Evaluating Email Marketing Channels

Email marketing is simply the act of transmitting a commercial message, usually to an extended group of individuals, by email. In its most broad sense, all email communication sent by a company to its customers, prospect, or existing customers can be viewed as email marketing. It constitutes the use of email to transmit advertisements, requests more information, solicits donations or sales, and so on. This type of marketing has grown tremendously in recent years, and its impact has been profound.

How do we define this concept, then, and what are some common characteristics of an effective marketing channel? The answer depends largely on how the term is used. In traditional marketing, the marketing channel refers to the actions and processes that lead up to the generation of revenue. For example, it would be an accountant who sends an invoice to a client. The invoice provides the client with the information that he needs to make a decision about the sale, including the amount and date of the sale.

However, many companies have begun to define email marketing differently. In particular, companies have begun to analyze the data provided by marketing channels to determine which activities produce the highest conversion rates. Some marketers focus on offering high-value offers that lead to purchases from their contacts. Others prefer to determine conversion rates based on the total number of impressions, which can be complicated because different clicks on ads result in different conversion rates. Still, others prefer to calculate conversion rates based solely on open rates, considering that no money is ever spent on a web page unless someone actually opens and views it.

Because these various approaches have different perspectives on the value of emails, marketers will often have differing views of what an email marketing campaign is or should be. What are the goals of these campaigns? To gain an understanding of how they are currently being measured, marketers have developed a variety of metrics that measure effectiveness across all channels.

Metrics can also help you understand how your customers react to your offerings. For example, did your email marketing campaigns result in responses that were highly positive or highly negative? Did the results of your email newsletters show a difference in responses as compared to your competitors’ results? Did those results show a statistically significant difference when comparing one email newsletter to another? These questions can provide insight into whether you need to add content or change up the nature of your campaigns.

When you are evaluating email marketing channels, there are some advantages and disadvantages to consider. The advantage of the one-shot campaign is its lack of repetition. There is no follow-up needed when sending out emails unless you choose to offer special deals or incentives to your subscribers. However, marketers must continually evaluate their channels to see if they are achieving the best results. Monitoring data will help you make the right moves to optimize your returns on investments.