Omnichannel marketing vs. multichannel

A good calibration moment

If the Open rate is slowly ceasing to be a reliable metric, which one is? Let's zoom out first. In the end, e-mail marketing is part of your marketing and sales apparatus. You want to interest leads, help customers, earn loyalty. Not just through email, but omnichannel.

All the data points in all your channels tell you something about the stages relationships are in. In the coming years, does your organization place the most importance on obtaining new business or on retaining customers? Which marketing tools are used for which objective? This is the starting point for determining which e-mail KPIs are crucial for you. Then align your email KPIs with the organizational goals.

E-mail statistics to consider

1. Engagement. You may not know if your email was opened, but there are also (anonymized) statistics that show you how long your emails were looked at. Less than 2 seconds, longer than 8 seconds? These are metrics that you can compare with different (A/B-tested) emails or over time that indicate whether you are succeeding in making those you reach more interested. An important metric on the road to conversion or loyalty.

2. Unsubscribe rate. Is somewhat seen as the ugly duckling of metrics. "Yes, we do lose some readers opting out with every campaign. However, you can also start using it as an active KPI. Not just for reducing unsubscribes, but especially for analyzing segments in your target audience that unsubscribe clicks. Are they your Loyal customers, One-time buyers or the Watching, non-buyers? Have you sent a sales email to a target audience that may not buy much, but includes important Influencers? And then what is the follow-up?"

"Yes, we simply lose a few readers with every campaign"

This is where your omnichannel strategy comes in. Perhaps email is a less appropriate channel for certain messages and segments. Sometimes social media, text or Web Push messages are more effective. Can you automatically follow up unsubscibes on emails with an action in another channel? Including automated weekly sales lists to provide unique offers to the Loyal customers among the unsubscribers? It shows again how important it is not to view email (data) separately from other customer data and channels. Make sure you can combine them in your data and automation software.

3. Conversion rate. How many people took the action you were aiming for? Did they fill out the form, view the offer, purchase your product or service? This is really still way underutilized. Of course attribution plays an important role in combination with your other channels, but get serious about it. Use your consultant or supplier to help you with this. Your manager and board will thank you for it.

4. Effort/impact analysis. Another one, from a very different angle. That of effort/impact analysis. Start measuring how much production time it takes to create emails and email selections. For example: 60 minutes for creating the content, 30 minutes for coding, 14 days for the entire process including data selection and approval. Then, in fact, you can much better determine where automation and data efficiency are going to be successful quickly. Especially if you combine this with the results of the other KPIs mentioned.

I know, time is money (ánd limited), mass often seems like cash register, or at least: attractive. As a content marketer, email marketer and marketing manager, you are long happy if all the expressions are ready on time. Especially if you have open marketing and data jobs. But maybe this is a good time to work precisely on quality time. Set up your data and email KPIs properly once again, it will save you oceans of time and even more importantly it will ensure alignment with organizational goals.

(this article also appeared on Emerce)

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