How to Measure Your Email Channel's Value

I've mentioned many times that email marketing remains the leader of cost-effective, digital marketing channels. Email is one of the best channels to nurture your B2B leads, generate key referrals, and stay top of mind with your non-purchasers.
 
However, many marketers want to know how they can demonstrate email's value to their organizations. This is especially important for marketers who support sales organizations, market products with long sales cycles supported through many marketing channels, or who drive both online and offline sales without a clear connection from the email campaign to the sale.
 
If you aren't an online-only retailer, it's often difficult to identify direct revenue attribution from the email channel to your sales. Complex sales and those closed in other channels often don't get credited back to the email message that piqued customers' interest.
 
Assessing Your Success
 
Determining the value of an email campaign is an essential part of any email marketing strategy. If you don't have a clear objective, or if you can't measure your results, you're hard-pressed to gauge your email program's success. If you can't establish value, your program is vulnerable to budget cuts and staffing changes.
 
Developing a method to measure success is the key to demonstrating the true value email has in your organization. Below, I will present some alternatives for measuring the value of the email channel.
 
Direct Attribution
 
Direct attribution is the most accepted way of determining the email channel's value. Attribution is typically tracked using a campaign code that passes through the transaction process to tie the campaign to the revenue generated.
 
However, email-generated revenue often gets overlooked by direct attribution when your subscribers don't click on the coded link in your email. This prevents the campaign code from passing into the transaction process. This disconnect happens when...