5 Ways To Measure Email Marketing Results Better

May 26, 2021 by Michel Leconte, Founder and CEO of SeoSamba

Tracking conversions from marketing campaigns helps drive sales that positively impact your bottom line. First, let’s talk about what a conversion actually is. In marketing, a conversion is the result of a desired action taken by your audience from a specific campaign. Actions can include newsletter opt-ins, someone filling out a survey or form, clicking a link within the campaign or contacting you. If you’ve ever used Google Ads, you know that Google assigns a phone number that is specific to each different campaign, called a tracking number. Now, when someone sees your ad and calls you, you know which ad they saw. 

“Why is that important?”, you may be wondering. Tracking metrics from your different campaigns gives you important data about your audience, such as which keywords are getting the most clicks, what calls-to-action are most effective or which offers work best. After this data has been gathered, you can use it to create more targeted campaigns in the future that will increase your conversions. More conversions will drive more sales, and more sales will increase your revenue (which is the desired result, of course). 

In a perfect world, all that data would be simple to track, nice and clean with no gray area.  But, it's not a perfect world and accurately tracking metrics is oftentimes difficult, or even impossible.  There are many ways leads convert that aren’t necessarily trackable, as we outlined in 11 ways email marketing gets off-the-grid ROI. 

Conventional methods for data tracking only gather a portion of your actual conversions. Conversions that are difficult or impossible to track include the times when someone mentions your business in casual conversation after having seen an email from you earlier that day, blind forwards, direct entry site visits and word of mouth, to name a few. Unless you are good about asking each and every lead how they heard about your company, then these leads often get counted as cold leads and not credited to any particular campaign. 

Luckily, there are some things that are within your reach to better control your conversion tracking.  A well thought out strategy combined with the right tools, such as the SeoSamba email marketing software solution, can help you improve offline ROI and get a clearer idea of your actual conversion rates. 

Here are 5 Ways To Better Measure Email Marketing Results to increase brand awareness, get better referral ls, improve lead generation and positively impact your bottom line. 

1. Create Unique Landing Pages for Each Campaign

A landing page is a single webpage that a user lands on upon clicking a link. Ideally, each offer for your different email marketing campaigns would have its own specific landing page relevant to only that offer.  Landing pages help to convert website visitors into actual leads.  

Instead of simply directing your target audience to an existing page on your website, direct them to campaign-focused landing pages.  This helps you track the campaigns that work well and weed out the ones that do not. Eventually, you’ll be able to zero in and create targeted campaigns that have very high conversion rates. 

For instance, new leads will integrate into your lead nurturing conversion funnel, while some will be phased out at a later stage if non-responsive to your incentives.

2. Use smart URL's

Leads from campaign specific landing pages can be tracked. Using campaign-specific landing pages is a great start, but in truth, not enough to differentiate between your lead channels and target audience. You’ll just end up creating numerous similar looking pages that could potentially create confusion for your customers and may even damage your SEO.

In order to track specific lead factors such as campaign, acquisition channel and audience, using specific URL parameters known as Urchin Tracking Module, or UTM for short, is necessary. 

Introduced by Google Analytics’ predecessor Urchin, UTM’s are URL parameters used to track the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns across various traffic origins (source), marketing channels (medium) and campaigns (campaign).

Using a very specific URL such as, www.yourwebsite.com/page?utm_content=linkbutton&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=productlaunchdec18, will make is much easier to consolidate the actual lead sources and track email marketing ROI from the original online link, as well as allowing you to track anytime the link gets copied and pasted and sent to any other digital channel (email, SMS, chat app...). SeoSamba’s product stack, including its Marketing Operating System and CRM, tracks these values by default. 

Free tools, such as the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder, makes it easy for anyone to build UTM URL’s. 

3. Implement Tracking Numbers 

Assigning a specific phone number to each of your  marketing campaigns is an excellent way to track exactly where leads are coming from.  These phone numbers, called tracking numbers, are virtual lines that forward to an actual phone number, such as your cell or office. This allows you to capture specific data from the calls to better understand where your leads are coming from. 

Understanding where your leads are coming from can help you fine tune future marketing campaigns for even better ROI. Creating campaigns that target different demographics and  locations with a specific message, then assigning different tracking numbers to each campaign will help you figure out which campaigns are effective and which campaigns need adjustments. Simply provision Dynamic Number Insertion call tracking phone numbers from your SeoSamba Marketing Operating System. 

4. Use sale, offer and coupon codes

Creating an offer or assigning coupon codes for each different segment of your campaign can help you measure very specific ROI data, getting as granular as you wish. If you find that you have a high shopping cart abandonment rate, a discount code may be exactly what you need to encourage people to complete their purchase. Personalizing the offer based on the shoppers history is an even better method for tracking. 

Using offer codes has other advantages as well, including higher open and click through rates.  SeoSamba provides a comprehensive coupon system integrated with its open source SeoToaster shopping cart.

5. Track Your Leads with a CRM

While this may seem fairly obvious, surprisingly few companies track their leads.  In order to accurately calculate ROI, you must accurately track leads.  Ticking a line on a yellow legal pad when calls or emails come in is not a feasible method for tracking leads.  Finding a good CRM (Client Relationship Management software) is an absolute must. 

While there are many different CRM’s available, there is only one that has the functionality, ease-of-use and overall value to proactively do this.  The SeoSamba CRM includes:

The Takeaway

With the right strategy and tools, measuring your off-the-grid email marketing ROI can help you improve your message, learn more about your target audience, become more efficient and increase conversions.

The implementation will require some effort from you in the beginning, but the long term benefits far outweigh the initial extra work.   SeoSamba provides all the tools your business needs to accurately track leads, streamline and automate marketing and manage your brand’s online presence in one place.  Start with a free trial of the SeoSamba CRM,  as well as a free trial of the  SeoSamba Marketing Operating System.