subject: How To Tell If Your Email Marketing is Working And What To Do If It Isn't [print this page] How To Tell If Your Email Marketing is Working And What To Do If It Isn't
If you have signed up to receive emails from other internet marketers then one look at your inbox will tell you just how popular this form of communication really is.
Using this marketing tool in your own business should result in increased sales but how do you really tell if it is working at all? Even if it is working, how to you know that it is being used to its full potential and is there anything you could do to make it even more effective?Another point to remember is the possibility that your email campaign could actually be harming your sales and this is something which must be avoided at all costs.
Perhaps the main thing you should do is to have an overall email strategy in place for all of your marketing campaigns. This should include anunderstanding of exactly what you wish to achieve from the email campaign, how you intend to achieve it and how you can effectively review the results to determine whether it is working.
The worst case scenario would be where your email campaign is not working at all but where you have put absolutely no monitoring in place to pick up on this.Perhaps the campaign is so bad that it actually loses you customers and sends them running to the arms of your main competitors.Without any monitoring then the first you may know about this is when the sales figures dip and you have a lot of requests for people to unsubscribe from your list.
Perhaps you had hit upon the idea of a hard sell' campaign where you bombarded your list with far too many offers over too short a time frame.Now even though all the people you contacted had given you their permission to do so, a constant barrage of sales emails might be regarded as spam and the 'unsubscribe' requests are telling you that your customers have had enough.
Another reason a campaign may not be effective is where you had launched a new product or service which was not entirely relevant to your target audience. Here you may have failed to capitalize on sales but at least you should not have done too much damage to your reputation.
Similarly marketers who are tempted to buy bulk email lists may be disappointed by poor sales because those on the list are very often not targeted enough to want the products in your niche. Buying bulk email lists also carries the danger that you may be reported as a spammer so be very careful if you decide to use this method of email marketing.
One way to evaluate an email marketing campaign is to monitor sales results both before, during and after a particular campaign has been run.Clearly you are looking for an increase of sales during the campaign and your existing customer tracking software may be able to show you exactly which customers opened your emails and went on to buy from you.
Also pay close attention to any comments you may receive as a result of your emails because this customer feedback can be the most important evaluation tool of all. Perhapsa common theme may emerge from this feedback and this will highlight any areas you need to address to keep your customers happy.
Finally you don't have to just sit back and wait for your customers to contact you and simply asking for comments on your email campaign can have powerful results.Many customers will be only too willing to give you their views and you can use this information to provide a better service.
