Using Google Analytics to Track Email Campaigns

In past articles I talked about using Google’s URL builder to track traffic from paid search channels outside Adwords (like MSN and Yahoo for example.)

In this article I thought I’d quickly show you how you can apply that same technique toward tracking of email campaigns as visitors have asked this as well.

Remember, generally Google Analytics looks for a few basic values in each link (yes you can track more items, but these are the basics.) The three basic pieces of information Google looks for in links is the campaign source, campaign medium and campaign name. The actual Google variable representations are listed below as a refresher but I have included some text that will help you from the email perspective.

1. Campaign Source (utm_source). This identifies the name of your email marketing system, such as ConstantContact. If you don’t use a thirds party email marketing system, you can label your campaign source something general like ‘Email Marketing’.

2. Campaign Medium (utm_medium). This identifies the campaign instrument used. In the case of email marketing, your medium is ‘email’.

3. Campaign Name (utm_campaign). This identifies the name of your campaign. The Campaign Name helps you differentiate between various campaigns or unique messages within each. Most Email Marketers use their message subject line or other identifying value for this parameter.

Here’s what the URL Builder might look like with those three variables filled in for an Email campaign:

Viewing Email Campaign Results

Once you have built your url and inserted it into the proper location within your email, tracking will automatically begin. With the tracking results you can find out a number of things including: which links were most popular with your recipients, when they visited your website, how long they stayed and where they navigated following arrival.

With this information you can refine your future email marketing to gain better results.

How to view campaign results in Analytics:

1. Log into your Google Analytics account.

2. Click ‘Traffic Sources’ from your Dashboard.

3. View your ‘Top Traffic Sources’ or click ‘View Full Report’ to see all traffic sources.

4. Locate and click the link identifying your email marketing Campaign Source. In our example above, your Campaign Source is your email marketing product, i.e. ConstantContact, or ‘Email Marketing’.

On your Campaign Source page, Google Analytics provides details on the number of visitors generated by your campaign, the number of pages they visited, average time on your website, percent of new visitors to your website and the average bounce rate.

Campaign managers can also drill-down using the segments drop-down menu. This provides even greater detail on individual campaigns, keywords, geographic regions, browser types, operating systems and visitor activity, like the most popular landing and exit pages. Each results page provides the means to drill-down even further and fine-tune your data.

Here is what the top level report might look like when segmented by ‘Source’ in Google Analytics:

Here is what the top level report might look like when segmented by ‘Medium’ in Google Analytics:

Here is what the top level report might look like when segmented by ‘Campaign’ in Google Analytics:

To get more detailed information on each you can further filter, segment, etc… and even drill down by clicking the link to the page you want to see more information on.

Now, if you haven’t had the ability to do so already, you can get better metrics from your email campaigns within Google Analytics.

Got any other ideas for email tracking with GA? Post your ideas below. I’d like to hear them.

Facebook App Allows Fan Page Admins to Create User E-newsletters

File this one under cool things to try in 2010: Facebook Fan Page administrators can now let their fans create personalized e-newsletters including content from the fan page.

Fb-funded NutshellMail, which operates a web based service that culls social media applications,  recently introduced the new feature to its web service.

The NutshellMail Facebook application allows you, as your e-commerce site’s Fan Page admin, to add an “Email Newsletter” tab to your page. By adding a newsletter, fans can opt-in to receive e-mailed content — highlighting your most recent posts — along with their Facebook updates.

Installing the application is fairly easy.

Step 1. On the Nutshell Facebook Application Page, select your page and click “Add Nutshell Mail”

Step 2. Select EMail Newsletter from the Drop Down Tab.

Step 3. Follow the App’s instructions for how to receive updates. In order for this to work, you’ll need to allow the Application access to your Facebook profile. Don’t worry, your person status updates will not go out to your Fan Page Fans.

Step 4. Be sure to promote your new e-newsletter function to your fans as well as in your next email send to customers.

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Once your email is approved (Step 3), you can adjust your account settings to receive e-mail updates as often (or as little) as you want.  You can customize what you receive  Using the Account Settings > Pages tab on Nutshellmail.com.

