on your promises. If you said you’d send a regular email newsletter, make sure you do, and don’t be tempted to send out irrelevant other emails – before you take the relationship further, be sure to ask for permission first.

Don’t betray their trust: this is the most important principle of all. Your relationship with each subscriber isn’t transferrable to someone else, it can’t be sold or passed on. It’s between you (your brand) and that person. If you sell, rent or give away your list, you’ve violated that relationship and all trust that was given to you, don’t expect to get it back.

Don’t get too needy: once you’re in a relationship, stay cool. It can be tempting to lavish your new found friend with attention, but this can be a bit too much for some people to bear, keep them amount of contact appropriate. Some people will decide that this isn’t the right relationship for them, and unsubscribe. It’s a fact of life, accept it and move on. It’s nothing to panic about until lots (more than 1%) do this, then it’s an indication that you need to take a close look at your behavior.

Stay interesting: to build the relationship, you need to keep things interesting. Don’t be tempted to just keep sending out the exact same information. It might be important to you, but is it important to your friends (subscribers)? Before you hit send, put yourself in their place.

Ask for feedback: relationships need 2-way communication, so make sure it’s easy for people to send you feedback. Couple this with your email marketing analytics to help you learn what you can do to build stronger relationships with your subscribers.

To help get you started we’ve produced a brief guide to the key things you need to know. This is by no means exhaustive (that would need several lengthy books) but these are what we consider the most important tips to help you make the most of email marketing.

This free email marketing guide includes:

• Quick ways to build your email mailing lists
• Planning your email campaign
• Tips for designing and building your email
• Vital checks to make before your press send
• The most important email marketing statistics and what they mean

The Coffee Break Guide to Email Marketing guide is available here as a PDF file for you to download and keep

How do you grow your list? Where do you start? We’re asked these questions all the time, so here are our top do’s and don’ts for building your lists.

Do:

Put a subscription form prominently on your website. You can automatically create your own subscription form using Sign-Up.to’s form builder (in the ‘Capture’ section).

Tell people that they can subscribe to your email list on the signature of your normal work emails – and link straight through to the form on your website.

Ask existing customers if they’d like to join your mailing list. Legally you don’t have to do this, as long as you’re emailing them about services that are the same as those they have purchased from you. However, they are your most valuable asset, so treat them with respect and ask nicely!

Give people the option to subscribe each time they interact with you. If you run an event, offer people the option to subscribe when they’re there, if you run a shop, have pre-printed subscription cards at the checkouts (make sure you keep a copy of completed requests, for legal compliance).

Spell out clearly why people will benefit from subscribing and how often you will contact them. Make sure people know exactly what they will be receiving and they will be much happier to subscribe, you’ll also avoid wasting your time collecting details that will be of no use to you.

Contact new subscribers as soon as you can. Send a welcome note to let them know what to expect, that way if your next mail out isn’t out for a few weeks they won’t have forgotten about you by then.

Don’t:

Automatically add everyone who has ever emailed you to your list . This is a breach of the data protection act and you could face prosecution. Just because someone has emailed you does not give you the right to add them to your mailing list.

Purchase lists. Permission isn’t transferrable. No matter what a list broker tells you, you will get complaints – lots of them. We don’t allow purchased lists of any kind to be used in Sign-Up.to.

Abuse people’s trust – the swiftest way to devalue your list is to send irrelevant content to them. You’ll get unsubscriptions and complaints but far worse – you’ll damage your brand and people who don’t unsubscribe may start to ignore your messages.

Building your SMS lists

Many of the same techniques apply for mobile as they do for email, but here are a few extras that apply specifically to this exciting new medium. To upgrade and add mobile features to your Sign-Up.to account, email solutions@sign-up.to or give us a call.

Collect numbers using a text-in keyword. You can add mobile numbers to your list by asking users to text in a keyword to the Sign-Up.to shortcode (for example: text SIGNUP to 61211 to join our mailing list). The user’s mobile number is automatically added to your list. You can set this up by adding a new mobile list in the Capture section of the system – simply follow the onscreen prompts (call support on 0845 644 4184 if you get stuck!)

