Everything Marketers Need to Know About Analyzing Their Email Marketing Data Posted on December 10, 2020 by Smartboost Email marketing is growing in popularity, and for good reason. According to Hubspot, email generates $38 for every $1 spent, marketers who use segmented campaigns see as much as a 760% increase in revenue, and 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention. The list of email statistics goes on. But to see these amazing results, you need to know how to approach email marketing effectively and efficiently. One way to do this is to analyze your email marketing data. Here, we will share everything you need to know about email marketing data and how to use it to your advantage. The Importance of Data in Email Marketing Before we dive into how to analyze your email marketing data, let’s look at the importance of this data in the first place. Email marketing data helps us answer important questions about who is reading our emails and what they are doing afterwards. There are different types of data you can look at to draw these conclusions. A few of the important questions that email marketing data can help you answer include: How many people open your emails? How many people click your links? Which link gets the most clicks? When do people open your emails? How many people unsubscribe from your emails? How many people purchase your products after reading your email? What’s the average revenue per campaign sent? What’s the average revenue per subscriber? How many people convert into leads through email marketing? What’s the average ROI of the campaigns you send? Why do certain segments have higher open rates than others? Why do you get unsubscriptions on every transactional campaign with no discounts? Why do you get lower revenue per campaign during certain months of the year? As you can see, these are important questions to know when approaching email marketing to understand who your customers are, what kind of content they’re consuming, what actions they are taking after receiving an email, and how to optimize your campaigns to reach their goals. Types of Email Marketing Data Now that we understand the importance of email marketing data, let’s look at the different types of data, or the trinity approach to email marketing. Behavior Analysis The first part of the trinity of data is behavior analysis. Behavior analysis data answers the questions regarding what people are doing when they open your email (or their behavior). These include questions like: How many people open your emails? How many people click your links? Which link gets the most clicks? What time do people open your emails? How many unsubscribes do you get on average per email sent? These data points can usually be found in your email service provider’s platform. You can click on a campaign and see the behavioral stats that back it up. Outcome Metrics The next set of data points that marketers need to look at are called outcome metrics. These outcome metrics are a little more complicated than behavior analyses because they require a bit of detective work. Things like open rate can be pulled from an ESP, but things like conversion and revenue usually require a combination of tools, such as Google Analytics and heat mapping tools. For example, you can see in Google Analytics if someone went to a page on your site (such as a product page) via an email. Experience Analysis The final piece of email marketing data you need to be successful is experience analysis. Experience analysis seeks to get inside the heads of your customers and figure out why they do the things they do. Experience analysis answers questions like: Why do certain segments have higher open rates than others? Why do you get unsubscriptions on every transactional campaign with no discounts? Why do you get lower revenue per campaign during certain months of the year? Unfortunately, the answers to these questions can’t be found in a basic ESP or even Google Analytics. To really get this information, you need to dive into the field of neuromarketing. Some examples of tools that can help you gather this experience analysis include surveys, A/B testing emails, lab testing, and heuristic, or UX, evaluations of your site. How to Analyze Email Marketing Data The trinity approach to email marketing data will help you look beyond superficial metrics and establish strong conclusions. From there, you can make your email strategy more powerful. Now, let’s look at how to analyze this data effectively. The Problem of Data Overabundance When approaching email marketing data, it can be easy to get weighed down on everything available to you. From click-through rates to open rates to everything in between, there are so many metrics to look at. Getting bogged down in these details can lead to data overabundance, or having too much data to choose from and not knowing how to form conclusions accordingly. Instead, focus on the below tips to know what you need to improve based on your data. Data Analysis Tips We want to help you avoid data overabundance and focus on the metrics that matter. Here are some tips to help: Focus on the goals for each campaign There is no “holy metric” when it comes to analyzing email marketing campaigns. Instead, each campaign will have different goals. For example, a lead generation campaign will have different goals than eCommerce or brand awareness campaigns. Knowing what kind of email campaign you’re running will help you look at the right metrics and adjust as needed. Start with questions that answer knowledge gaps you have One of the best ways to analyze your email marketing data is to reverse-engineer your process by starting with questions first and then using the data to find the answers. These knowledge gaps will help you focus on just the points that are most important to you and your goals. For example, maybe you have an eCommerce website and you want to know which age demographic converts the most often. You might have questions about your customers’ age range, conversion rate, and which pages they visit on the site. You can then use these questions to guide your email campaign by A/B testing age demographics, tracking conversions, and looking at what pages (if any) each demographic visits after opening your email. Combine tools We talked earlier about combining tools to gather behavioral data, outcome metrics, and experience analysis. You can pull basic metrics, like open rates and click through rates, from your email service provider and if you want to dig deeper, you can use tools like Google Analytics, GetFeedback, CrazyEgg, and User Zoom. Define and segment your audience In one of the first statistics about email marketing that we shared, we talked about the importance of segmenting your audience, yet 42% of marketers still choose not to send targeted email messages. If possible, you should segment your audience to gain more insight and clean data. There are many ways to segment your lists, including: Geographic segmentation (location-based) Demographic segmentation (age, gender, occupation, etc.) Behavioral segmentation (transaction data, etc.) Tailor and time your message One of the easiest ways to improve your email marketing campaigns is to tailor and time your message to your audiences. Using the segments discussed above, you can tailor the message to each market to get the most out of your campaign. In addition, you should consider when your emails have the highest CTR. For example, Thursday mornings might be the most effective time to send your message for your unique audience (this will be different for everyone). Use benchmarks to guide your data Benchmarks will help guide your email marketing data because you will know what to expect. For example, benchmarks for a lifestyle brand will be much different than for a B2B brand. You will want to consider both brand benchmarks (what you’ve seen from email campaigns in the past) and industry benchmarks (what other people in your industry are seeing). This chart from Campaign Monitor has a large list of benchmarks for different industries. Conclusion Email marketing is a powerful strategy for marketers and knowing how to take a data-driven approach will make your campaigns more effective and efficient. By combining all three types of email marketing data and remembering the tips here, you can look at your data objectively and make strategic email marketing decisions.