Email Stats

[tarrington]

I have been testing different subject lines, calls to action, etc in my email campaigns and I am tracking the open rate, number of clicks on my links, appointments to clicks and sales to clicks.

What metrics should I be looking at and what does a good job look like?

 

[Kevin McKillop]

I have been testing different subject lines, calls to action, etc in my email campaigns and I am tracking the open rate, number of clicks on my links, appointments to clicks and sales to clicks.

What metrics should I be looking at and what does a good job look like?

As far as emails go, you can't do much more than track clicks and opens. Often open rates aren't entirely accurate, depending if your provider tracks unique opens only or total opens. I have emails that have been opened over 100 times by the same individual. This isn't accurate at all, it's just their email program fetching the image tracking pixel.

Clicks are a little more accurate as email clients won't trigger it themselves.

Most providers should be able to provide some additional tracking you can put on your site to measure 'conversions' for a given email campaign, but that would have to be via website opt-in. A lot of what goes in at the dealership is over the phone too which isn't going to track automatically anywhere.

Assuming you're using Google Analytics on your site, be sure to tag your links you put in your emails to help you measure/identify that traffic and their behaviour as best you can

 

[malinda.terreri]

From a deliverability perspective, I would look at:

• Opens by major ISP (national average is 20%)
• Abuse Complaints by ISP (goal of 1 per 1000)

From a list management perspective, I would look at:

• Click through rate and the trend (are people interested in what you are sending them) We look for a 30% click-through.
• Unsubscribe (<.30%) and abuse rate (do people like what you send them and how often you are sending)

From a sales perspective, we use the email address as a unique identifier so we can match up actual email opens to vehicle sales and RO's.

Rates and benchmarks for these will be influenced by your list - are you emailing prospects v. customers?

You mentioned you are testing subject lines which is great. Make sure you use a large enough sample and make your determination on the most important factor. For instance, for one of our newsletters we used a sales-focused subject line to promote a special event the dealer had going on. The open rate was lower than normal, but the net clicks on the promo link were higher compared to what we were testing against. For this email, the total clicks to the special offer were most important so if we would have picked based only on the open rate, we would have picked the wrong subject line.

 

[MikeHaeg]

As far as emails go, you can't do much more than track clicks and opens. Often open rates aren't entirely accurate, depending if your provider tracks unique opens only or total opens. I have emails that have been opened over 100 times by the same individual. This isn't accurate at all, it's just their email program fetching the image tracking pixel.

Clicks are a little more accurate as email clients won't trigger it themselves.

Most providers should be able to provide some additional tracking you can put on your site to measure 'conversions' for a given email campaign, but that would have to be via website opt-in. A lot of what goes in at the dealership is over the phone too which isn't going to track automatically anywhere.

Assuming you're using Google Analytics on your site, be sure to tag your links you put in your emails to help you measure/identify that traffic and their behaviour as best you can

Hey Kevin,

That's an interesting point about the unique opens vs total opens, something to think about when running the numbers.

In regard to your point about the phone, I think you're on to something but I disagree about the lack of "automatic tracking anywhere" point. That tracking can come in two different capacities:

1.) A "static" tracking number in the text of the email. "Call 888-555-1234 because these are priced to move!" This tracks/records calls from the email itself. These phone numbers should compliment any testing. For example, a different number on a Jan. email than Feb., a different number for Subject A vs Subject B. Folks like Malinda at 1to1 News are using this and get great value out of the data I'm sure.

2.) I think the bigger area of concern would be what if the person clicked through, browsed the site, picked up the phone and called? Your point (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that this is hidden right? For dealers using dynamic web tracking on their site, this path and phone call can actually be tracked and tied together. It's something we do a lot with dealers and of course, for full disclosure there a couple other companies worth looking into as well.

 

[Kevin McKillop]

Hey Kevin,

That's an interesting point about the unique opens vs total opens, something to think about when running the numbers.

In regard to your point about the phone, I think you're on to something but I disagree about the lack of "automatic tracking anywhere" point. That tracking can come in two different capacities:

Hey Mike ... When I say difficult I mean to say it's unlikely dealers have this type of capability in place (none we've worked with have) and getting them sign off to pony up for service like that can be difficult. Some don't even have call tracking of any kind let alone separate numbers per email broadcast month-to-month along with all their other advertising mediums to be tracked.

I'd love to have dynamic call tracking in place on dealer sites since so many leads come via phone. But a lot don't want to pay for it, and dealing with these closed website vendors systems, they all want additional fees just to set it up on top of the call tracking solution itself.

 

[Jason]

I have been testing different subject lines, calls to action, etc in my email campaigns and I am tracking the open rate, number of clicks on my links, appointments to clicks and sales to clicks.

What metrics should I be looking at and what does a good job look like?

Looks like some other folks have the basics covered, so I'll just add that you may want to copy & paste your Subject Lines into the Litmus.com Subject Line Checker. This handy and free tool will show you how your Subject Lines appear in various email clients. Give it a try if you aren't using it already.

 

[tarrington]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

Would anyone else mind sharing their stats and/or goals?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Sharing a few stats from the MB dealer I work with...

The list size is just shy of 11,000.

Open Rate: 38%
Click Rate: 42%

Contest Entries: 281 - They usually run a monthly contest


This is SOLID and some of the strongest numbers I've seen. Right Malinda?