While social media has created the unprecedented ability to connect with, engage and entertain thousands of prospects at any one time, many horse businesses are consistently hitting roadblocks. Not only are social media platforms, like Facebook, making it harder than ever to reach your target audience, but the staggering statistics reveal just how easy it is to get lost in the white noise.
Many horse businesses believe the power of social media has far surpassed email marketing, with a few claiming that email is dead. But, we argue the opposite is actually true and, in fact, email marketing in our current age of social media is perhaps even more important.
So, we’re going to show you how you can stop trying to reach the masses with the social media megaphone and, instead, have an intimate, one-to-one conversation with some of your best customers via email in this new three-part series.
Part One introduced the fundamentals of email marketing campaigns and Part Two shined a light on the essentials that’ll improve your open rates. In this final instalment, we wrap up with an overview of the analytics that demonstrate your success and help you pave a path forward for your horse business.
Understanding Metrics
Just like social media, the power of email marketing, as a digital marketing tool, lies in its ability to offer real-time performance metrics. These metrics demonstrate the achieved success of your email campaigns and provide insights into the behaviour of your audience, both of which are fundamental when developing your long-term email marketing plan.
When analysing the performance of your email marketing, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by all of the data in front of you. However, it’s crucial you understand which metrics are most important and allocate time on a regular basis to reviewing them.
Let’s take a closer look…
At-a-glance information, such as open rates, unsubscribes and bounces, demonstrate how engaged and accurate your mailing list is. A low open rate indicates subscribers are either disengaged or your subject line failed to capture their interest. A high unsubscribe or bounce rate may indicate a stale list. These metrics offer opportunities to improve your email marketing.
You can examine the behaviour of your subscribers more closely by reviewing the data attached to your recipient list, such as clickthrough rates. These metrics indicate who opened your campaign and who didn’t, and the elements your recipients interacted with inside the email itself. These are important insights to help you understand what type of content is most popular.
You may have included links in the form of text-based hyperlinks, URLs, or within images or graphics. The data attached to tracked links will demonstrate which performed best. If the purpose of your email campaign was to encourage clicks on a call to action, then this is the prime method of understanding if your email campaign actually persuaded your recipients to do so.
Finally, if you included social media icons, such as follow or share buttons, then it’s important you examine the performance of these as well. A follow or share is a powerful endorsement for your message, so this data may reveal the most active influencers within your mailing list.
Improving Performance
When looking through all of this data, you may find yourself wondering how you can apply what you’ve learned from these performance metrics to the future success of your email marketing. The smartest way you can do this is by first defining what success looks like and this end goal may change from campaign to campaign.
We term this ‘conversion’ and, essentially, it’s how many recipients take the action you intended via your email campaign. Now, let’s be clear: a conversion may not be a sale; it could be a competition entry, a like on Facebook or enrolment in a course. With each email campaign you prepare, you should continuously return to your campaign goal. This is your marker for email marketing success.
It may take time to determine how to successfully drive conversions. However, the only way you’ll achieve this is by consistently planning, creating, distributing and analysing email campaigns. But, while you aim to generate success from your marketing objectives, don’t forget the all important recipient on the other end. How can you delight, entertain and inspire them at the same time?
Looking for some outside support? Don’t wait for success, create it — with the experts in equine marketing, Archer Creative. To learn more about how we can help you exceed your growth goals, call us on 1300 077 126 or visit www.archercreative.net.au.
