Question

Topic: E-Marketing

E-newsletter:are There Limitations With Tracking?

Posted by Anonymous on 4/5/2006 at 1:59 AM ET 250 Points
E-Newsletter: my technicians tell me that it is not possible to measure to how many recipients the e-letter got forwarded, how many times it got opened, how many seconds they read it before it got deleted and how many e-letters got even deleted before opening. Are they right? What are the current limitations with tracking e-letters?
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  • Posted on 4/5/2006 at 2:35 AM Member
    Hi,

    I'm not a technician but I would suggest you get somebody from outside to look at what software you are using and get a second opinion.
    Many "technicians" just tell the "non-technician" it cant be done because they know it CAN but just do not want to do the job.

    Also the manufacturer of the software you are using might help you set it up the way you want it.

    Go on the website of the service provider and or software manufacturer and ask them directly.
    Its sometimes a matter of putting the right interface on your machines.

    Regards,
    W
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 4/5/2006 at 6:25 AM Accepted
    Forwards: If someone simply forwards the message along, then you really can't tell for sure. You may detect additional HTML opens when the forwarded version is opened, but you won't know that it's because of a forward. If you're using a "forward to a friend" link, then you can obviously tell how many times that was clicked, and you should be able to tell how many messages were actually sent using this application.

    Opens: If you use a 1x1 pixel tracking image, you can get a good estimate of opens. It won't be perfect, though, because some people will get the text version, which can not be tracked. Also, some people block images in their email program, so that won't trigger an open. Also, some companies strip out the tracking pixel as "offensive content" so that when their employees get the mail, it can't be tracked any more.

    How long open: I think ExactTarget claims to have something that tells average time the message is open (I could be wrong), but I don't see how that works. I can certainly look at a server log and see if an image was pulled (registering the open), but I don't know how you can tell how long it was open for. I would file this metric under "Neat, but not necessary."

    Non-opens: I suppose you could assume that if 20% of your messages were opened, that means 80% were not. Of course, you have to wonder why they weren't opened. Were they even delivered? And were they really not opened? See my comments about the flaws of the 1x1 tracking pixel above.

  • Posted on 4/5/2006 at 9:40 AM Accepted
    Hello Agnes,
    Quite a few profs have posted excellent answers to your excellent question.

    I would like to clarify that if your e-letter is an attachment to an email such as a pdf file, some of what you are asking will not be possible. If your e-letter is in XML or HTML, then much of what you want can be possible if you have the right people to do it.

    I would like to reiterate what Woutkok said about in-house techies sometimes giving the snow job to non-techies. I work in the tech field, and I constantly see techies giving upper management techno-jargon laced excuses, and getting away with it.

    One important note, however, is that sometimes the project is too specialized for the in-house techies to work on. It is not their fault. They may be very good and eager people, but the nature of the new project is beyond their expertise. An analogy is like having a good mechanic who specializes on diesel engines, but can't work on transmissions because he was never taught.

    How can you tell when techies are diverting work because they are lazy, or actually cannot do the job even if they wanted to? 1) Either start learning about tech yourself, or 2) hire out some temporary consulting expertise to sift through the in-house explanation.

    I would classify the type of work you are requesting as specialized talent... it's rarely found within a medium-sized company's IT staff who's day to day jobs are to trouble shoot software problems, keep track of passwords, install hard disks, and make a few updates to the company web site. I know a few garden variety Web/IT techies who can do these things, but they are the exception and not the norm. So, the next time you talk to your IT staff, I would go easy on them. At least on this project!

    My final recommendation is to call a local IT consulting agency specializing in online creative/email marketing. Most will not charge for the initial consultation, so you have nothing to lose.

    Good luck!
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 4/5/2006 at 1:33 PM Member
    Hi Agnes,

    All good advice above.

    To build on these I would like to add that while it is nice to have the raw stats available to you, how they are helping you (or not) achieve your goals and objectives is what is ultimately more important, i.e. what is your e-marketing strategy and what set of tactics are you implementing to achieve the goals and objectives?

    The beauty of of e-marketing is that we have all these wonderful statistics available to us. With the plethora of email server side and web server side analytics you can see more visitor information than you could ever functionally use.

    But what do they mean? What is important? How do you improve them? How do you integrate them across channels?

    These are just a few of the really important questions, and I encourage you to explore them and put your results in writing as a "plan" which you can then use as a roadmap.

    Some of what you mention that you want is not possible (practically), nor important, and I agree that your "technicians" for whatever reasons, are giving you grossly incorrect answers.

    If you need more straight advice, please feel free to contact me offline.

    I hope that helps.
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 4/5/2006 at 1:50 PM Accepted
    You should read this
    https://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6806.asp
    Frank Hurtte
  • Posted by darcy.moen on 4/5/2006 at 8:15 PM Member
    I've been doing email marketing for years now, and I've come to the conclusion that open rates, how long a message is read, whether it's forwarded to a friend....it's all an exercise in Mental gymnastics at the best of times. The only real measure of email marketing should be, did the customer buy, and how much?

    I do data mining, and I create marketing campaigns...its a dollar driven enterprise that must pay a return on investment....period. All this other stuff is kerfluffel.

    You want to now open rates, great, use the 1X1 pixel call....but Office 2003 versions of Outloook block that, as does ZoneAlarm and some otehr firewall programs.

    Want to know if a link generates a download, great.... use a CGI program called Clicktracker to record how many clicks were recorded.

    A lot of the tools are out there if you want to find them, download them, install them, or rent them from an Application Service Provider like ExactTarget and Constant Contact. But really, generating all this data...what good does it do you?

    All this data is spread all over the place, in various systems. Now you have to aggregate it all back into one database. Who opened what, for how long, what lin did they click, sending folks to what landing page, how many impressions resulted in sales.....ARgh! It's like asking the librarian how many times a book has been signed out and how many times it's been read, by whom, and for how long....does it really matter?

    It may matter if you are using this information to improve open rates, or improve the content of your email, or add sales to your bottom line....but are you acting on the information? Are you USING information to get better and improve? I hope so....because if not, you are creating a lot of employment for techs in the IT department and wasting efforts that could be better spent elsewhere.

    I'm getting off my soapbox now.

    Darcy Moen
    Customer Loyalty Network
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 4/7/2006 at 8:51 AM Accepted
    I won't argue against the idea that the number of leads or sales is the only thing that really matters, but whether the performance of your campaign is great, bad, or merely acceptable, you really still do need things like the open rate to do a full analysis, even with all of its flaws.

    No matter how well your campaign is doing, it can always do just a little better, and there are usually three points along the way that you need to watch:

    (1) Opens.
    (2) Clicks.
    (3) Conversions.

    Any one of these can be the weak link in the campaign, no pun intended.

    If your click-through rate and/or conversion rates are good, you might still have a weakness in the open rate. You need to test subject lines and "from" addresses to see what yields the best open rate. You can also test day of week and maybe even time of day.

    In summation, to dismiss the open rate fully is, in my opinion, a mistake. We run A/B splits on almost all of our mailings, constantly looking to see what factors have an impact on the open rate.

    "If they ain't openin', they ain't clickin'."
  • Posted on 4/8/2006 at 2:15 AM Author
    Hi,
    thanks so much for your detailed advice!!

    Next step I will do: invite my IT-guys for a big capuccino and in return get 2 or 3 of the mentioned softwares tested and implemented.

    One final hope: I would love to get the e-mail addresses of "a few garden variety Web/IT techies who can do these things" because around my area here (middle east) proficiency in this field is (not yet) to be found.

    Thank you and Cu Agnes
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