Using Google Analytics to Determine the Best Time to Contact Customers

June 14, 2008

It’s been a busy few weeks of continued testing and experimenting to discover some of the most reliable methods ecommerce store owners can use to increase sales. I’m back and ready to show more of what I’ve uncovered.

Retaining Current Customers

Building an online business involves many elements, one of which is a solid customer retention strategy. Keeping your current customers coming back for more while adding new customers is one key element that will help build a healthy and sustainable shop.

It order to retain current customers, you need to stay in contact with them. But when is the best time to contact them in order to gain maximum response?

Much of this is determined by the market you are targeting. For example, if you are selling a product that is targeted more toward stay at home mothers, you may find that your emails are more effective when sent during the evening hours (after the kids are in bed and they have time to themselves.) As another example, if you are offering a product that is targeted toward business owners, it may be best to send these follow-ups during normal business hours (knowing this is when they are more likely to be in front of their computers.)

The two examples above are for illustration only and are not intended to be taken as “tested fact”. They are to get you thinking about your target audience and how understanding their lifestyle can determine when they are likely to be listening.

Finding the exact time period, as in the day of the week and hour(s) that are most effective, can involve some clever thinking but fortunately there are some objective reporting methods you can use to get you real close on your very first attempt.

Google Analytics to the Rescue

One way to zero in on the day(s) and times you should be testing is to turn to Google Analytics reporting.

You will be able to get an good estimate of the number of unique visitors that are coming to your site on any given day by going to the Absolute Unique Visitors report. The image to the left shows where in your navigation that report is found.

Once there, make sure you select a nice sample size (say the last 6 months) as a range for analysis. This will provide you with a decent trend report. Once you have that in place, select to “Graph by Day” found in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Selecting that link will report the figures on a daily basis over the past 6 months.

Now all you have to do is scroll down and make note of those days of the week (as in Sunday thru Monday) in which you receive most of your traffic. Keep these figures aside for reference. The report below shows a sample section for one site. Although you are only seeing a few lines, you’ll want to scroll through your entire report to find the ideal days. This section happens to show a pattern that is consistent throughout the entire 6 month period I analyzed.

Partial report showing visits broken down by day.

Ecommerce Revenue by Day, Hour etc…
Now that you have a general idea on the number of visitors you get on a daily basis during any given week, it’s time to figure out what days and more specifically hours actually generate revenue for you.

To do this you’ll be using another report. The “Total Revenue” report found under the ecommerce section (you must have ecommerce tracking turned on and the tracking code in place on your site for this to provide any data.)

You’ve already selected the time frame for analysis when you generated the first Unique Visitors report in the above step. Now you should have on the screen a report that looks much like Figure 1 below. Once you have that on the screen you will be able to scroll down and take note of the most productive days / hours of the week where your site generates the most revenue. You’ll want to take note of the hour, then switch it to “day” view using the selections in the upper right hand corner of the screen that look like this:

Once you have switched between both views (day vs. hour) and have scrolled through the reports making notes of the most effective days and hours during the week in which you generate revenue, you’ve got everything you need to determine when is in all likely hood the best time to send newsletter or promotional emails to your current customer base.

Figure 1

In the real world example I show here, the ideal time to send out a promotional email for this market would fall on either a Weds. or Thursday of the week with the email arriving in customers in boxes between the hours of 9:00AM and 2:00PM with the preference being around 11:00AM (when most sales are generated.) Anything before or after that time will not yield the maximum results.

Why? Because all the reports confirm and show that the majority of our visitors are most active between these periods. Therefore, we can make an educated guess that we have our audience’s attention most often during those times, and that means they are online … where they need to be to receive your email.

Does it work? You bet it does.

In my testing, I used these reports to test whether sending a promotional email on the days that were most active, during the hours that were most productive would yield the desired results. Indeed it was accurate. In fact, on those days and times I sent an email which fell outside the “target period range”, the effects were far less than desirable. Open rates were lower, click through rates were lower, and sales were off.

However, when I sent the email ensuring it would land in customers in boxes during the specified target hours and days, the results were spectacular. In fact, sales over tripled for the day when the promotional email was sent within the target time frame. This was a consistent increase that happened every time the email was sent during the target time frame. It was not a one time only occurrence.

