Tracking your marketing emails

When you send out an email marketing campaign, you’ll probably want to know how well received it has been. After all, that is one of the advantages of using email instead of snail mail for your marketing. How many paper mailshots have you sent that haven’t even been opened…? I don’t know either!

Using email tracking, you can not only find out who has opened your (HTML) emails, but you can also find out what links have been clicked (across both plain text and HTML emails) within your campaign.

This is incredibly useful for two reasons, firstly you will now know how many people on your list are actually opening your emails and secondly you will know what sort of links are appealing to people.

Tracking email openings

Unfortunately, you can only reliably track the opening of HTML emails. An HTML email by its very nature will at some point have to go and ask a server somewhere for some sort of data (most commonly, an image). Software can recognise these requests and use them to figure out that an email has been opened. This technique can then be cleverly adapted to put in a unique request for some data for each recipient opening the email. That way, you can see exactly who has opened the email.

You can also see when a user opened an email, which could potentially be very useful information for marketing purposes. It could be used to determine what day of the week or time of the day to send future campaigns.

There is a slight flaw with this method; if a recipient forwards their email to 20 friends, each time a friend opens it, it’ll be counted as an opening from the original recipient. A bit of common sense when analysing your statistics is required! I’m sure you wouldn’t be complaining that your campaign is being forwarded on anyway, it means more people are reading it!

Because plain text emails are simply text, they don’t make any requests to the server, so it’s a lot harder to track openings of emails. Links in plain text emails can still be tracked, so if you notice a recipient has opened a link but their opening of the email hasn’t been logged, it’s likely that they’ve opened the email as plain text.

It can be quite exciting to have a look at your statistics after sending out a campaign, however, don’t expect everyone on your list to open your email, it’s often only around 20% of your list of recipients that are recordered as opening the email (possibly less, if there are a lot of plain text recipients) but it’s still far more cost effective to send to 1000 recipients and have 200 people open it than to send out 200 paper mails!

You could use the open statistics to collect a new list of recipients, specifically the ones that didn’t open your campaign. You could then send them another one a couple of days later that starts with something like “We noticed you didn’t open your last email, maybe we can tempt you with these better offers?”.

Tracking link clicks

As well as whether the email has been opened, you can also track what links people have clicked on (and again, when they clicked them).

It’s a similar method to tracking the openings. Basically, the server sending out the email campaign acts as a stepping stone to the recipient’s route to the destination link. The email campaign’s link doesn’t go directly to the intended URL, instead it goes back to the email sending software. The email sending software recognises the unique request, logs a “click”, checks which URL it maps to, and then sends the user on to their destination… in an instant! It’s a bit like passing through a turnstile.

Finding out what your recipients are clicking on can be very useful. Lets say you’ve sent out a marketing email with three different offers in it, with a link for each to a page on your website with more details about that offer. A quick review of your link statistics could tell you which offer of the three was clicked on the most. Knowing this information can help you decide on offers for future campaigns.

Going slightly deeper, you could target individuals by using links to determine their interests, and then send them follow-up emails with details of products/services that are tailored to those interests.

All the links in your campaign are automatically tracked if you have tracking turned on, so you can also use link tracking to see if and when recipients have unsubscribed themselves from your email campaign (and if you send a lot, which campaign prompted them to unsubscribe could be useful information).

You can also see if and when users have clicked the “webversion” link.

The webversion link, when clicked, opens a copy of the recipient’s email in their browser. It is usually presented as “If you are having trouble reading this email, click here to open it in your browser” (because HTML email is extremely delicate and you need to know all of its quirks to get it to display correctly across all the incarnations of email client) and is very wise to include.

If you find that your webversion link is getting a lot of clicks, then it’s quite likely there’s a technical problem somewhere in your campaign, and something you’ll probably need to get fixed before the next one goes out!

It’s worth noting that you can make a webversion uniqe to each user, in which case all the tracking will still work even if a user is viewing their email in their browser.

A quick note about the look of the links themselves. They’re obviously dependent on the style of the rest of the email, but you probably do want them to be prominent. The standard is blue, underlined text (when using a white background), but there is a bit of leeway, it’s certainly not something to overlook!

An example…

Over the Christmas period we decided to send out an E-Christmas card to our colleagues. It was a bit of fun, but also contained a few tracked links. You might remember receiving it… if so, we hope the turkey still has pride of place on the mantlepiece!

