How to Analyse & Optimise Your Email Automations

So, you’ve done your homework and come up with a solid email automation strategy and now you feel as though you’re ready to sit back, relax, and watch your business reap the benefits...not so fast! The ‘set it and forget it’ strategy is never a good approach to follow. 

The key is to continue to periodically monitor your email automations in order to identify tweaks and improvements.

In this post, I’m going to cover how to monitor the performance of your email flows over the short and long term. I’ll also share a list of easy experiments you can start running today to optimise your automated sequences.

Monitor performance

Monitoring performance not only allows you to identify areas for improvement in the short-term, it also allows you to gain deeper insight into your business on an ongoing basis.

For every automated email sequence you build, it’s a good idea to look at the performance across the following 4 key metrics:  

Delivery Rates 

The first thing to look at is how many people are actually qualifying for each automated series on a daily or weekly basis? If these numbers are lower than you expected, then perhaps your qualifying trigger is too exclusive. Having said that, for some behaviour-triggered sequences, low volume can also be a good thing! For example, if an abandoned cart sequence is not very active that could be because your customers are going straight through to make a purchase. 

Open Rates

This is an obvious one but also a super important metric to keep an eye on. Are people opening your emails? Open rates vary by industry but a good aim is to try to keep your open rates above 20%. If you’re falling below that figure, try A/B testing your subject lines to stand out better in a crowded inbox. You should also consider keeping an eye on how many emails your recipients might be getting from you each week to make sure you’re not overwhelming them.

Click Rates

If your open rates are high (great job!) but your click rates are low, that’s likely to mean that you have a little bit of work to do on the actual content within your emails. There are a couple of things you can look at here:

1. Are your “Calls-to-Action” (CTAs) clear in each and every email? 
2. Are your communications relevant and personalised?

Of all the emails you’re sending, your automations should be the most relevant and timely as they’re designed to be triggered based on someone’s behavior. Think about how you can get more targeted with each email you’re sending in order to boost your engagement.

Conversion Rate

Granted, not all of your emails will be focussed on encouraging someone to make a purchase so your conversion rate might be based on clicks to a blog post or a webinar registration for example. However, if you are focussed on purchases then look carefully at your click rate vs those who actually go on to buy from you. If there’s a large discrepancy in the numbers you may need to consider optimising your website further in order to reduce friction and encourage people to make a purchase.

Test, test and test again

Once you’ve got into the habit of monitoring the performance of your automations, you’ll start to identify areas of improvement. The next step is to carry out structured and controlled A/B testing to see where you might be able to improve.

If you’re struggling, here are some A/B test ideas to get you started.

Subject Lines: Experiment with tone in your subject lines. Try asking questions or using emojis. Test different subject lines to see what your audience responds to. 

Send Times: Determining the best time or the best day to send your email campaign is an essential piece of your overall email marketing strategy. And for good reason. High-quality content timed to arrive in your recipient’s inbox at the right time can help increase both your engagement and delivery rates.

Experiment with Plain Text Emails. Plain-text emails are just that—plain text. They are the email equivalent to a letter written on a typewriter—no images, no pretty fonts, no hyperlinks. While they may not be nearly as attractive as HTML-based emails, they play a significant role in a well-rounded email marketing strategy. Plain text messages that have a more personal touch. For certain buyer personas or target lifecycle stages, opting for a more personal sounding message from a key person at the business — presented as if it were written from that person’s own inbox — can be really effective at driving engagement. 

I hope you’ve found this post helpful and that it’s given you little inspiration to help you improve your existing automations (or even put some in place if you don’t already have them). Give these ideas a go and let me know how you get on.

About the Author, Georgie Carter

I'm a Marketing Consultant and the Founder of Pepped, a lifecycle marketing agency for health and wellness businesses.

I wish I had a pound for every time a stressed founder came to me saying they're frustrated they aren't:

? Communicating effectively with their leads and customers

? Getting enough leads into their sales funnel

? Retaining and nurturing customers

? Building a loyal customer basIf you're anything like the other business leaders I speak to, you probably understand the value of lifecycle marketing and CRM but know you aren’t capitalising on it. You know that you're probably losing out on new customers, but you don’t have the expertise or time to fix the problem.

Well, the good news is....

WE CAN HELP YOU ? We work with UK and US entrepreneurs and leaders disrupting the fitness, health and wellness industry, from Unicorn status global brands such as Houzz and Hims to scale-ups such as Alexia Clark LLC and Jennis (Dame Jessica Ennis-Hills's fitness app). 

SPECIALITIES ? Lifecycle marketing, CRM, email marketing, customer journey mapping, lead acquisition, content creation, content strategy, sales funnel optimisation, copywriting, website design, customer retention, customer engagement, customer loyalty and referral strategy.