Tracking, Assessment Ongoing Email Marketing Campaigns

 

Written By: Andy Ogg, CTIE Editor and Marketing Director – Travel Professional NEWS®

 

 

We have arrived at Part 3 of the Email Marketing series and in this final part, we are going to be diving into the power of data review, tracking and assessment of your Email Marketing strategy. Has it been worth it? What results has it brought to you? Have you seen increases in sales?

 

In this 3 part series, we ill be looking at:

Email Marketing 101 – The Basics of Email Marketing as a Travel Professional in 2019
Email Marketing 102 – Creation, Design and Execution of an Email Campaign
Email Marketing 103 – Tracking, Assessment and Ongoing Email Campaigns

 

Tracking of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

In Part 2, we discussed the different possible vendors that are available in today’s times. No matter which platform you have chosen, tracking analysis should be readily available and should contain:

 

Email Opens

This looks at the number of times an email was opened by a recipient. Many vendors of email marketing offer a further segment which can be referred to as Unique Opens. What’s the difference?

 

Unique Opens

This looks at a particular recipient opening the email the first time. Subsequent opens after that initial open become classified under Opens. In many cases, your Opens should be a higher number than your Unique Opens as, in most cases, people typically open an email of interest more than just one time while in their inbox.

 

Click Throughs

No matter the number, these are the recipients that were intrigued by your messaging and wanted to engage further with it. No matter the content, it drove a recipient to learn more and engage with your messaging. The Click Through number is a great number to pay close attention to.

 

Unique Click Throughs

Similar to Unique Opens, Unique Click Throughs look at the first Click Through of a recipient. With the available data tracking today, a Click Through is usually only unique on it’s first click, no matter the device a person utilizes. To further clarify, if a recipient of one of your messages opens it on their mobile device and then again on their desktop computer, only the initial mobile Click Through will be considered Unique.

 

Location

This is a great way to create a more refined subset of your subscription list, especially if there is a hot spot location that becomes apparent. Watching the locations of your engagement will not only help you in your message creation, but also in targeted marketing.

 

For example, if you have a hot spot forming in the state of Texas, offering hot deals on cruises departing from the state could not only be timely, but also useful to your recipients looking for a cruise.

 

Devices

Most of the vendors in todays offerings will offer you insights into the actual operating system and device a recipient uses. While you begin your email marketing campaign, these statistics are not crucial, the more data that collects, the more you can work with it. For example, if your list is showing a 70% open on mobile devices, it would be a great idea to structure your messages to be more mobile friendly meaning less text, more images and an easy to scroll design.

 

Contrary, if the opposite occurs and you see most of your subscription list using a desktop computer, structuring your messages with more text, information and links, could prove to be more fruitful. While the number of mobile users viewing emails continues to decrease, recent studies show that the percentage of emails are still opened on a desktop computer.

 

Assessment of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

With the data being collected on each email, it will assimilate quickly. A good thought is to review and assess your email marketing data at least once a month. With each email you send, the data will change, allowing you the opportunity to customize your creative design to maximize each and every mailing.

 

Assessing and reviewing your email marketing campaigns isn’t crucial but it’s highly recommended to maximize your efforts and time spent in creation and execution.

 

Ongoing Campaigns of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

With the tools mentioned in Part 1 and Part 2, many of your emails will change, in both color, design, links, content and so on but with data collection, you’ll soon see a similarity. Whether it’s a design, structure, content or call to action, locating the “key” to success for your list will allow you to replicate and achieve even more success in your efforts.

 

Make sure to utilize the data, trends and content at your disposable to ensure that each message has value, information and tools for your subscribers. Focus on those items and success is sure to follow.

 

As you can see, there are a lot of parts that make up a successful email marketing campaign and the list keeps on growing as technology and digital marketing grow in popularity and use. A successful email marketing campaign will undoubtedly improve your business in a multitude of ways including brand exposure, educating of your services and increased sales. Thank you for joining me in this fun 3 Part series!