If your dog has the balls (no pun intended) to sit back and lick his ‘family jewels’ while you’re watching, what do you think he’s up to when he’s home alone?
Have you ever left your dog home alone, unsupervised for an extended period of time? When you’ve done so, did you walk into a house in immaculate condition? Or were the natural instincts of your canine friend unleashed as if a tornado stormed through the hallways, leaving shredded tissue paper scattered through all corners of the house and bite marks on your newly painted baseboards?
Before you ask yourself how one dirty sock traveled all the way from your laundry basket to the inside drawer of your entertainment center, consider who truly may be at fault in this situation. Did you forget about Murphy’s Law – what has seemingly become the governing law of the land? I’m not trying to be cynical here in expecting the worst in any situation, but I am simply advocating the need to be prepared when nature takes it’s course and your loving fur ball leaves a welcome home present on your throw blanket – one that doesn’t smell like roses.
Unless you’ve got your dog locked up in a cage and under 24 hour surveillance, how do you really know what your dog is up to when he’s home alone?
How does your dog’s (private activities) relate to email marketing?
Take this a step further and question your email marketing evaluation strategy. Once you’ve designed your email creative, set up your landing page to effectively capture leads or sales, uploaded your verified email list, and hit the send button, do you pat yourself on the back with a job well done and call it a day? In the hustle and bustle that accompanies the implementation of an email marketing campaign, the evaluation process is often the most overlooked, yet most important piece of the puzzle. How do you truly know if your email marketing campaign is performing at its full potential without monitoring delivery, open rate, interactions with the email creative, click through rate, or return on investment? You don’t. This is where the dog comparison comes into play. Just as you don’t know what your dog is up to when you’re not at home, you can’t have any idea how your email marketing campaign is working if you don’t review the stats, tracking and details of everything else that makes up your results. If you don’t invest the time and resources into properly reviewing all of your stats, you’re setting yourself up for a series of costly mistakes that could take a toll on your bottom line. Of course, you’re not expected to hit a home run your first time at bat, but that’s why we often like to say that Mistakes & Failures are the Key to Success. Taking the information you learn from your stats will enable you to make the proper changes and tweak each new campaign you send to result in better deliverability, increased open rates and interaction and generate the best possible ROI.
Related: Don’t Be Fooled Into Thinking Email Validation Guarantees 100% Deliverability
What is the only way to know the true percentage of emails that have been delivered to the inbox and opened, without images being blocked? The answer lies in real-time tracking. Access to the live tracking link enables you to monitor the performance of your email campaign. This reporting tool tracks the number of emails sent, the number of emails opened, and the number of unique clicks on each link embedded in your email creative.
If, for instance, we launch a single deployment to 100,000 business decision makers and/or consumers online and only 20,000 recipients open the email, we have fulfilled 25% of your contract for 80,000 Guaranteed Opens. This means that you have the opportunity to streamline your offer and continue to deploy until 80,000 people open your email and review your advertisement. A thorough analysis of all of the performance variables detailed in the live tracking report of your first deployment will give insight into what can be done, tweaked or changed to improve the next deployment. Perhaps it’s using a different email creative, or perhaps it’s just a matter of tweaking the subject line to further relate to your audience or peak their interest to help entice them to open and read the email you have sent.
Whatever it is, we are here every step of the way to offer our expertise and a professional opinion. With 15+ years in the industry, we have seen our fair share of dogs gone wild and have witnessed Murphy’s Law in full effect. Don’t make the mistake of leaving your marketing to chance, because your dog can take care of himself. You can’t stop your dog from buffing the family jewels, but you can monitor the stats of your email marketing efforts to make a positive difference.
“We learn from failure, not from success!”
― Bram Stoker