Email marketing: how to use click-through data
If you’re keen to expand your email marketing strategy, click-through data should be a key consideration. It provides a wealth of information to help you understand what customers want. A basic send out isn’t enough to capitalise on the many benefits of email – it’s just the beginning.
Unfortunately many businesses don’t take advantage of email:
- to drive more traffic to their website
- to make them more money
- to deliver excellent online customer service
I recommend you keep on track and learn from your click-through data. This will help you deliver more targeted email campaigns.
Here’s a few ideas:
- Why not create an email offer for popular click-throughs? For example, if you’ve identified a particular group of customers that like “handbags”, why not send them a brand-focused email offer?
- If there’s a common pattern in order of click-throughs to your emails, re-arrange future messages in order of interest. Customers generally scan emails. Capture their attention as quickly as possible.
- Send follow-up emails based on click-through data. For example:
1. Create an automatic “thank you email” to send to customers following a purchase. Introduce the “customers who bought this item also bought…” concept pioneered by Amazon.
2. Identify segments of customers who don’t click through, and send them a “second chance email” offer.
3. Create a well-developed email subscription model to target your data collection and increase click-through rates.
4. Click-through data can provide enough information on customer interests to enable you to follow up with a phone call.
5. Consider sending an online survey to customers who click-through. You could offer a reasonable incentive such a discount off their next order.
6. Don’t forget to say thank you to any customers who forward your email on to a friend – it’s just plain good manners!
And where possible personalise your email. But don’t make customers feel as if you’re stalking them!
Don’t forget… when a customer clicks-though on an email it’s only the start of their online experience. As a first step I recommend creating effective landing pages. Whether they form part of your website or specifically relate to your email link, landing pages are important to track where the customer goes next.
Google and Yahoo strike ad deal
After months of speculation Yahoo has sealed a deal with Google which allows them to use Adsense on their search and content network; which could be worth $800 million in revenues to Yahoo over the next 12 months.
Just a few hours after showing Microsoft the door for the second time, the promiscuous search engine Yahoo has finally decided to settle down with Google.
After flaunting itself to Microsoft for a number of months, trying to squeeze more money out of the potential full/part buy-out for its shareholders, Yahoo canned the deal and signed up with Google.
The Google-Yahoo partnership affects the US and Canada, where Yahoo can use Adsense to show Google ads on some of its search engine results pages (SERPs) as well as on its content network.
The deal is set to last 4 years but if successful Yahoo has 2 three-year extensions available. The deal is also set to make the two online giants’ instant messaging software compatible.
According to Google’s official blog post on the matter this IS NOT a merger, and does not remove Yahoo as a competitor. Yahoo are still going to be running their own search engine, and are still going to be running Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM).
At the end of the day though, Yahoo will be generating revenue - and essentially more profit - for Google. The difference in click-through-rate from searches on Yahoo and searches on Google is substantial, so using Google’s ads should allow Yahoo to gain a much larger volume of clicks.
This deal says to me that Yahoo have no intention of improving their own search marketing system, and are quite happy to pay Google for use of a better one that will display more relevant ads and in theory generate more clicks (and more revenue).
Google also say on their blog that Yahoo are welcome to use their technology as little or as much as they like. So if it proves successful, will we see Yahoo join Google’s search network permanently? Could this be the beginning of end for YSM? I’m sure we’ll find out before the end of the 4 year deal.
The opinions expressed herein are the personal opinion of the author and are not intended as statements of fact and do not represent the view of Coastdigital Limited in any way
