3 Ways to Impact Engagement with Analysis

"It amazes me how many companies start email “strategies” without putting much thought into the impact of a poor, or typically complete lack of, planning. It’s not easy to start emailing customers, potential customers or subscribers, or to add new campaigns to existing channel strategy – but, it all starts with understanding what they want followed by consistency."

The dog, man’s best friend - but, why? Why does the dog consistently champion his leader and abide his wishes? How does a dog know to give his loyalty – his trust - to just one person? It’s simple. It’s so simple that it’s easy to miss. It’s not because his human gives him treats. It’s also not because he feeds him and keeps him healthy with a roof overhead. It’s still not because he takes his pooch for walks and runs, or even plays ball with him. - It’s not even for belly rubs! It’s so simple I already said it - Consistency.

I know what you’re thinking – “what does a dog have to do with email marketing?” There shouldn’t be any question about it! Being consistent – for the pooch – is being consistent with love and affection, care and adoration. The consistent owner is the Alpha dog and is rewarded with both respect and loyalty. The consistency in care given to your subscribers is akin to the love given to your pet. Being consistent with your subscribers is not only paramount to engaging and retaining them - it’s a necessity for deliverability.

It amazes me how many companies start email “strategies” without putting much thought into the impact of a poor, or typically complete lack of, planning. It’s not easy to start emailing customers, potential customers or subscribers, or to add new campaigns to existing channel strategy – but, it all starts with understanding what they want followed by consistency.

The initial step far too often overlooked, and far too important, is analysis. Let’s discuss Rover again – you wouldn’t continue to give your dog food that they didn’t like, or treats they won’t eat, right? So, the analogy begs the question of why would you do so with your email subscribers? From basic analysis through the complex variety with behavior modeling – anything available is better than no analysis at all.

The past few weeks were spent with two different clients on opposite ends of the B2C spectrum. Both have mountains of data and both have challenges digging into it. This is a common problem for companies of every size, and especially for monster corporations that have been around for so long that they didn’t have a chance, or simply didn’t realize how, to keep up with data technology as they grew.

The quandary has a simple answer – make the data work in your marketing efforts to increase relevancy, engagement and therefore, loyalty. It can feel a bit like climbing Mt. Everest and can take enterprise-wide initiatives, several years and a healthy budget to make it happen.

Don’t panic! There are several more simple analyses that anyone can do, albeit manual unless you’re lucky enough to have some great marketing tools at your fingertips (or a fabulous strategic consultant!) that can help identify opportunities in your email campaigns. Here’s a few to wet your dog whistle:

     1. Analyze click behavior to determine engaging content:

a.     Whether you have a newsletter campaign or other regular deployments, collect click data and heat mapping and compare them against the same campaign as well as other campaigns.

b.     Do you see some hot topics that you didn’t realize were so hot?

c.     Perhaps you see content that rarely or never gets clicked – dump it!

d.     You may also see that the email CTA and primary content aren’t relevant at all – do people only click “login to account” or similar?

    2.  Perform YOY trend analysis:

a.     It’s amazing how many DON’T do this! It’s a bit manual, but well worth it. A simple line chart can reveal oodles of information that can’t be seen in a table full of data. Make it clear!

b.     YOY analysis also helps to glean potential problems with deliverability, engagement, email exhaustion and even frequency tolerance.

c.     Also, overlay quarter over quarter (QOQ) results as well:

3.     Ask your subscribers what they want:

a.     It sounds too simple, doesn’t it? I have a client that consistently runs surveys within existing email campaigns. The results are regularly reviewed and have produced several successful – and surprising – ideas.

b.     Caution: Keep It Simple! Ask 1-2 questions only, broad enough that it’s appealing to answer, but narrow enough to answer the question you really want to know.

Case in point – this photo is of my beloved pooch Cleo. She sat perfectly for me because I knew exactly what engaged her and the relevant (brand) promise to offer her. I arrived at my findings through years of analysis - Cleo loved fortune cookies and would do anything for some crunchy Chinese take-out goodness – and clearly, she did!

At the end of the day, when arriving home to your beloved pooch, nothing makes Rover happier than seeing you – that’s precisely how you want subscribers to feel when they see your brand in their inbox. Take these simple steps to get there and increase your engagement, relevancy and then deliver and analyze consistently to maximize the growth trajectory of your email channel.