When you use an ESP like Mobilize Mail you get statistics per eDM (email marketing) campaign.  These statistics let you know what the recipients did with the message you sent to them i.e. did they open it (download the images) and did they click any links in the eDM.

These statistics are a great start in understanding if email marketing directly results in sales for your business – but there’s a lot more measurement to be done to identify if an actual sale was directly attributed to an eDM campaign.

Your eDM landing pages (the pages recipients click through to from the email message) need to have Google Analytics (GA) code on them so all activity on the page is measurable.

The measurement available when GA is set up correctly can let you know if your New Zealand business is getting sales directly from your email marketing.  How this works….

Before you deliver your eDM to your recipients add Google UTM tags – this is where you do it in Mobilize Mail’s MMAPP3 ‘Set Delivery’ tab.

Here is how it would look in your GA account……see the entry for ‘newsletter’

If you have set up goals for these landing page you will be able to track clicks off these pages too.  The landing pages may display product for sale or quote requests for services.  All action taken by the visitor on the landing page can be tracked and measured – and although GA will not tell you who the visitor is you’ll be able to work this out via your eDM click statistics – where all recipients who have clicked the landing page link are identified.

Tracking sales off your eDMs is achievable and will prove how effective your sales promotions really are and if your email marketing is generating sales. Magic!

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This blog post lets you know how your business can use our TXN – transaction emails service for your website or business systems emails.

By way of acknowledgement of action taken by a visitor on your website you may send them a receipt email. An example of visitor action is – registering to an event you’re hosting or downloading a free report you’re giving away.

These transaction emails are not likely to tracked for open rate and click rate and they are usually plain text and without any ‘call to action’ requests.

However as a supplier of email marketing solutions we realise that every type of email communication a business has with a visitor, client or prospect is an opportunity to deepen the relationship.

With our TXN – transaction emails service your business can track the open and click rate of website emails and the presentation of the transactional email message can be a professionally presented in HTML with all the bells and whistles normally only afforded to eDMs (email marketing messages).

Why would my business want or need this service you may be thinking.  You’re used to email marketing campaigns and eagerly awaiting the statistics that present the response to your newsletter or eDM promoting an event or product.  Well with all your website emails getting the same treatment as an eDM – you can get equally excited about the response taken by your website visitors off your transaction emails.

As we know every opportunity to communicate with a client, prospect or advocate of your New Zealand business must be taken seriously. Not only is the content of communication very important, how it is presented and what action can occur from it is too.   And all going to plan it may lead to more business therefore getting more from your website transaction emails has got to be good for you.

There are some techie reasons too for using a professional ESP (like Mobilize Mail) to deliver your transactional emails and you learn more here

Mobilize Mail’s new ESP system called MMAPP3 has a nifty feature that allows you to turn your eDM (email marketing message) into an AR (auto message) as soon as the eDM has been delivered to your email list.

Why is this feature useful?  How can your business use the Auto Responder module in MMAPP3 to achieve better communication with prospects and secure more customers?  These are the questions we will also answer in this blog post.

Our theory on the lack of use of the AR is that most of us do not understand what it can achieve when activated in professional ESP systems.  Our experience with ARs is setting up the ‘out of office’ or ‘gone on holiday back in 2 weeks’ auto responser in our Outlook or personal email application like gmail.com etc.

In professional ESP systems like our MMAPP3 the Auto Responder feature can be used to achieve more regular communication and measure action taken by specific email recipients.

Mobilize Mail has gone to great lengths to offer a full feature auto responder module in MMAPP3 that has as many features as our usual email campaign module, and we developed this module for you on purpose.

The easiest way to get started with ARs is by ticking the box that will turn your eDM (latest newsletter, or weekly update etc) into an AR after delivery.

Any recipient added to the email list (either you manually added them or they signed up via your list subscription form) after your initial email campaign delivery will receive your eDM via the AR feature.  You can set the AR to trigger the delivery of the eDM on a day and time of your choosing.

Now your eDM is an AR you can manage it in the AR module.  In this module you can view the AR statistics e.g. open and click rate,  change the delivery time and suspend the AR or change AR message contents.

The action of turning your eDM into a AR allows your new subscribers to get your latest eDM without needing to wait for your next email campaign.  The AR is achieved by a simple tick of the box and rewards your business with immediate communication with your new subscriber who may be a customer or prospect.

To respond faster and more effectively with your network of prospects, customers and advocates consider setting up a series of ARs.