As for why an e-commerce site would want to add this function to its Fan Page, studies show that consumers are more likely to purchase based on their own opt-in preferences to e-mail. What better way to get your brand in front of your consumers or fans than to be in an email they opted to have you in.

75 Words to Consider During Your Next Electronic Campaign

Social media and e-mail, for all of their popularity, can only offer so much reach to potential customers. You can have the perfect sale at the perfect time using the most pristine analytics possible but lose conversion because your message got lost along the way.

How can you be sure your message will get in front of as many eyes as possible?

1. Consider using some of the most popular retweetable and repeatable words on Twitter and Facebook.
2. Avoid words that will land your message in a customer’s spam filter

The 20 Most ReTweetable Words & Phrases (according to DanZarrella.com) are:

you	twitter	please
retweet	post	blog
social	free	media
help	please retweet	great
social media	10	follow
how to	top	blog post
check out	new blog post

 

According to spam filter experts, there are at least* 55 words or phrases you want to avoid in your e-mails include:

#1	Accept credit cards	Affordable
All natural	Apply online	Bargain
Best price	Billing address	Buy direct
Call	Cards Accepted	Check
Click /Click Here / Click Below	Click to remove	Congratulations
Cost / No cost	Do it today	Extra income
For free	Form	Free and FREE
Free leads	Free membership	Free offer
Free preview	Full refund	Get it now
Giving away	Guarantee	Hidden
Marketing	Marketing solutions	Money
Name brand	Never	No Hidden Costs
No-obligation	Now	Offer
One time / one-time	Opportunity	Order / Order Now
Order today/ Order status	Orders shipped by priority mail	Performance
Please read	Price	Risk free
Sales	Satisfaction guaranteed	Save $
Save up to	Special promotion	Urgent
US dollars

 

You may obviously need to use some of the words above in your next e-mail, however, be sure to use the word(s) sparingly and never put a word like Free or Now in all capital letters. Increased frequency or repeated use of these words can highly increase your chances of an email landing in the spam folder.

Many third party email systems like Constant Contact, iContact, and AWeber automatically pre-check your email for you against a spam database and then give it a “spam rating”. The rating is supposed to help you gauge how your email stacks up against other spam and thus provide an idea of whether it will be caught in spam filters or not. I highly recommend one of these types of services if you are not already utilizing a third party system.

*This list was adapted from http://www.marketingforsuccess.com/wordstoavoid.html. For a list of 250 words and phrases to avoid, take a look at Words and Phrases that Trigger Some Spam Filters at http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

Top 10 Days for Sending Holiday Emails

Just read a great white paper from iContact that listed out the top 10 days to send holiday emails (dates based on 2009 calendar so note that some days may actually change from year to year but the principle is the same.) Nice timing and I thought I’d pass them along to you:

Monday after Halloween
Nov 2nd

Day before Thanksgiving
Nov 25th

Black Friday
Nov 27th

Cyber Monday
Nov 30th

First Friday in December
Dec 4th

Second Friday in December
Dec 11th

Friday before Christmas
Dec 18th

Monday before Christmas
Dec 21st

Day after Christmas
Dec 26th

Monday after Christmas
Dec 28th

Don’t wait to get started. Plan your emails now to ensure you are ready to take advantage of each.

Best Times to Send Emails

In continuing with my series on sprucing up your email campaigns, I thought a post on the best time to send emails would be appropriate.

To date I’ve discussed reasons you should consider a third party email service, 4 components present in all emails, and even promoting social media elements in your emails.

What we haven’t touched upon is the timing of the emails. The questions we are looking to answer are:

1) What are the best day(s) to send emails.

2) What is the best time of day to send emails.

Does a “best” day and time really exist?

The answer to this question is it depends and isn’t going to be the same for everyone—what works for one person might not work for another. It depends at the very least on your market, your customers, whether you sell B2C (Business to Consumer) or B2B (Business to Business), and even the time of year (which I won’t get into in this article.)

It goes without saying that if you are targeting B2B type readers you want to hit them during the work week (rather than on the weekend). With B2C you might get away with a weekend send depending on your offer, your target, and your objective. I personally find weekends to be slow no matter the market and try to stay away from them for sending marketing emails.

I am not going to leave you with just that as an answer though.

