Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

Chapter 9. Analytics That Matter

In my introduction, I mentioned the adage, “I know half of my advertising is wasted.... I just don’t know which half.” Oops. I said that we weren’t ever going to say that again. I promise we’re really finished at this point. Because with email marketing, you are free of this uncertain mentality. You are no longer restricted by intuition and ambiguity, which have plagued marketers since the beginning of the mass marketing movement.

By paying attention to analytics, you now have the power to know exactly what’s happening, why it is happening, and apply a return on investment to every single email marketing activity.

Wow, that’s powerful. It’s better than a crystal ball, isn’t it? Instead of predicting, you can witness actual behavior, measure effectiveness, and make future decisions based on that learning. Go ahead and let it soak in for a minute.

It’s very different from the direct mail and catalog world, isn’t it? Remember, in those mediums, we have to worry about delivery, whether it was opened and read, which pages people browsed but didn’t buy, whether the catalog was passed on to others... we wait and we wonder. I feel the pain of businesses like Restoration Hardware, because every time I get one of their beautiful catalogs, I eagerly turn to those pages with sofas. I give each of them a loving look. Then I get distracted by something else and eventually throw away that wonderful work of art. Do you see how broken this model is? Unless the ...