Sir Speedy Centennial

Marketing and sales messages are really important — I think we can all agree on that — but analyzing your messaging is where the smart money is. Every campaign should use analytics to measure success and provide feedback that helps you to modify future campaigns based on these results.

Email messaging to our customers doesn’t always fall in the category of marketing, sometimes it’s just messaging: a new product we’ve added, a store opening, an invitation, a posted report. The common thread is that we are sending an electronic message. Electronic messages can include an easy-to-use click-thru link that lands the customer squarely on a custom (measured and analyzed) web page.

By way of example, let’s consider that you do have a customer message to impart; perhaps an invitation to attend a webcast. There are lots of great opportunities in this email message, so let’s not forget to use personalization for the salutation and, if possible, more personalization in the body to speak to the customer.

Now that you have the event and the message, plan ahead so that you get the best analytics possible. The key to this step is that you want to divide your email list randomly; this is called segmenting. Don’t segment by state or gender. To really get a feel for how your customers are responding, it’s imperative that you don’t segment them in a manner that might skew your results. It may be that people who work at a particular type of job find your topic interesting and that the people to hold this job are more often men than women. Segmenting by gender will assuredly return artificial results.

If you have a very large list, start with just a few names — somewhere in the neighborhood of about 100 names per group — and create a separate landing page for each group’s registration. Each group’s invitation should be worded slightly differently — the same invitation, just try appealing to their interest with different approaches. The landing pages should include a form where your customer can register for the event. When a web form is completed, it is either collected in a database or emailed to a pre-defined recipient; maybe that’s you.

Though analytics applications make it simple to track how many people click on the landing-page link and even how much time they spent on the landing page, it’s not critical. If you are managing your own list and the completed registration forms are forwarded to you, it will be easy enough to match up which of your groups is responding best. This tells you something about your message. Adapt and resend — that’s the beauty of an email campaign.

Don’t forget to create a new landing page. You want to know whether or not you experience the same rate of success with this group as with the test group.
It’s easy to analyze once and then get stuck in a rut. Don’t be fooled. Just because one message type does well once, doesn’t mean it will work every time. Try sending HTML messages compared to plain text. Try including graphics in some and not in others. No matter the variables of the test, every message campaign should start with one. It’s an easy first step, but it can keep you from sending an ineffective message; or worse.

We all want to ensure effective messaging and with today’s electronic ankle bracelets attached, we stand to create successively progressive results. It makes the gamble of messaging a whole lot less risky. Sir Speedy Centennial is with you every step of the way. We will help you to segment your list, create messaging, analyze results, and modify messages based on these results. Click here to email our owner and get started today.