Understanding Behavior: Getting Engaged or Stranded at the Inbox? Using core metrics to read between the lines.
First off, I love Jordan Dossett (the presenter). She's clearly experienced and had a great attitude that helped cut through the post-lunch subdued blues. So, quick plug for her company, Antharia. Check it.
Onto the session...I've always been fairly intimidated by analytics and email delivery reports. There's so much data to glean, that usually I wind up with a conclusion or two and then get distracted by more actionable/urgent/immediate tasks in my queue. But, I realize metrics are one of the most powerful tools for understanding your online audience. It should be a priority. So, I went into Jordan's session hoping to take away 3-5 actionable items that would allow me to take back to the office. And that's what I got. Get clustering.Most communications professionals are familiar with demographic and psychographic analysis of audiences. But not all of us are great about analyzing and grouping these larger audiences into clusters. Web analytics services (Google Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics, etc.) and ESPs--Email Service Providers--can be powerful tools to group clusters within larger pools of stakeholders. Talk to your clusters.
Conditionalizing content according to your clusters/sub-audiences is a great way to engage individuals in ways that are particularly meaningful for them. Ideas I'll take back to the office...
- Using data validation on the front-end (i.e., email sign-up forms, donation forms) to keep your list clean. Constituents often mistype their email addresses--"homail" and "eartlink" are a couple examples--and not all services provide instant validation. However, it's always possible with some easy code.
- Checking out the behavior (using web analytics) of a few individual visitors can reveal some useful information. Finding patterns between data such as time on site, entry and exit pages and action items can be revealing.
- This may sound simple, but when considering the time of day for your email send, you should bear in mind the cluster/group/list you're targeting, as well as the actions you want them to take. If you send an appeal (donation ask) on a weekday between 8:00 and 5:00 to a list mostly comprised of professionals, they may open your email at the office and forget to donate when they get home at night.
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