Comparatively, email marketing is the best conversion channel vis-a-vis cold calling or social media marketing. This is proven by looking at some notable findings on email marketing that are doing the rounds on the internet; email marketing generates an average return of $38 for every dollar spent. An average open rate of an email is 21.73% which is much higher when compared to social media reach (Facebook at 6% and Twitter at less than 2%).
Email marketing could be quite frustrating at times. When you email prospects and do not receive a response, there could be various reasons – the email was not opened, it was not delivered to the inbox, it was ignored, or the content did not make sense. Despite these questions, emails still stand tall among all communication channels because of their ability to get tracked.
Every email that is ignored indicates one prospective client slipping through the cracks, and you cannot let that happen after building a long list of subscribers. Tracking emails can help you arrive at a logical conclusion for all of the above questions, and more details like IP address, browser, operating system, location, etc., are available. Email tracking tells what prospects do with your emails so you can tweak your email messages for better deliverability and better response rates. It allows you to effectively follow up with prospects, track their willingness/unwillingness, work on your sales pitch, and finally build a better sales pipeline.
What does it track and their benefits?
Now that you understand that you can seize control of your outbound emails let us look at how you can track them. Let us compare the traditional way of emailing Vs. the present time.
- Step by step process of the traditional method of emailing: It involved zero tracking
Send emails
Wait…, Wait…! And wait for responses
- But this scenario has changed with email tracking software:
Send emails – Compose and send emails right from the email tracking software.
Track who opened the email – Email tracking software tracks and notifies as soon as the prospect opens the email. A notification pops on the screen the moment the email recipient clicks open the email. Unlike a read receipt, where the recipient should take the effort to click (which they might or might not), the tracking software works in the background.
How does that benefit you?
- Unlike a read receipt, you can know if a prospect has clicked open the email or not.
- If they opened the email, it means that the subject line is working, or it could also mean that they recognize the recipient (brand name.)
- The device through which they accessed the email, if it is through mobile, the prospect could be on the field, but a desktop indicates that he is right in front of the computer and you are on top of their mind, which could be the right time to pick up the phone and reach them.
- The location from where they accessed the email, if the prospect accessed from another place other than his typical work location, he might be out of the office and indeed not the right time for a follow-up email.
- How many times did they open the email – number of times indicate they might be interested in your content. This tells us the interest levels of prospects.
Track who clicked through the links – This is the most important metric of email marketing. This metric helps us to transcend the traditional emailing method and helps in the better engagement of brands with customers.
How does that benefit you?
- A higher click-through rate tells us that the email content and call-to-action design are working or vice versa.
- Indicates the campaign’s effectiveness – how effective is the campaign in increasing the subscriber interest and helping them traverse through the sales funnel.
- It also tells the landing page’s effectiveness, the landing page’s design, or the website where they clicked through and landed.
- Based on the click-through rates Vs. Product/ service emails, you can identify the most popular product amongst the audience.
- Multiple click-throughs indicate the interest levels of the prospect.
- A high click-through indicates better engagement of prospects; the better the engagement, the better the conversions.
Track who viewed the attachments – Email tracking software notifies when someone clicks or downloads email attachments. Depending on the type of attachment that intrigued their interest, you can plan the follow-up emails.
How does that benefit you?
- It helps in having a smooth sales call.
- Better informs the prospect about your company and offerings without having you spend more time on the call.
- When you know that a contact has viewed and downloaded the attachments, you can sense their interest levels and pitch your sales call accordingly.
Top Email marketing tracking tools
Now that we understand the effectiveness of email tracking, you must be wondering about finding out the right tool for your needs. There are multiple free or even premium accounts with outstanding features specifically designed for your business model. Here is a list of the top three tools available in the market.
1. Agile
Agile CRM is one of the top email tracking tools with excellent tracking and reporting elements. With Agile’s email tracking, you are equipped with more than just opens and click-throughs, valuable information of the customer, engagement history, social profiles, web engagement, sales enablement, customer service, marketing automation, and a lot more. It is an all-in-one CRM tool for sales, marketing, and service teams. Agile’s email campaign analytics provides full-fledged reports that help you improve performance. Agile also provides autoresponders – to automatically send emails based on actions and A/B testing – to optimize the email messages. It has some great integration features with IMAP, Google applications, and Microsoft Exchange and email gateway integrations like Mandrill, SendGrid, Amazon SES.
Price: The free version tracks 5000s emails per month for up to 10 users and charges beyond that. Up to 100K emails $0.004 per email.
2. Litmus
Litmus is an email tracking tool for marketers to make better email campaigns. Its advanced features like email builder, analytics, a checklist with custom controls empower teams to deliver better results. Litmus’ spam testing scans emails across key spam filters (against 25+ different tests) to identify and rectify emails and improve deliverability. Litmus extension allows preview and testing of emails internally or with external email service providers like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, IBM Watson Campaign Automation, Eloqua.
Price: It has a free 7-day trial, and its basic plan starts at $79 per user per month. The basic plan does not include code editor integrations, spam testing, email analytics, custom controls, enterprise security.
3. Yesware
Yesware is another popular email tracking software tool that tracks open and reply rates, link clicks, attachment opens, and presentation pageviews. Yesware’s drip campaign is simple and easy to set up for better sales prospecting. The drawback with Yesware is that it does not come with an internal CRM solution. Still, it can be easily integrated with third-party CRM like Salesforce, SugarCRM for log activity data and customer details. It has excellent integration features with Gmail, GSuite, Microsoft Outlook, MS Office 365, Microsoft Exchange. Yesware’s meeting scheduler helps you book meetings faster and sync all your calendars – Outlook, Gmail.
Price: While there is no free version, it provides unlimited email tracking from its initial offering, which is $12 per user per month. CRM integration is not available in the Pro plan but is available from the Enterprise plan.
Conclusion
Now that you know what to track and their benefits, what is your next move? Use that information to make better decisions like calling the prospect as soon as you see a pop-up notification of email-open, understand the level of engagement, follow up with the right context, and a lot more. You have the information, and what you do with it depends on you.
