Email Newsletter KPIs Part 1 - Delivery Rate, Open Rate, Growth Rate, Cost of Acquisition, the first in a series on email newsletter and email marketing KPIs and metrics, is now available on AllBusiness.com. This first post covers (you guessed it) Delivery Rate, Open Rate, Growth Rate and Cost of Acquisition.
As usual, I'm taking a typical NextStageish view of things.
For example, Delivery Rate determines how many of the emails you sent actually got into a real email InBox. You know I don't find that terribly interesting except for the purely mechanical information it provides, ie, your email distribution system is working and your subscriber list has real InBoxes as addresses.Is that information valuable? Yes. If your subscriber list is getting filled with bogus InBox addresses then it's time to contact your list provider or revisit your acquisition methods. And soon. NextStage tends to make its living by understanding the hearts and minds of consumers, though, and all that low Delivery Rate values indicate is that consumers thought so poorly of your newsletter and email marketing efforts that they selected to provide you with trash information.
This goes beyond being ignored by consumers -- an indication your message isn't getting through -- this is an indication your message got through and was considered so bogus as to deserve something bogus in return (a true fair-exchange, that).
Open Rate is the first indication of the value subscribers' assign to your newsletter. It is a measure of how many subscribers open the newsletter. NextStage has some variants on this that I'll be covering in future AllBusiness.com posts and here, as well.
Growth Rate is a NextStage variant of some traditional email marketing KPIs and determines if your subscriber list is growing or shrinking over time. The last item covered is the traditional Cost of Aquisition and I offer some low-cost/no-cost options for list building.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- BizMediaScience Email Marketing blog posts
- How to Design an E-Mail Newsletter to Maximize Your ROI: Part 1 podcast
- How to Design an E-Mail Newsletter to Maximize Your ROI: Part 2
- Email Newsletters, Anyone?
- Make sure your email newsletter is working
- BizMediaScience SEND Glands Blog arc
- This is Your Brain on the Internet at Emetrics SF on 8 May 2008
- Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08
- New Communications Forum 2008, 22-25 April 08 at The Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa, Sonoma County CA
- San Francisco Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 4-7 May 08
- International Communication Association's Communicating for Social Impact, the 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association at Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 22-26, 2008
- SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08
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