Lies, Darned Lies and E-Marketing

By Sarah Eaton

In the old days, to be a top-notch marketing professional, you had to possess qualities most frequently associated with soothsayers. Intuition was key. It helped if you knew some ancient magic and could predict the future.

The worst part was that you couldn't really tell what was working, so you spread yourself thin and hoped something — anything — worked.

Nowadays marketing professionals can describe themselves as both mystics and mathematicians. Now we have numbers rolling off spreadsheets and coming out of our ears.

When it comes to newsletters, there are certain numbers we're fed continuously. We cling to these numbers like we're drowning. (If they go away, we might be forced to consult runes and draw archaic symbols in the dust again.)

Now that we have numbers, we don't need anything else. Numbers don't lie. They are numbers, strong and solid and true. These numbers speak to us of our success or failure.

The above paragraph is unquestionably true, but only if you add the word "accurate" before the word "numbers" each time.

The trouble with measurement in the e-marketing world is that everything is so blooming complex. There are so many behind-the-scenes variables that go into creating that poor little number on your spreadsheet that taking it at face value doesn't really do it justice.

   Delivery Rates

This might be the most gnarled number of all. It seems like it should be simple: Was the email delivered or wasn't it?

Unfortunately, there's a little something called a false positive.

Anti-spam software or settings in your readers' email clients may cause your message to be junked or deleted before your reader ever lays eyes on it. If that happens, it could still look like the email was successfully delivered on your ESP's (Email Service Provider's) end.

What can you do to prevent false positives?

• Work to make sure your content doesn't contain spam triggers and that your HTML coding complies with standards.
• Work with a quality ESP; the people on their end are forever anticipating deliverability trends and working with ISPs to ensure a greater percentage of deliverability.
• Encourage your readership to add the address you use to send your e-communications to their address book. That pretty much guarantees that your message will land in your readers' inboxes.

   Open Rates

What's so difficult to understand about open rates? People either open your email, or they don't — except, of course, that most open rates are measured by whether graphics are downloaded.

That means that all of the cautious folks on your list (those that have their security settings on high) are not standing up to be counted by your tracking software.

So, at this point, when you're looking at your data, you have quite an interesting conundrum.

Imagine this scenario. An individual, according to the data, appears to have received the newsletter but not opened it. What does that mean?

It could be one of three things:

1. They really did receive the newsletter and really didn't open it.
2. They received the newsletter and opened it, but because they didn't download the graphics, it wasn't measured.
3. They didn't even get the newsletter because it got trapped in a local spam filter (false positive).

A lot of the value of a good newsletter can be found in the design, so why wouldn't people want to download your graphics? Because, for all they know, you could have sent a scary virus-toting email to them.

There's a simple way to get around that, too. Make sure your list is truly permission-based. If the people to whom you are sending your newsletters know who you are, they will also know that you would never, but never, send them a scary virus-toting email.

In the words of the wise philosopher Homer Simpson, "People can come up with statistics to prove anything; 14 percent of people know that."

That's something to keep in mind when you look at your numbers. They're not lying to you, necessarily; the numbers mean well. It's just that they're complicated little guys.

If you do what you can in terms of ensuring deliverability and publishing your e-newsletters only to people who want to receive it, you'll go a long way toward making your numbers appear as they really are.

Sarah Eaton is the Managing Editor for BeTuitive Publishing. Sarah brings her strong gut sense for business, an interest in marketing analytics and a respect for the power of the written word to BeTuitive. Check out her blog: BeTuitive: Actionable Results for the latest e-marketing strategies.

Copyright © 2007 BeTuitive Marketing

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