This is a great way to accurately capture data when people are away from their computer – in your store, at your restaurant or in a club for example. There’s no risk of capturing incorrect data as there would be if you get them to fill in a paper form, and people can react to your call to action immediately.

Send an immediate response. SMS is a very immediate medium. Make sure you send an SMS response when someone subscribes by SMS, so that they know you received their message. You can also use this message to reinforce your promotion or brand message. You can automate this process by setting an SMS reply message for your list.

In Summary – There’s no instant way to build your list – the process takes time and effort – but persist. Each name you add to your list using best practice techniques like those I’ve listed above is extremely valuable to you and is well worth the effort.

This legislation affects anyone using email or SMS marketing; there are several key points which you must observe in order to avoid being liable for a hefty fine.

A simple overview:

1. If you have had no prior commercial relationship with a person you will have to obtain their permission to communicate with them by email or SMS text message.
2. You cannot obtain this consent via sending an email or SMS message to ask for it, and the permission has to be actively and knowledgeably given – i.e. the user must tick a box or actively opt-in by performing a specific action.
3. If you have had a previous trading relationship you may be able to communicate with them about a similar product or service. It’s that little word similar that gets the lawyers salivating. Because English law is largely determined by case law and precedent it will be some time before the definition of similar is determined, very expensively, in court.
4. You must clearly identify the sender of the message.
5. You must provide a valid reply address.
6. You must make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe from future communications.

Penalties

Those who fail to follow these regulations face prosecution and could be fined up to £5,000 in a Magistrates Court or an unlimited fine if the prosecution is pursued in the Crown Court.

In late 2009 the Information Commissioner’s Office was granted to ability to impose fines of up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the data protection principles.

Useful Links

The Information Commissioner
Responsible for enforcing the electronic communications regulations in the UK.

Improve your compliance with Sign-Up.to

Sign-Up.to provides a range of tools and services to help ensure your campaigns are compliant with UK marketing laws. For a free trial click here.

What is the difference between Sender ID and SPF?
SPF validates the originating email address of a message. This is not always the same as the ‘From’ address as it relates to the actual server sending the message.

Sender ID validates the actual ‘From’ address of the email, in order to set up a Sender ID record you will need to add the Sender ID information to your domain name – see below for details.

Why is Sender ID important?
Sender ID adds an extra layer of security to email – it makes it much more difficult to send email from forged addresses, a favourite trick of spammers and scammers. By adopting Sender ID legitimate email can be more easily separated from junk.

How does Sender ID affect me?
If you’re using email marketing, Sender ID affects you! 
Major ISPs like Hotmail and Gmail use Sender ID to screen emails – if an email is received which does not have a Sender ID record set then the user is alerted to this – at the moment nothing else happens but in the near future this may change and result in your message being classed as spam.

If an email is received from an address with a Sender ID record but from a system that is not listed in the record, it is sent to the junk folder.

If you are sending email from an email marketing system like Sign-Up.to you need to ensure that the system is listed in the Sender ID record for your domain name, this will help to maximise the delivery rate of your campaign.

How does Sender ID work?
A Sender ID record is a small piece of text that is stored in the DNS record of your domain name. You can generate this text using the online tools available at http://www.anti-spamtools.org/SenderIDEmailPolicyTool/Default.aspx This text explains which servers are allowed to send email on your behalf. When a system receives email from you it looks up this record and checks it against the details of the server that sent your message. As only the owner of a domain name can alter its DNS record this is a fairly secure way to manage this information.

How do I create a Sender ID record?
Firstly, you need to have access to the DNS record of your domain name. This will usually be through the company you registered your domain name with, or your web hosting/design company. You need to check that this company supports creating a TXT record in your DNS. If they don’t you will need to move your DNS to another provider like http://zoneedit.com - this doesn’t mean that you will need to change your web host, just your DNS provider.

