An Introduction toE-mail Tracking

February 20, 2009

Why we track

• To learn more about our audience

• To see what techniques work

• As part of an end-to-end tracking tactic to measure success

• To make decisions that improve communications

How do we make decisions with the data?• The data can be compared with similar

communications to other groups– How does the communication stack up against

others?

• For publications, or varied communications to the same group, look longitudinally– What trends are identifiable over time?

What decisions might we make?

• Content changes

• Design changes

• Frequency changes

• Add or drop a publication or channel

Consider that…

• Audience engagement drops over time

• Audiences themselves change over time

• List hygiene can help

What is tracked

• Links, or “clickthrough tracking”

• Message opens

Clickthrough tracking

• Clickthrough tracking changes links

• Links take the recipient/clicker to another system

• That system records the click

• The system redirects the user to their final destination

Clickthrough example

• We want users to visit umn.edu

• We enable clickthrough tracking

• The system produces a different URL

• Lyris might producehttp://ecommunication.umn.edu/t/93781/4795559/41608/0/

Clickthrough data

• Total clicks

• Unique clicks – number of links clicked by different recipients (the same user clicking a link repeatedly is only one unique click)

• Click rate – unique/#recipients

• Total, unique, and rate also done by URL

Open tracking

• Opens are tracked by an invisible image

• The image is given a unique URL to identify the recipient who opened the message

• A clickthrough implies the message was opened

Open tracking’s shortcoming

• Recipients must load images (or click a tracked link) to be counted as having opened a message

• Most e-mail clients won’t automatically load images from senders that are not recognized

• The text part of the message doesn’t contain images; <Mascot>Mail users

Open data

• Total opens

• Unique opens – a recipient opening the message more than once isn’t counted repeatedly

• Open rate - unique/#recipients

What to use?

• Clickthrough tracking is a better measure

• Clickthroughs measure ‘real’ action on the part of recipients

• Open tracking is useful for trends over time

Varied messages, varied results

• How you craft your message impacts clicks

• If the message enumerates everything recipients need to know, why would someone click?

• There’s a middle ground (e.g., U of M Brief)

• Is the audience opt-in or opt-out?

• Who is the audience?

• What day and time was it sent?

What is a good clickthrough rate?

• No single standard

• Opt-in vs. opt-out groups vary greatly– Opt-in is preferred

• We don’t have good data internally

• One source* showed 1st half of 2008 data with mean click rates varying from 0.78% for one industry to 6.66% for another

*mailer mailer Email Marketing Metric Report 1H 2008

http://www.mailermailer.com/metrics.rwp

To summarize

• Don’t just send, track, analyze, improve

• Look at your data

• Make decisions based on your data

What are you doing?

• Speakers, questions, discussion

• Laura Johnson, Marketing Communications, University Relations

• Adam Overland and Matt Sumera, Internal Communications, University Relations

• Others? (feel free)

U of M Brief tracking data