Using this method of reporting, you can continue to refine this process to get an even tighter time frame by going back to the same reports mentioned above a few days AFTER sending an email and breaking it down by hour for the day the email was sent. This will tell you to the day, the week, and the hour during any given month that is best for contacting your customers.

So if you are sending newsletters or promotional emails without really knowing whether your customers are listening, and furthermore, without knowing whether you have a shot a increase productivity, then you need to stop now. Take the time to gather the proper data and start sending your emails when your customers are active and ready. You’ll thank yourself for the research and your sales should reflect that added time spent.

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Eight Tips for a Clickable Email Marketing Campaign

May 15, 2008

This just landed in my inbox, and since I’ve been on the subject of email marketing here lately, I thought it would be good to post a link to it.

I just read an article written for ECommerce Guide on email marketing and it provided some similar insights to my previous articles on this topic. It may further assist you at developing email marketing campaigns which enable your store to prosper.

The article is called Eight Tips for a Clickable Email Marketing Campaign.

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Building Clean Lists of Prospects Who Want What You Have

May 15, 2008

In my two previous articles How to Design an Effective Email Follow Up Campaign and Beware of Stale Email Addresses I talked about things you should consider when planning an effective email follow-up campaign, including the negative effect a list of stale email addresses can cause.

In this article, I’ll give a few simple tips on how you can clean your list up and actually use it to target customers specific interests and increase your sales.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term “list building”, let me give you a brief summary. List building is the process by which one gathers requested information (opt-in only, no spam here) about a group or groups of visitors to later utilize during marketing campaigns.

Keeping your list clean (or in other words, stocked with valid, verifiable information and active users) is critical to the success of future follow-up plans. A dirty list is worth nothing and can have detrimental effects on the most well planned marketing campaign.

Let’s Get to it

With a little creative thinking, and some proper wording, we can turn what would be an “ordinary opt-in” into a bonafide hot prospect that wants to hear from you.

1) Start with the headline.

Instead of simply saying “signup for our newsletter” make the title more provocative. For example, if you sell Widgets, some more attractive title’s might be:

• “Get Exclusive VIP Only Offers on New Widgets”.
• “Be the first to know about exclusive new deals.”
• “Get hints and tips for everyday jobs.”

2) Follow-up with an informative subhead if desired

Now that you have their attention, you may want to briefly explain exactly what they can expect if they add themselves to your list.

This is also a place were you can further qualify those that you wish added to your list (i.e. those that have a real interest in what you offer, and are more likely to buy from you in future follow-up campaigns.)

Using the above headlines as an example we could do something like the following:

Heading: “Get Exclusive VIP Only Offers on New Widgets”.
Subhead: Be one of the first to know about new widgets and get exclusive discounts available only through email.

Heading: “Be the first to hear about exclusive new deals.”
Subhead: Get a sneak preview on upcoming product specials made available only through email.

Heading: “Get hints and tips for everyday jobs.”
Subhead: Learn hints and tips from pros on how to use your widget to accomplish everyday jobs saving you time and money.

These types of headings and subheads are only examples. The aim is to attract people willing to provide you with a valid email address (because the content they will receive will be valuable enough for them to make sure they receive it) and also qualify them to some degree as “potential buyers” (prospects) through mentioning exactly what it is they can expect by adding themselves to the list.

3) Fill each email follow-up with information that truly helps those on your list improve the current situation they are in.

If in one way shape or form each of your follow-up campaigns aims to provide highly valuable information that helps the end reader better their situation and that information would be hard to find anywhere else, then you’ll be more likely to keep them interested, active and fresh on your list.

Think about it. Would you stay on a list that often provided information which consistently assisted you in solving a problem, making your life easier, making you more money, or saving you money? Chances are you would.

In that same respect, would you stay on a “newsletter” list that simply told you information which not only didn’t help make your life better, but could be found in a number of other locations without the extra email in your inbox? Chances are you wouldn’t stay long.

Getting Even More Information

Offering a gift, coupons, free trial samples, etc.. which must be mailed to them via standard postal service is an effective way to build a list that can be used in both online and offline marketing campaigns.

Offering free trial samples of your products and send them to for only the shipping and handling fee does two things.