The email in its original state can be found here. Note the code to invoke the first name into the text to give the email a bit of personalisation (you might find me talking about that in another blog entry!), there’s also the webversion link which won’t work as it’s automatically generated at the time of sending to make each user’s webversion unqiue.

After that email was sent out, we regularly checked the statistics, finding out who was opening the emails, and whether they were clicking any links. One particular recipient appeared to be opening it repeatedly, which we soon realised probably meant that they’d forwarded it around their office, which did bring a smile to our faces.

I’ve also just taken another look at the statistics, and it seems one recipient opened the email on the 9th February! That’s got to be a record for the earliest card for Christmas 2009!

Obviously, as I said, that “campaign” was just a bit of fun, but it did prove the power of tracking, and if you didn’t download the PDF, we know who you are!

Search Engine Optimisation FAQs

Whenever a prospective client comes to meet with us about a new SEO Project they always have a list of questions relating to their SEO Campaign and I have compiled a list of the most popular questions below. Hopefully after reading through them you will get a better idea about the limits and the benefits of SEO and perhaps start to see how it could help you and your business.

Can search engine optimisation techniques be applied to any website?

Yes, as long as your site is not password protected as this will not let the search engine spiders collect information about your site. Poor website design and development, as well as unsuitable website technologies can also hinder the search engine spiders. As search engine optimisation is used to improve a spider’s ability to index sites more easily, this would be achieved by removing these barriers when the website is redeveloped.

Will the appearance of my website change after it has been optimised?

This will depend on the structure and coding of the site. Usually, the coding and underlying navigational structure can be improved for search engine optimisation without changing the appearance of the website.
Changes to the look of the website may only be necessary if it uses elements that cannot be replicated by the use of alternative techniques. These include elements such as frames, JavaScript navigation, Flash, dynamic content, or pages that require the user to login in order to see the content. However, in most cases, the use of alternate techniques and coding can mean that the look of your pages remain visually unchanged.

How do you know which keywords and phrases should be used?

Firstly we take a list of keywords and phrases provided by the client. As the client is an expert in their field, they often have a vast knowledge about their clients, products, services and customers, which leads to the generation of the first keywords and phrases list.
Secondly, the words and phrases are analysed and the KEI (Keyword Efficiency Index) is generated for each of them. This is a statistical score that is generated from the number of times the word or phrase is searched for, against the number of competing pages. This allows us to see which words and phrases would be best used on your site, and for which search engines it would be best for.
Thirdly, after seeing our evidence-based report advising you which keywords and phrases will be the best for you, you make the decision which ones you want to use and which ones you don’t.

What is the difference between ethical and unethical Search Engine Optimisation?

Ethical search engine optimisation involves using only high-ranking keywords and phrases that are relevant to the content of the website in order to improve its position on search engines result pages (SERPS).
Unethical search engine optimisation involves deliberately using high-ranking keywords and phrases that are unrelated to the content of the site in order to misdirect traffic to the site and artificially inflate the website’s ranking in the search results. This reduces a search engine’s ability to return relevant search results, and so many of the main search engines have identified a number of search engine optimisation techniques that are unacceptable to use on web pages. If a search engine finds that a website has used these techniques, they may impose a ranking penalty or ban the site from their index.
An ethical search engine optimisation will not involve any technique that is recognised as being unacceptable to any search engine and our company takes pride in offering the most ethical SEO services to our customers.

How quickly can you see the results from the search engine optimisation?

Unfortunately, it can take some time for search engine optimisation to generate results. It depends on a number of factors, but primarily the competitiveness of the keywords and keyphrases used in the search engine optimisation. This can be anything from under a month for uncompetitive key phrases, from 3-6 months to get into the top 30 of a large search engine, or up to a year to achieve stable first page rankings in the main search engines. On average, Google requires an extra three months to get the same results. We therefore recommend that clients who need instant website traffic initially have a “pay-per-click” advertising campaign alongside the SEO.

I have been with an SEO Company for the past year, but still have a page rank of 0 and I am not appearing anywhere near the first page on Google – why is that?

