Are You Tracking Your Email Marketing List?
An email marketing list is one of the most important resources any small business owner has.
After all this is your customer base.
This is where your sales are coming from and who is following you on social media sites and whom you write to when you are creating content.
But many small business owners ignore the health of this list and as a result are not performing at optimal levels.
Before you send another email, newsletter or offer to your list I suggest you do a few quick calculations.
Most email marketing programs will do this for you automatically, but if not here is what you need to find: What is your list size? The size of your list is not the issue.
You should be doing these checks at least once a month whether you have 10 people or 100,000 people on your list.
Know the size from check to check so you can determine it has grown and how much.
What is your unsubscribe rate? This is how many people have opted-out.
People will opt-out of your list and this is not necessary a bad thing.
It happens for a number of reasons including they are no longer interested, they are cutting down on the mail in their inbox or they have changed email addresses.
What is your opt-in number? How many people have opted-in since you last checked.
This is how much your list has grown.
If you don't have anyone new signing up then you might want to work on driving more people to your site using great content and social media or JV Partners.
What is your Spam rate? This is how many people have reported your emails as spam.
This is a bad thing.
If they don't want your content then you need to make it easy to opt-out of your email list.
If they mark you as spam often enough then you can either get the list suspended or be banned from your email marketing program.
This is a very serious problem that can result in loss of all or part of your email marketing list.
What is your open rate? This is how many people are opening your emails.
If the number is small this can indicate your list is sick or at the very least uninterested in what you have to say.
You will need to work on engaging your list so they will want to open what you are offering.
You can improve your open rate by offering great content without sales.
The more you sell to a list the smaller your open rate will be.
What is your click through rate? This is the number of people who click on a link in your email.
This can be back to your blog, a page on your website or an offer from a JV Partner.
This will typically be a percentage of your list.
MailChimp suggest that normal rates are between 1 to 6% depending on the industry.
This number is one of the best measures of engagement in your list.
If people are not clicking on the links you are providing especially if it is linked to your blog or other non-sales content then you need to work on building list engagement.
What is your bounce rate? This is the number of emails that have been bounced or have not been delivered by servers.
This can happen for a few different reasons including a closed or full email account or invalid email addresses.
Keep an eye on this number as they can negatively impact your list delivery rate.
If you have a very high number of bounces over time this can indicate that you have a sick list.
Bringing it all together Now that you have gathered the data lets bring it together and make sense of it.
I would suggest you create a spreadsheet with the above data as well as the percent of list growth.
Excel is one easy way to do this as you can enter the formulas and it have it figure the percent's for you.
Excel can also take the data and make graphs for a picture of your list over time.
Why is this is important? Tracking your list numbers lets you see if there is something not working or if there is a growing trend.
It forces you to pay attention to your followers and what they are telling you.
For example if you start a new campaign and notice you have a very high opt-out rate you can edit or tweak the emails in the marketing series to see if you get fewer opt-outs.
It gives you the data you need to be responsive to your list and fix any problems before they are too big.
Another example of using follower response to build your campaigns might result if you notice that one email you sent had a higher than normal open rate.
You may want to plan on writing a few more emails on this topic as your list is apparently very interested.
After all this is your customer base.
This is where your sales are coming from and who is following you on social media sites and whom you write to when you are creating content.
But many small business owners ignore the health of this list and as a result are not performing at optimal levels.
Before you send another email, newsletter or offer to your list I suggest you do a few quick calculations.
Most email marketing programs will do this for you automatically, but if not here is what you need to find: What is your list size? The size of your list is not the issue.
You should be doing these checks at least once a month whether you have 10 people or 100,000 people on your list.
Know the size from check to check so you can determine it has grown and how much.
What is your unsubscribe rate? This is how many people have opted-out.
People will opt-out of your list and this is not necessary a bad thing.
It happens for a number of reasons including they are no longer interested, they are cutting down on the mail in their inbox or they have changed email addresses.
What is your opt-in number? How many people have opted-in since you last checked.
This is how much your list has grown.
If you don't have anyone new signing up then you might want to work on driving more people to your site using great content and social media or JV Partners.
What is your Spam rate? This is how many people have reported your emails as spam.
This is a bad thing.
If they don't want your content then you need to make it easy to opt-out of your email list.
If they mark you as spam often enough then you can either get the list suspended or be banned from your email marketing program.
This is a very serious problem that can result in loss of all or part of your email marketing list.
What is your open rate? This is how many people are opening your emails.
If the number is small this can indicate your list is sick or at the very least uninterested in what you have to say.
You will need to work on engaging your list so they will want to open what you are offering.
You can improve your open rate by offering great content without sales.
The more you sell to a list the smaller your open rate will be.
What is your click through rate? This is the number of people who click on a link in your email.
This can be back to your blog, a page on your website or an offer from a JV Partner.
This will typically be a percentage of your list.
MailChimp suggest that normal rates are between 1 to 6% depending on the industry.
This number is one of the best measures of engagement in your list.
If people are not clicking on the links you are providing especially if it is linked to your blog or other non-sales content then you need to work on building list engagement.
What is your bounce rate? This is the number of emails that have been bounced or have not been delivered by servers.
This can happen for a few different reasons including a closed or full email account or invalid email addresses.
Keep an eye on this number as they can negatively impact your list delivery rate.
If you have a very high number of bounces over time this can indicate that you have a sick list.
Bringing it all together Now that you have gathered the data lets bring it together and make sense of it.
I would suggest you create a spreadsheet with the above data as well as the percent of list growth.
Excel is one easy way to do this as you can enter the formulas and it have it figure the percent's for you.
Excel can also take the data and make graphs for a picture of your list over time.
Why is this is important? Tracking your list numbers lets you see if there is something not working or if there is a growing trend.
It forces you to pay attention to your followers and what they are telling you.
For example if you start a new campaign and notice you have a very high opt-out rate you can edit or tweak the emails in the marketing series to see if you get fewer opt-outs.
It gives you the data you need to be responsive to your list and fix any problems before they are too big.
Another example of using follower response to build your campaigns might result if you notice that one email you sent had a higher than normal open rate.
You may want to plan on writing a few more emails on this topic as your list is apparently very interested.
Source...