Email Benchmarks – Get To Know Them Better
By: Jeev Trika | Posted: 31st July 2007
Email marketing is something to be excited about and you just need to look around a bit into the Internet marketing world to find that a lot can be done via emails. Most people using email have not really thought about the fact that emails are being used so widely for marketing purposes. And what is more, email marketing has proved to be a fairly effective method of reaching out to potential and existing customers.
But how do marketers know that the emails that they are sending out are indeed effective. You can be sure of one thing, marketers usually do not do things without backing it up with some concrete reason. So by the same logic, email marketing is not a shot in the dark. There are numbers and statistics that show if an email marketing campaign is proving to be successful or not.
And this is where email benchmarks come in. Benchmarks are needed in every industry to gauge how you are doing, compared to others. These benchmarks can give you a picture of clicks, opens and other such email marketing related information. Email benchmarks give you an idea of where you should be in comparison to where you are. But as anything that involves numbers and analysis, this is not a simple procedure.
First things first, where you get your benchmarks from is a very big consideration. After all, you need to be sure that you are getting valid information. Most email service provides can give you this information since they are the ones who have most access to the email related activity of their clients. There are a few industry publications that also provide this kind of information. As a marketer you need to realize that all these sources have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, email service providers would probably give you only the better sounding data since they want to promote email marketing. Sharing information that says email marketing is not working would be unfavorable to their business.
Then there is audience and type of emails to consider. You want to make sure that the benchmark that you are using is relevant to your target audience. The same goes for the type of email you are sending out. You want data that gives you some insight into how your target audience would treat your specific type of email.
As mentioned above, email benchmarks are not that easy to use. In fact, they can be completely useless if you do not know how to use them properly. Numbers, on their own, are not valuable. It is how you analyze and make sense out of these numbers that makes all the difference.
At the end of the day, you are using industry benchmarks for a reason and that is profits! You might be exceeding these benchmarks and still not getting enough profits or in spite of not meeting these benchmarks you might be getting desired revenues. So do keep in mind that benchmarks are not everything. They are just a standard to compare your standing with; you do not have to live by these values. It would be best to use industry benchmarks till you can come up with your own. You need to figure out what works for you and what are the standards that you expect from your business. It could be more than or less than the industry benchmarks.
Benchmarks are extremely helpful if they are used properly. If not, these email benchmarks can really lead you off the track. Treat benchmarks as they are and all they really are is a snapshot of industry averages. You can look at email benchmarks as a map that you can use if you want to. It gives you are fair direction of what is going on around you but you can decide your own path depending on what suits your business. Taking a benchmark to be the ‘be it and end it of all’ is not a good idea. This is to say that even if you are not meeting an industry standard that does not mean that your email campaign is a failure. Look at it this way: are you reaching the business goals that are set by you?
Benchmarks are definitely a good place to start. Many marketers do not know where to start when they are about launch an email campaign. This is a time when email benchmarks can really come handy. It gives you somewhat of an idea of where you can start and which direction to take. From there, however, it would be best to rely on your own benchmarks and set your own standards.
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Tags: statistics, internet marketing, marketers, audience, marketer, logic, existing customers, email marketing campaign, industry publications, benchmarks, email service providers