March-2-2015

A strategic email campaign is one of the best ways to regularly reach your clients and prospects. When done correctly, it delivers valuable information. This engages your audience, helping you foster relationships and increase sales.

How do you measure your email campaign’s effectiveness? By monitoring it. Utilizing Google’s free analytics tools, you can set clear goals for each email and monitor its success rate. Are recipients clicking through to your site? Do they take the actions you want them to take?

To help you wrap your head around the what and how, we’ve compiled a quick rundown:

Set Goals

Goals are one of the free analytics tools Google provides. They allow you to clearly define and monitor your business’ online objectives. In this instance, a goal represents a completed online activity (aka conversion).

These activities can vary widely, depending on your business’ industry. Below are examples of potential goals for different industries:

  • E-commerce Sites: Sale of an item
  • Mobile Gaming App: Completed level
  • Professional Services: Filling out and submitting a contact form
  • Online Tutorials: Signing up for an email newsletter

Create “Thank You” Page(s)

As with measuring any milestone online or offline, having a clearly defined goal is essential. When it comes to the Internet, goals are typically achieved when a visitor completes a designated activity. In most cases, visitors can take more than one path to complete the activity. That’s okay. You still need to define the final marker of success.

One of the easiest ways to do so is with a “Thank You” page. Set up a “Thank You” page for each of your objectives – one that is not accessible via your main navigation menus. You can then create an automatic redirect – triggered when a visitor completes the desired task – to your designated “Thank You” page. Google will track the number of times this page is visited, tallying the success of your campaign.

Monitor Funnels

Knowing the success rate of your online campaign is only half the battle. To tweak and enhance your approach, you need to understand what’s working and what isn’t. This means knowing:

  • How your visitors find you
  • Where are they coming from
  • Where they are entering your site
  • What path (or paths) they are taking to your goal
  • Where they are falling off (aka exiting your site before completing your designated goal)

Google’s Analytics allows you to view these funnels. With this information you can evaluate your website, make strategic changes to enhance your visitors’ experiences, and increase your conversion rate.

Have questions about email campaign analytics or need help setting them up? Contact RWL Design today.