We’re back with Part 2 of our 4-part series on tweaking your holiday email campaigns for extraordinary results!
In Part 1, we talked about the “usual suspects”: how to craft compelling subject lines and use personalization to get your subscribers’ attention during this very busy time of year. If you missed that post, you can read it here. And make sure you scroll all the way to the end – we included a handy list of key dates to help you with your holiday campaign planning!
And now, on to Part 2. It’s all about the importance of setting campaign goals before your emails go out, so you have a defined way to measure their success.
Ready? Get set… Goals!
Set ’em and don’t forget ’em!
If you don’t know how you’re going to evaluate the performance of your holiday email campaigns, you won’t have any idea whether or not they got the job done. Since you’re spending significant time and resources on those campaigns, you’d do well to define some solid criteria by which you can measure your success.
Start by setting basic goals: the number of clickthroughs, opens, and sales you want to see from each campaign.
You can use last year’s stats as a benchmark, or come up with some educated guesses if you don’t have access to that data. Also, be sure to do your research: take a look at industry benchmarks and see how you measure up. Set both “ordinary” goals and stretch goals to challenge yourself. The point is to have something to strive for.
We highly encourage you to do A/B split testing on all your emails.
This way, you’ll be able to see which version of your message resonated most with your readers, i.e.:
- Which version had the most opens?
- Which one translated into more sales?
Now cast your mind into the future. What else will you want to know once your holiday email campaigns have been deployed? How about:
- Which message/offer was most compelling for your readers?
- Which one got them to take the desired action?
- Which offers didn’t get the response you’d hoped for?
And that’s just for starters.
Clickstream reporting, interest tracking and purchase tracking will give you a more complete picture.
Email marketing platforms that provide in-depth reporting, such as ListManager, may also give you access to clickstream reporting, interest tracking and purchase tracking – invaluable data that can help you get an even more accurate measure of how well your campaigns performed.
That said, most ESPs enable you to immediately track campaign data, so you can use it right away to tweak your campaigns throughout the holiday season and beyond.
Based on the data you collect, you can make real-time adjustments to your campaign.
ListManager allows you to re-segment your list immediately after your email goes out. So, once you’ve sent your email and the data starts coming in, you can create one or more new segments based on the response you’re getting (opens, clicks, etc.). Then you can set up a triggered or sequential mailing for people who have responded in a particular way. For example, if they’ve abandoned their shopping cart, you could send them an email reminding them that their items are ready and waiting to be purchased. If they completed their purchase, you can send a message letting them know about complementary products. You get the idea – the possibilities are limited only by your imagination!
If you have questions or want to learn more about ListManager, or our other email marketing solutions, just give us a call at 877-263-8285.
How do you handle goal setting for your holiday email campaigns? Let us know in the comments below!
In the meantime, stay tuned for Part 3 of our series – coming soon!
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