There have been many studies conducted and data collected on the best times to send emails. We can use these results as a general starting point for our own campaigns. In reality though, the real answer will be found in your own tracking of your sends (you are tracking your emails with some type of analytics right?)

You’ll find any number of answers on the internet to what is the best day / time, but I have complied my research into what seems to be a consistent “baseline” reported from not only third party email services like Aweber, Constant Contact, and iContact, but also based on market research studies conducted by non-email service providers.

Keep in mind while reading this that it is tough to truly nail down a best day and time because each is ever changing.

However, after rooting through all this data I found the following as a reasonable conclusion to start with (I based this on the frequency of mention for various days and times.) After conducting my research, I was somewhat surprised to discover that my personal experience fell within the ranges I found to be the most effective times and days. Again, this may not be the case with everyone, but it did prove to me that the baselines I settled on (and that I mention below in this article) were at the very least a good starting point for most.

The Survey Says…

According to combined surveys it looks like the best days/times on average to send emails are:

Best Days on Average
Tuesday and Weds continually stick out as better days during the week.

Best Times on Average
The results on this seem to be all over depending on who you talk to. In general though the consistent times mentioned were:

• Morning between 8 AM and 9 AM
• Mid morning between 10AM and 10:30AM
• Early Afternoon between 1PM and 1:30PM

My personal experience has found that currently, sending at 8:15 AM on Weds. provides the best overall results across the board for both opens, clicks, and actions taken. I want to hit readers first thing in the morning when they are checking email before they start their day and before their email box gets filled (pushing my email to the back of the pack.)

Having said that, an article I reviewed on email marketing reports had some very interesting images of data tables based on metrics reported. It might be worth reading as well.

Pros and Cons of Each Day Outlined

Jenn Abecassis wrote an nice article that appeared in 60-Second Marketer which listed the positive and negative aspects of sending email on each day of the week. I reiterated her points below and will let you determine which if any sound reasonable for your needs. I personally have not tested her theory but really think she makes some great arguments for each day with looking into.

Monday -
Pros: Office work has not filled inboxes yet.
Cons: People are in “work mode” and won’t be focused on non-work tasks.
Best Practice: Send emails late Monday morning, after people have cleaned the weekend spam from their inboxes.

Tuesday -
Pros: People have organized their week, and can find personal time for emails.
Cons: Emails poised for a weekend response may be too early.
Best Practice: Use Tuesday for emails that request action during the workweek.

Wednesday/Thursday -
Pros: People are planning their weekends and gearing up for personal time.
Cons: Time during the workweek is running short, and requested action may be pushed back to the following week, or even forgotten about.
Best Practice: Focus leisure and weekend notifications during these key weekend planning days.

Friday -
Pros: Studies indicate fewer total emails sent compared to the rest of the week, increasing visibility among the myriad of other messages.
Cons: People hurry to leave the office early, and may not take time to view non-work related emails.
Best Practice: Send emails early in the day to give consumers more time to take action. An unopened email from Friday will sort to the bottom of an inbox on Monday, and is often discarded.

Weekends -
Pros: People check emails on weekends, too, so weekends may have untapped potential.
Cons: A weekend email may seem overly-intrusive to some people.
Best Practice: If possible, try to avoid Sundays and focus on Saturdays, which may have a better response rate. (SK: Actually, if you are B2C, I would test Sundays myself — we used to get great response on Sunday).

Conclusion

What works for one person may not work for another. Email marketing should be tested and tracked as much as any other portion of your business.

Keep these points in mind when determining the best time and day for your own email marketing.

The answer isn’t the same for everyone.

• The best day for you and your business might not be the best day for the next person.
• The best day might change from month to month (based on time of year) and from send to send.
• The best time could be different for subscribers located in different parts of the world.
• Not all messages necessarily “work” on the same day or at the same time. Understanding your objective and your subscribers will help you focus your efforts and find what works for you.

The BEST way to move forward:

1. Use the guidelines above in making an initial educated guess
2. Test to see whether your guess was right or not
3. Once you’ve got the best day nailed down, try experimenting with what time of day works best
4. Make sure you maintain accurate reports so you can benchmark your results moving forward.

Remember, it ultimately will come down to testing, testing, and more testing. Don’t neglect the fact that you won’t know for sure until you thoroughly test and measure your own individual results.

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