The series can release an AR at a set time and day and follow on ARs in the series can also be delivered in sequence. You can ascertain who has taken action and when and this assists your business and the actions it takes next.  Email marketing can be a lot more than the once a month delivery of a newsletter when ARs are deployed.

There is also a reluctant to look at statistics that are presented as numbers if you are not a numbers person.  Creative people liking words and visuals are not excited by lots of numbers however it’s these people who create your business marketing messages so we’ve come up with a solution in our new system MMAPP3 to please the creative folk.

MMAPP3 has lots of visuals in its statistics module so when you view your eDM campaigns you can look at graphs not numbers – yay says the creatives!  To also assist our clients we offer an eDM Review Service (email advisory service) where we add  commentary on the results.  We also compare your campaigns with earlier campaigns and find out what you want to know – i.e. what’s important to your business.

Our team reviews your eDM campaign statistics and presents the information in a document that is perfect for understanding the impact of your message and how it compared with your other eDM campaigns.

Measurement essentially lets you know how you’re going – are you on track and reaching your email marketing goals?  If you don’t set email marketing goals you can get value from knowing which eDM campaigns faired well and learn what content is desired by your recipients.

We recommend a quick review of your email marketing statistics every month and a more intensive review every quarter.

It is very important to spend your time wisely and get the highest open and click rate you possibly can get so take a look at the Statistics module in your MMAPP3 account – review a new message 24 hours after delivery and again review it again a week later.  You’ll be presently surprised by the movement in statistics over that time.

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When Mobilize Mail tests eDMs for clients as part of our premium service (business eDM campaign management) we are some times surprised at just how much browsers play an important role in the rendering of email HTML.

The email application and the browser needs careful consideration. Viewing your eDM from your yahoo email app on a Firefox browser may differ from viewing it in IE.

We are in the business of ensuring our premium service clients’ eDMs view well in all the commonly used email applications and broswers – but we use a dedicated software tool to achieve testing perfection.  If you are getting a new template or eDM designed for your business ensure a through testing phase is completed before you use it for your business.  If you are a client of Mobilize Mail – we will test your eDM or template thoroughly for you.

Over the past couple of years Chrome has become a strong player in the browser market with StatCounter (a free web counter) reporting last year that Google Chrome has outpaced Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

The increasing use of gmail as an email application has got a lot to do with Chrome’s steady rise to the top of browsers.

While this information may seem somewhat irrelevant – it is not when it comes to the presentation of your eDMs as it is important to ensure they present well in Chrome and gmail.

Essentially all eDMs where the template has been changed, images and tables etc added should be thoroughly tested before put to use by your business.  Businesses are judged on the presentation of their messages so testing is a fundamental part of managing your email marketing campaign.

>>>>NEW email marketing in 2013……eBook for you click here

>>>>Share our Flyer – click here

If you love measurement and viewing lots of statistics our new MMAPP3 (as our techies call it) is pushing all the right buttons.

MMAPP3 is designed to empower our clients to make even smarter choices to secure more business via their email marketing campaigns.

In development for many months Mobilize Mail’s MMAPP3 is now in production and it is answering our clients prayers by delivering more on many different levels.

While we go through the steady migration from our legacy system to MMAPP3 our developers continue to add more features.   I’ll provide a quick overview of some of the new features that I am using now and I will provide a regular blog post update on new features as they are developed.

The new UI (User Interface) has more buttons and it is a lot more intuitive.

A Spam Checker function – check your message for words that may affect the safe delivery of your email to your recipients

Split Campaigns – do you sometimes find it hard to choose between a couple of subject headings?  With our split campaign feature you can test and compare two messages with different content or different subject heading with a small section of your mailing list before selecting to send the winning campaign to the remainder of your list.

Statistics - User friendly presentation of email campaign statistics is a must for any email marketing system.  With MMAPP3 the usual ESP statistics are provided and mapped to graphs as well as transfer to lists in your account and exporting.  Comparing statistics over the duration of the campaign, and comparing the campaign with earlier email marketing campaigns is a feature of MMAPP3.

We have enhanced our message statistics search feature for faster access to earlier campaigns and results are easily translated into print format.

Over the next few weeks I will let you know the new features I am putting to good use and how they can assist you with your  business email marketing campaigns.

Part 1 in the series provided an understanding of why New Zealand businesses need to know exactly where their customers and prospects hang out online and why they need an active yet professional social presence to attract followers.

In part 2 we worked out which social media networks work well for New Zealand businesses and in this final part we focus on how to keep the high value followers and gain more momentum with sharing information online.

Question: How do we know the information we share in social networks is relevant to our intended audience (i.e. our customers and prospects)?