Once you have access to this you need to go to http://www.anti-spamtools.org/SenderIDEmailPolicyTool/Default.aspx and use their wizard to create a record for your domain. You will need to know where you send email from, or set your record to allow any server to send email from your domain name (this is not advised!) If using Sign-Up.to you must add sign-up.to in the ‘Outsourced Domains’ box – this allows us to send email on your behalf.

When you have completed the wizard you will be given the text that you need to add into your DNS record. Once you have added this in you can check it by using the wizard again – it should detect that you have a record set. Note that in some cases it may take 24-48 hours before your new record shows up.

I don’t have my own domain name, can I still use Sender ID?
No – you have to control the domain name to set the Sender ID. As such you cannot send out emails from free email addresses (hotmail.com etc.) through systems like sign-up.to

Find Out More about Sender ID:
http://www.microsoft.com/senderid/

Open Rate:

This statistic shows the number of unique users who’ve opened your message. Don’t settle for a system that simply counts every time anyone opens your message, you need to make sure you only see unique opens. Otherwise you don’t know whether 100 different people opened your message or the same person opened it 100 times.

What it tells you: The number of unique people that actually loaded up the images in your campaign. This could be by properly opening your message or viewing it in the preview screen of their email client.

What it doesn’t tell you: How many people actually read your email. Just because someone opened your message doesn’t mean they read it. Also, because open rate tracking relies on the user loading images, some people could have read your message but not loaded in images.

What it’s good for: Getting an overall impression of the success of your campaign compared to previous campaigns and showing you how well the subject line worked in getting people to at least preview your message.

Open Rate by Time:

This statistic shows you what time of day people are actually reading your message. Usually displayed hourly for the 48 hours after you send your campaign. The same rules apply as for opening rates as regards accuracy.

What it’s good for: Assessing whether you’re sending your email out at the optimum time. If most people read your email in the afternoon but you send it in the morning you could try sending your message later and see if that increases response.

Bounces:

These are the number of messages which didn’t make it to the subscribers’ inboxes. There are two types of bounces:

Hard Bounce – this is caused by a permanent problem with a recipient’s email account – for example that email account is no longer active or the server doesn’t exist.

Soft Bounce – this is a temporary issue with the delivering to the recipient – commonly caused by their inbox being full or a delay caused by network issues at the recipient. It usually means that the message reached the recipient’s server and was then rejected. Sometimes a soft bounce message will be successfully delivered later, or may become a hard bounce.

What it tells you: How many people definitely didn’t get your message. For regularly used lists this should remain fairly constant for each campaign as people change email addresses or go on holiday it’s normal for a proportion of messages to any given list to both hard and soft bounce.

What it doesn’t tell you: There is no set standard for defining a bounce because the recipient’s system determined your message to be spam, so you can’t get an accurate measure of this from bounce rates.

What it’s good for: If you see an unusually high bounce rate for a campaign to a list you use regularly, it’s likely that spam filters are the cause; if you see a large number of soft bounces, perhaps a lot of your list members are on holiday.

Link Clicks:

Your email marketing package should be able to show you detailed information on who clicked the links in your campaigns. Vital information you need to be able to see:

Number of unique users who clicked links: Make sure this is the number of unique people, and not just an aggregate total of all links clicked. This shows you how many people you actually got to perform an action in response to your campaign.

Number of unique users who clicked on each link in your campaign: You should be able to see exactly how many people you got to click on each link in your campaign (and who they are, and what time they clicked). This lets you identify what copy, offers and other devices work best in your campaigns and which calls to action need work. If you can view the individuals who clicked on the link you can even send them specially targeted follow up emails in response.

Link Click by Time: Similar to the open rate by time statistics, this shows you when people actually interact with your message. You can compare this with the open rate by time and see if people reading your message at a specific time are more likely to perform a given action, helping you decide when the best time to send your message is.

Unsubscription Rate:

Any email campaign you send must carry an unsubscription link, and you should be able to see how many subscribers use this link to stop receiving your messages.

