Resolutions for 2004: Exercise more often, read more books, spend more time with significant others and improve email marketing performance. Sound familiar?

With the year coming to an end, now is the perfect time to look back at your email marketing efforts and see what worked, what didn't work and what steps are necessary to take your program to the next level.

Your look back should include:

• Analysis of key performance metrics
• Review of recipient feedback, surveys, Web site analytics
• Comparison against internal and relevant external benchmarks
• Review of creative/content

After completing your review or internal audit, now it is time to map at your improvement plan for the coming year. Elements of your plan should include:

• List building and maintenance
• Creative
• Segmentation and personalization
• Testing
• Reporting and analysis

In this article we'll focus on what to collect and analyze in your year-end review - and provide some links to past articles and tools to help take your program up a notch in the coming year.

Analysis of Key Performance Metrics

Your first step in the annual review process is to pull together in a spreadsheet the campaign or newsletter results for the year (or shorter period if you distributed an overwhelming number of messages). Include all relevant statistics from opens, clicks, referrals, bounces, unsubscribes, spam complaints, etc. Once assembled, calculate your overall averages and determine the best and worst performing message for each metric.

What metrics should you analyze? The basics such as open, click-through, bounce rates cross all types of email programs. But beyond the standard metrics, ecommerce, publishers and corporate newsletter publishers should look at measures more relevant to their goals and objectives.

Depending on your objectives, sample metrics include:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Click to open rate (# of unique clicks/# of unique opens)
• Bounce rate
• Delivery rate (emails sent - bounces)
• Unsubscribe rate
• Referral rate ("send-to-a-friend)
• Number of or percent spam complaints
• Net subscribers (# subscribers + new subscribers) - (bounces + unsubscribes)
• Subscriber retention (# subscribers - bounces - unsubscribes/# subscribers)
• Web site actions (number of visits to a specific Web page or pages)
• Percent unique clicks on a specific recurring link(s)
• Number of orders, transactions, downloads or actions
• Percent orders, transactions, downloads or actions of emails sent or delivered
• Total revenue
• Average order size
• Conversion rate (number of actions/unique click throughs)
• Average dollars per email sent or delivered

Factors to look at include:

• Priority Metrics - What are the most important metrics for your email marketing program? If you are a retailer it is probably things like conversion rate, number of orders/emails sent, average order size, etc. For newsletter publishers it might be net subscriber growth, referrals and open rates. For companies sending corporate newsletters it could be click-through percentages on specific/recurring topics/links and subsequent conversions to information or demo requests. The key, however, is that you determine the critical measures of success, and not simply focus on open and click-through rates.
• Consistency - Were your key metrics consistently within a certain percent range, for example, 42 to 45 percent open rates? If your open rates varied significantly then you might have had some delivery issues or variations in your from line and subject lines may have confused recipients? Wide variances in click-through rates would likely suggest that the relevance of your article topics, products, offers or content varied significantly.
• Highs and Lows - Find your message highs and lows for each key metric and compare to your overall average. If the low or high varies dramatically, then there is likely a lesson - positive or negative - to be uncovered. An off-the-charts conversion rate, for example, would suggest that a promotional email fired on all pistons - timing, subject line, design, offer/price, product relevance, Web site content, etc.
• Message Metrics Variances - What if you have a combination of great and horrible metrics resulting from a single message. For example, you might have a low open rate, but very high click-to-open rate. This can happen when you have a weak subject line, a delivery problem or change your from address, for example, but the message content has very high relevance (offer, content, etc.). If you find this happening, focus in fixing the cause of the problem and continuing and optimizing the positive trait.

Review of Recipient Feedback, Surveys, Web Site Analytics, Sales Statistics

If you have a feedback email account, review the emails you've received throughout the year looking for both positive and negative comments. If you receive few feedback emails, you may not be making it easy for readers to solicit feedback, or it just maybe that you haven't established enough of a "personality" that motivates your readers to respond.

Have you conducted any reader surveys during the year? If so, what were the key findings upon which you can act in the coming year? Next, analyze your Web site statistics. If you publish a newsletter, which types of articles are most visited on your Web site? If you are selling online, which product categories are most visited and which products and categories produced the most orders and revenue.

Comparison Against Internal and Relevant External Benchmarks

If your organization produces more than one email newsletter or campaign, see if your fellow email marketers will share their data so you can benchmark key metrics. Additionally, comparing your performance to "industry averages" can provide confirmation that your program is on track, or in need of some first aid. As I've written before in "Email Metrics: Lies, Damn Lies", be careful when comparing against these industry averages. Use them as general guides - not as precise benchmarks that you should compare your efforts to. That being said, there are a few good sources out there of industry statistics, including:

• Emarketer
• Email Sherpa 

Review of Creative/Content

Next, pull together samples of your actual messages and subject lines. With the above benchmarks and analysis in mind, review each of the following creative areas looking for what approach drove the best results:

• Subject Line - Length, tone, style and whether you included company or publication name
• Layout/Format/Length - Did you change formats? Compare the various formats over time - not just one or two messages? Did you switch from full articles to teasers, or postcard to a multiple product format?
• Content Style - Do some newsletters have more personality than others? Is your style full of humor, or just the facts and conservative in nature?
• Segmentation/Personalization - Did you send special messages that had a higher level of personalization or segmentation than others? Were the results significantly different?

Review of Competitors and Best Practice Examples

Finally, pull together samples of your email messages from your competitors and your favorite newsletters and campaigns - no matter what industry. What things knocked your socks off - subject line style, design, personality and style of writing, great approach to offers, etc?

Next Steps

Hopefully that more than covers everything on the intake front. So take the next month or so to assemble all of this information, conduct your analysis and reflect on the "big picture." Then establish your goals for the coming year and map out your improvement roadmap. 

Good luck with your review and planning process!

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