Answer: A quick review of who is following your business will give you a good indication of whether you’ve hit or missed the mark with your content.

For your business the quality of the follower is better than the quantity.  In some social media networking sites where perception is greater than reality having more followers can appear more important however for your business we’d recommend investing your time and effort in the networks that provide lots of feedback and measurement.  The goal of maintaining social media profiles for your business is to keep your existing customers happy and attract new prospects.

Providing content online is a cost to your business therefore you want your effort and investment rewarded with lots of relevant interaction from your followers that may turn in to business.  To understand the effectiveness of the content you are sharing the online asset (blog, social media network) must be able to provide some measurement (e.g. statistics on views, clicks etc) so you know what you’re sharing with your followers is working as desired and if the results suggest otherwise  you are empowered to change the information you share to achieve your business goals.

“Garbage in, Garbage out” – this is a techie term and is described in Wikipedia like this:

Garbage in, Garbage out is used primarily to call attention to the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data (“garbage in”) and produce nonsensical output (“garbage out”)

Over time it is easy to lose focus and share whatever is easy to source rather than what will get the appropriate response from your followers hence measurement is a vital component of managing your social assets.  What we’ve identified over the years is not all social networks are equal – some get a better response from photos and others from 400 word articles.

In review of our own social presence – the content we put on our Facebook page (Facebook.com/businesstalk) is not appropriate for our blogs (PropertyBlogs/BusinessBusinessHub etc) and too much of our blog content on our Facebook page reduces the interaction we wish to achieve from our Facebook followers so it is important to avoid Garbage in, garbage out and target your intended audience appropriately in their social network of choice.

Your business therefore needs to work smarter at sharing appropriate content and assessing it’s impact over time.  We recommend analysing who is following you every three months and compare to earlier periods.

Too much of the same content may turn away the audience you are seeking or it may appropriately cull it – much like a sales funnel.  There is no one rule for all when it comes to sharing information in blogs and social networks and your business goals will more than likely differ from the goals of other companies.

Therefore observing your competitors online is worthwhile insofar as it will provide a benchmark for your success and if you struggling to made headway contact us we actively manage our own networks as well as provide our client with services including copy writing, blog implementation and management, all with a single focus – to growing your marketing database for effective email and social marketing.

>>>>NEW email marketing in 2013……eBook for you click here

>>>>Share our Flyer - click here

For New Zealand businesses Facebook, Twitter, and if your business is B2B then you’ll need to be on LinkedIn and of course Google Plus.  That’s four business profiles.

Your business also needs be found by Google Search engines and dynamic or ‘magnetic content’ is required – ensure you are running a blog on your business domain.

Do you have these basic digital assets set up for your business? – If not this is your starting point for your business to get more from your marketing 2013.

We recommend setting up a business blog – publishing your content on it and ideally using software like our Campaignhub to broadcast your blog posts to your social profiles and possibly our CSN network (30,000) too.

Essentially you can not measure what is not there.  If you don’t have a good solid foundation of assets in the popular digital channels your business is potentially missing out on customers or at the very least you’re likely to be spending more money than necessary to reach your customers.

Marketing spend that is measurable provides you with the power to elect where to dedicate the effort and $$ to get the maximum return for your business.

We know online now rules over traditional media channels and online is threatening traditionally offline businesses e.g. Retail is a sector that is getting lots of attention recently with online shops threatening their very existence.   So while many businesses have been slow to get a good online presence over and above a website – they too need to become smarter, evolve and reach out to interact with their customers – where their customers are hanging out.

This next comment may please many of you if you’re not Facebook fans – your customers may not all by hanging out on Facebook.

We’ve noticed lots of our customers love our blogs: BusinessBlogs, PropertyBlogs and even our Mobilize Mail Blog gets a good work out.  So while we post lots of information on our social media profiles we put the most effort into the quality of the information we publish on our blogs and from our blogs the quality content is broadcasted to our social profiles via our Campaignhub software.  This is how our customers prefer to interact with us.

Therefore once you have your digital presence set up and they are gaining momentum with new followers and good content then you can assess their popularity via measurement and the control of your marketing spend and effort is in your hands.

>>>>NEW email marketing in 2013……eBook for you click here

>>>>Share our Flyer - click here

With more emails hitting your recipients’ inBoxes than ever before your email campaigns need to be sharp, professional and deliver results for your business.

Download our new eBook – email marketing in 2013.

In our book you will discover valuable tips on email design, content, planning and measurement.

All articles were personally written by us and we hope they provide you with inspiration and ideally motivation to do more with your email campaigns this year.