1. Allows you to build a list of clean information about a potential prospect which you can be sure is valid (they want their sample so they will provide valid shipping information to get it.)
2. Qualifies them as a higher level prospect that is willing to spend money online. You can be sure of this because they have already provided you with some type of payment information to cover the shipping and handling. I’ve seen this method work in a number of cases and be very effective at generating future sales from those that choose this route.

The main goal of any effort, no matter the situation is to build a healthy, active list with people who stay. Provide them with quality information (and introduce them to products you offer which can truly help them) and you’ll see the benefits of a clean list filled with prospects that are eager to hear from you and who are likely to buy from you as well.

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Web Analytics Tops List for ECommerce Decision Making

May 8, 2008

I’ve said it so many times it should be expected now. When it comes to making decisions on where to start adjusting your website in order to achieve better conversion, the first and last place you can count on is your web analytics program (providing you have a decent one in place.)

Having said that (once again), it should come as no surprise that topping the list of sources which ecommerce retailers base their website decision making efforts on is web analytics.

The E-Tailing Group, Inc. reports that out of 20 different areas to choose from, web analytics was the leader in driving merchandising decisions for many online businesses.

The breakdown of all 20 is as follows:

So why did web analytics top the list? I’ll tell you why I believe it did. Because website analytics provides non-biased, objective, and factual data that can’t be disputed.

Providing it has been installed correctly, web analytic reports are based on concrete information of activities surrounding your site. Web analytics do not lie. They paint a true picture, no matter how grim or glorious of the state of your website at a given point in time based on actual events occurring within it.

Interpret the analytics correctly and you’ll often find a gold mine of information that uncovers exact points of inefficiencies that could be costing you sales.

There are many analytics systems out there. Each offers their own benefits. I’ve been able to generate conversion rates (unique visitors to sales) for clients as high as 18.4% with data that was gathered using properly installed Google Analytics.

So, don’t think that you need to shell out big dollars for a tracking system in order to gather the necessary data to increase your sales and website conversion. It’s not always about the system you use, it’s how you interpret the data it reports.

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Beware of Stale Email Addresses

May 6, 2008

In my last article How to Design an Effective Email Follow Up Campaign, I stressed the importance of implementing a system to stay in contact with your past customers.

One thing I did not mention was the need to make sure the list you are planning on marketing to is fresh. Outdated, stale lists pose a big threat to your business and can contribute to your site being blacklisted by some of the major internet service providers (ISPs); not to mention being shut down by your own email service provider!

Neither of these are good things, and each can turn what would have otherwise been a decent email marketing campaign into a complete disaster for your business.

If you are one of those ecommerce store owners who has been working for years on the internet and over that time has gathered a nice customer base (along with email addresses), yet have failed to follow up with them on a frequent basis, then beware.

People change email addresses all the time and with spam being so prevalent on the internet today, getting a valid email address can at times be tough. Remember this; every person you send your email to has their finger on the “spam” button. If they feel your email is an unwarranted solicitation, you’ll be cast into the spam folder and reported to the nearest “spam cop” faster than you can blink an eye.

Furthermore, if you send out an email campaign, and the vast majority of the emails sent are returned (bounced), then you could be raising a red flag for your email service provider as well. Too many bounced messages in relation to the amount of emails sent can cause an email service provider to feel your list is outdated, dirty, or purchased. Before you are reported as “spam” and get their email service potentially blacklisted, they will shut you down.

So How Do You Avoid a Spam Report

• Start by working with a clean list. One that is fresh, not out-dated. Remove any addresses on that list older than 12 months old (that you have not been in contact with since that time.)
• Make sure each of the email addresses on that list asked to be placed on that list.
• Make your first follow-up contact within a short period of time after the initial transaction takes place while your name is still fresh in the customer’s head and the stage for future follow-ups is set.
• When in doubt, don’t send to an address you feel might not remember your company or the last transaction.
• Use your company name or website in the “From” line of all your emails.
• Remind them why they are receiving the email from you (i.e. they either purchased from you in the past, or asked to receive the information)
• Give them a clear and easy way to remove themselves from your list, and once removed, never email them again. No matter what. Professional yet affordable systems like Constant Contact have this feature built in to protect you.

Although it may be tempting to tap into an older list of past customers, if you have not been in contact with them frequently use caution. Following some simple guidelines, and respecting their privacy will ensure your email campaigns are effective, and your company remains in good standing.

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