What it tells you: How many people no longer want to receive communications from you.

What it doesn’t tell you: Why. It could be that they’ve changed job, or subscribed with another address or it could be that your offers don’t interest them anymore.

What it’s good for: If your unsubscription rate suddenly increases (more than 1% of your list) then you’ve got problems – perhaps you’re not meeting your audiences’ expectations?

Email newsletters give you an opportunity to stay in regular contact with customers and prospects, letting them know about new products you are offering and also educating them about issues related to your industry. Through careful use of content and by tracking your campaigns you can also identify issues of particular interest to groups of customers and use this information to improve your sales efforts.

There are several important things to consider when producing an email newsletter:

Frequency – you need to send out your newsletter on a regular basis, so that recipients come to expect it. Many people find monthly works well, but it depends on your audience. Whatever frequency you choose, make sure that you tell recipients how often they can expect to receive your emails and then stick to it!

Content – make your newsletter worth reading! It shouldn’t be too sales driven, use your industry knowledge to provide readers with extra useful information that shows you’re an expert in your field.

Tracking – the great thing about email is that it’s so measurable, you should be able to see who is reading your newsletters, when and what links they’re clicking on – making it easy to identify your Return on Investment (ROI) – you can also use this information to help you improve future newsletters.

Timing – when you send your campaign can have a big effect on results. If your audience is office based then there’s no point sending your newsletter at weekends or late at night – most people tend to clear their inboxes out as quickly as possible first thing in the morning, especially on Monday’s, so you may find your hard work wasted! Send out your message at a time when you think people will be willing to receive it – perhaps just before or after lunch – experiment and see what works best for your audience.

Audience – make sure your recipients have asked to hear from you. You can collect details from existing customers, at tradeshows, from your website and many other places, but make sure people know that you’ll be sending them your newsletter and make sure it’s easy for them to unsubscribe if they want to.

Design – your newsletter is a reflection on your business, so it should match your corporate identity. You don’t need to go to the expense of having a designer produce each email for you though. A single design template can be used in a newsletter creation tool like Sign-Up.to which then allows you to quickly and easily drop in new content yourself (or have a bureau service do it for you at minimal cost) – letting you produce great looking newsletters quickly at low cost.

Delivery – in these days of firewalls and stringent anti-spam measures, sending your newsletter from Outlook just won’t cut it – many of your recipients will never see your email and your efforts will be wasted. Outsourcing to a service provider will improve your results and give you added features like automated bounce and unsubscribe handling, tracking and delivery reports – and it will still cost a fraction of a postal mailout!

Follow these simple tips and you’ll be off to a great start. Look at your tracking results to continually learn from what you do and make every campaign better than those you’ve sent before. Try new things, experiment and make sure that you measure response.

If you haven’t already got a Sign-Up.to account open one free and see for yourself what a difference it can make to your email marketing.

The first step is to make sure you include an email sign up form within your blog template. There are 2 ways to do this, depending on the type of blog you are running:

If you run your blog using WordPress:

Simply download and install our free WordPress email marketing subscription form plugin here: http://www.signup-onlinemarketing.co.uk/assets/others/sut_wp_capture.zip (or click on the ‘Share’ link in your Sign-Up.to account). Full instructions on installing our free WordPress plugin.

This will automatically add a subscription form to your blog pages.

If you run your blog on another platform:

Use the form building tools in your Sign-Up.to account to create your form, and add a link to your form the sidebar of your blog theme. Alternatively, if you’re handy with PHP you could try modifying our WordPress plugin.

Click here for a tutorial on creating a mailing list subscription form in Sign-Up.to

The next step is to make sure you promote your newsletter properly. Adjust your blog’s theme template to ensure the subscription form is prominent – then blog about the option to subscribe to your newsletter, making sure you explain the benefits of subscribing and how often people can expect to be contacted by you.

Finally, don’t overlook the benefit that promotions like free downloads, vouchers and competitions can bring to enhancing your subscription rates.