Hello! As an email analytics professional, my role is to help clients gain valuable insights into their email marketing campaigns and better understand their customers’ behavior and preferences. Here is a lengthy discussion of some services I provide as an email analyst:
Email marketing is one of the most commonly used digital marketing channels, but it can be difficult for brands to truly understand what’s driving engagement and ROI with their emails. As an analytics expert, I work directly with clients to measure the effectiveness of their email programs and optimize them for maximum results.
One of the first things I’ll do when taking on a new client is conduct an audit of their existing email workflows, templates, and subscriber database. Analyzing the historical email performance data gives us a baseline understanding of what’s currently working well and where there may be opportunities for improvement. Some things I look at include open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes, subscriber growth trends, and buyer journey mapping. This upfront audit work helps identify any issues holding their emails back and informs future strategy.
With that foundational knowledge in hand, I then focus on implementation of an integrated analytics solution to provide ongoing tracking and reporting. Most of my clients choose to deploy dynamic Google Analytics tracking parameters directly in their email templates. This allows me to track behaviors like opens, clicks, on-site page views from emails, and more across the client’s entire digital footprint. The analytics solution also feeds data into our customer data platform (CDP) and marketing automation system to power personalized campaigns.
Armed with real-time email performance metrics, I’m able to regularly report out key performance indicators (KPIs) to the client. For example, I’ll share open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate benchmarks by email type, segment, and over time. This gives visibility into what’s working at a quick glance. I also conduct deeper multivariate analysis by looking at demographic factors, device usage, geography, and other attributes to uncover subtle trends.
One area I specialized in is segmentation optimization. By leveraging our CDP data combined with email analytics, I’ve helped clients identify the best customer cohorts to target for certain types of emails based on propensity to engage. For example, we found that new subscribers responded much better to onboarding emails focused on education versus promotion. Tailoring messaging and creative to the right audience significantly improved email metrics.
Ever since GDPR and CCPA, privacy compliance has become a huge part of my work. I work hand-in-hand with clients to audit email lists for consent status, implement preference centers and subscriber update flows, and ensure they have the right policies in place. On the analytics side, properly tagging emails as transactional versus promotional allows tracking compliance rates, opt-in/opt-out volumes over time, and campaign response rates by consent type to prove legal compliance efforts are effective.
One other area clients rely on me for is A/B testing support. I use the analytics data to help identify the right metrics and variation points to test, ensure proper tagging for testing purposes, and analyze the results to determine what variations drive the best results post-campaign. A/B testing is a cornerstone best practice that I highly recommend as part of any robust email program optimization process.
As an email analytics professional I tap into the mountains of data available through email analytics solutions and use it as a strategic lever to take client programs to the next level. Data drives all of my recommendations and counseling. Whether it’s measuring current success, identifying areas for improvement, proving privacy compliance efforts, or informing innovative tests – analytics are the backbone of optimizing email marketing performance. I hope this breakdown of my role was helpful! Let me know if you need any other insights.
Andrew Stroud