2 Performance Indicators That Can Help Boost Your Sales

By Wendy Montes de Oca
Running a successful e-mail marketing campaign is largely dependent on the quality of your products, your mailing list, your offers, and your advertising copy. But even if you have top-notch products, offers, and copy, you aren't home free. To make sure that your marketing efforts are having the results you want, you need to measure some key performance indicators.

I've already given you four of them - Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Cost Per Lead (CPL), and Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Thousand impressions (CPM). Here are two more metrics you want to stay on top of:

• Open Rate - the number of people who opened your e-mail divided by the number of e-mails sent. 

This calculation will help you see if your e-mails are getting opened. Per Doubleclick.com, the average open rate for an e-mail to a list size of about 100,000 people is about 20 percent. If your list size is around this quantity and you aren't getting a similar open rate, you should examine your subject line, sender name, the day and time of the week your e-mail is being sent, the list you're mailing to, and your overall e-mail deliverability practices. (Are your e-mails getting blocked or reported as spam?) These are all factors that can influence an e-mail's open rate and should be tested, one variable at a time, to pinpoint the cause of your problem. 

• Bounce Rate - the number of e-mails returned divided by the number of e-mails sent. 

A high bounce rate means your mailing list is old and hasn't been refreshed regularly. Unlike postal addresses, people can change their e-mail address at a drop of a hat. If you keep bad e-mail addresses on your file, you're virtually paying to send e-mails to names that don't exist anymore. As an industry best practice, most lists are refreshed quarterly or bi-annually. If you practice routine list hygiene - "cleaning" your mailing list on a bi-annual or annual basis and removing non-responders, bad e-mails, etc. - you should have a bounce rate, according to Doubleclick.com, of around 12.5 percent or less.

[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca has led the marketing efforts for several global leaders, including Chase Manhattan Bank, General Electric, ADP, and Salomon Smith Barney/CitiGroup, as well as consulted for entrepreneurial companies.]
__________________________________________________
This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2176, 10-18-07], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.