One of the things they teach you when you do any email marketing is to collect data. You do collect data, right? Good…just checking. Anyway, the question I’m putting forth to you today is a simple one. Is all that data worth squat? Do you even know? If you’re like most email marketers, you probably have no idea. Well, this article is going to clear this mess up as much as possible.

Let’s start with the first problem in regard to data. It originates from the actual building of the list you’re emailing. See, too many marketers don’t know how to build a targeted list. They’ll offer some kind of free report or newsletter for a certain niche but fail to do the necessary research in order to determine what that niche actually wants. So what happens is that you end up either not building a large enough list OR you end up building a list that is going to be totally unresponsive to what you’re offering.

So what do you think is going to happen when you start tracking your email campaigns? Well, in the case of a too small list, you can’t make any kind of a reasonable conclusion on the effectiveness of the campaign because of the small sample size. In the case of a list built on a wrong premise, you’re going to end up with stats that look like McGovern’s in the Presidential race of 1972 when he lost to Nixon in a landslide. So in order to make sense of stats, the foundation of your list MUST be solid.

But what then? What if you find that you get a 50% open rate on all emails sent and yet, your CTR is less than 1%. Does this really mean anything even with a targeted list? Well, it could mean one of many things. For starters, it could mean that your prospects are interested in your content but not interested in your product. However, it could mean something else. It could also mean that you are giving away too much info in your newsletter, thus making it so that there is no need to BUY your product.

That is the problem with pure statistics. They don’t tell the whole story. They never will. This is why it’s important to dive deep into your campaigns and find out what the reason is for the low CTR, if that’s the case. You need to email your list and ask them point blank what the deal is. The responses you get, provided they are enough, should give you some idea if the problem is the product or simply that you’re giving away the store.

Of course the sneaky way to do this is to simply ask people how they like the newsletter and if they feel it is helpful. If most respond that they’ve never gotten so much great info in a newsletter, that could indicate that they’re getting too much info. If the response is good but not off the charts, it could indicate that the product you’re pitching just isn’t appealing to them.

Unfortunately, this is not an exact science…which is why you have to take stats with a grain of salt.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.