Like most web related areas, SEO has a number of unethical companies promising first page results and high page ranks in the first few months but delivering very little. This poses a huge problem for both the client and experienced SEO companies offering good results based on genuine research and hard work!
In order to combat this what we would suggest is asking your SEO company to deliver regular reports on your website’s performance for a set of targets that you set, this way you can challenge the results they are getting for you and you will soon know what type of company you are dealing with! However, be realistic in your goals and know that you are never going to be top of the search results for very competitive keywords like “toys” or “bikes”. A good SEO company will be able to target keywords that suit your company and which you have a realistic chance of doing well with.

I want to appear top of Google by next week – what can I do?

Using organic SEO, this is not going to be possible for you to achieve and do not believe anyone who tells you it is. In a situation like this when you are not willing to wait for organic SEO to take its course you should look at Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. This is a great way to get yourself on the first page of Search Engines overnight. People are often worried about PPC because they are not aware that you can set a daily budget for the amount of money you want to spend, this means that you will not end up with a huge bill at the end of your campaign. Instead you can monitor or get an outside company such as Kent House to monitor your campaign on a weekly basis and judge how successful it is for you and make little tweaks that can have a big impact on your results.

Understanding SEO and other nasty internet marketing acronyms

Before I get started let’s deal with SEO, Search Engine Optimisation. It is easy for those of us in the know to talk about SEO, SEM, PPC, CPC, keywords and so on but are we aware that there is a whole world of people out there (some of them marketers!) who do not talk in acronyms, do not understand them and do not therefore understand us?!
As a marketer, I am always keen to ensure my message is being understood so for my first few blog entries I am going to do a basic jargon buster and SEO breakdown to help people understand the ABCs and 123s of SEO and other internet marketing abbreviations and terms. Of course I’m not going to make you an expert in a few short articles but perhaps in future it will save you from being “acronym-ed out” of high-brow marketing conversations!

The Internet Marketing Jargon Buster

SEO        Search Engine Optimisation

The act of “optimising” your website so that it appears higher in search engine results for your chosen keywords. In its most basic form, this involves working with your website to improve content, architecture, labelling and ease of navigation as well as getting some relevant inbound links to your site. It can also include the length of time your website has been in existence for, your page rank and your hosting provider. Search Engine Optimisation does not occur overnight but can take from 3 to 6 months to see any improvement – but it is well worth the effort!

PPC        Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click advertising is a fantastic way to achieve 1st page Search Engine results overnight. Things I love about PPC include the ability to set a campaign budget, set maximum cost per click values and how trackable it is! Most of the major search engines offer this service from Google’s AdWords to Yahoo!’s Search Marketing to Microsoft’s adCentre.

CPC        Cost Per Click

Cost Per Click is a PPC Advertising term and basically means the amount of money it will cost or does cost you when someone clicks on your advert. With most PPC Advertisers you can set the maximum amount of money you are prepared to spend for a click for each of your keywords (yet another reason I love PPC Advertising!).

SEM        Search Engine Marketing

This term covers both SEO and PPC and deals with any marketing activity involved with improving your position in the Search Engines. It is also worth noting that some people are only referring to PPC Campaigns when they talk about this.

Keywords

I guess I am now as guilty as everyone else, I have used this term several times already and you may not know what I’m talking about – sorry! There must be some words and phrases that you want to be found under when a searcher searches – very simply put, they are your keywords. They may include your business name, your main product and service and some other details about you such as “books – next day delivery”. Before you start optimising your site you need to come up with a list of keywords and then work your optimisation strategy around these words and phrases.

Impressions

Everyday millions of searches are done online, each time someone searches for a keyword you have included in a PPC Campaign and it is shown on the search results page that is an impression – you should not be charged in PPC for impressions just for Clicks. Impressions are also a measurement used by online publishers who sell advertising space on their site for example www.thesundaytimes.com. They will sell advertising space – banners, skyscrapers and buttons – based on the number of impressions your advert will get.

CTR    Click Through Rate(s)

Leading nicely on from impressions… Click Through Rates take the number of clicks your advert has had and express it as a percentage of the number of impressions your advert has had. CTRs can sometimes look depressingly low but it is very dependant upon what the nature of your business is and also how much competition there is in your area.

These are the basic terms used in internet marketing but I will delve deeper into each topic as 2009 progresses. If you have any questions on SEO or would like me to do an article on any particular marketing subject send me a quick email to yvonne.conway@kenthouse.com and I will be happy to oblige!

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