The Need to Move Beyond Simple Metrics in Email Marketing

Author:

J-P De Clerck

Source:

In the early days of the Internet, measuring the impact of your online activities was very simple. Those who owned a website were already satisfied if they could monitor how much traffic was being generated, how many pages visitors viewed, and which ones. Back then, email marketers monitored how much emails were being sent and coming in, how many people opened them, and how many times a link was clicked upon.

The integration of web analytics and email marketing rarely happened, and web analytics by itself often consisted of nothing more than looking at some data that was gathered through a simple measuring tool or through the server.

Today, the Internet is no longer a new phenomenon, but a medium that has a drastic impact on all aspects of our business. Online applications and interactions have become the backbone of our business in a digital world.

I recently wrote how there’s a shift from selling to buying going on, and how more and more elements of the purchasing process are taking place online.

Furthermore, people can use a huge amount of online channels to get into contact with businesses, and they’ll do this whenever they feel like it. Finally, the Internet plays a crucial role in the way (future) customers find businesses and how they interact with them.

Therefore, whoever wants to serve his customers professionally and wants to generate and “feed” leads through online channels – the ones that people use – must have an integrated customer and online analytics approach that goes way beyond the tactical metrics of the early days.

Nowadays, we should look at metrics and key performance indicators that tell us something about the bottom-line, and follow both the lead and the customer throughout the entire lifecycle.

As discussed on the Conversion Marketing Forum blog, it’s crucial to “prepare” the leads for the sales team when doing so....