Big Data is great but don’t forget about the small data as well

Posted by Mel Jewell
October 28, 2015October 28, 2015

Big Data is definitely in vogue at the moment with companies looking to find ways to improve sales and operational efficiency through analysing huge volumes of data searching for industry and commercial patterns. Whilst the expense of such an endeavour may be a little off-putting for some smaller companies, this doesn’t mean you should forget about the potential in your own data and those nuggets of insight you can glean from in-house analysis by getting caught up in the Big Data wave. Understanding your own customer behaviour is a great way to figure out where your customers are most likely to become disengaged (or disappear entirely) allowing you to target them more effectively to see if you can encourage them…

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Love at first sight

Posted by Tony Macpherson
May 15, 2015May 18, 2015

We all know how important it is to make a good first impression – especially when we’ve spent time and effort to look good in front of those we want to attract! So how do you do that with emails? Building an email database is about more than building a data capture form on your website as you need to drive traffic – whether it’s SEO, PPC, generating followers through social platforms or more traditional media – getting people to your website is an expensive business. So, when people do find their way to your website, ensure two things are done well; make it quick and easy for them to add their email address to your mailing list and create…

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What should you be looking to report on and why? Part two

Posted by Mike Parry
October 8, 2014April 24, 2015

In the second of this two part series on email reporting (the first can be found here) I am going to look at delivery reporting, what it means and how it affects your email campaigns. Delivery reporting – what is it and how can you use it to improve your list health (which ultimately improves future inbox placement and subsequently ROI)? The first thing to look at is a reporting overview to give you a snapshot of your campaigns. This should immediately highlight any causes for concern. The numbers you are looking at here are delivered, anything under 98% for an opt in list should lead you to look at the reasons the undeliverable number is above 2-3%. Whether the…

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Why using your softest metric is a mistake!

Posted by Mike Parry
April 29, 2014April 28, 2015

Have you ever been in a meeting or been that person in the meeting telling everyone it’s great, email open rates have gone up. Now it is true that if you can get “real opens” up then the rest of your metrics will hold true and that is a good thing but the proliferation of smart devices – predominately the iPhone and iPad – and the way their email client works has led to increasing numbers of “false opens”. A “real open” is, of course, when a user makes a conscious decision to open and read or at least scan your email. A “false opens” occur when a user – predominately on an email client that lists all unopened emails…

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