I recently read Jeff Mills' iMedia Connections blog, Best Practices for Email Campaign Testing, and saw that more than one-third of email marketers are not testing their campaigns. I guess I can never stop being amazed.
The breakdown of email content testing based on the eROI survey is valuable information. Through my marketing analytics lens (without knowing how the survey data was analyzed), one thing jumps out at me. Email marketers seem to be taking a short-term, quick-fix approach as opposed to a long-term desire to build customer intelligence leading to targeted emails.
What tells me this? The survey results in the blog show a much higher percentage of marketers testing quick-fix items such as subject lines (make the funnel larger at the beginning, they must be thinking, to make more come out at the end) than calls toaction and offers. In fact, marketers are testing subject lines nearly as much as they're testing calls to action and offer combined.
So this is clearly a prime time to discuss the methodology for setting up a testing strategy. (Note that I'm not going to talk about the different types of tests, such as A/B or multivariate versus univariate, since the tools... Read more
Archive for Satnam Singh 
Throw and Hope it Sticks? 3 Steps to Email Testing Nirvana
Now Competing for the "American Idol" of Marketing: Arithmetic, Mathematics and Statistics
I know, I've "Geek-ized" a pop sensation. I couldn't help it. The temptation was too strong. It seems analytics has become the talk of the town in marketing. Everyone is discussing measurement and ROI and how analytics is helping them make better decisions about marketing spend.
However, as all contestants are not created equal, neither is analytics. The discussions I've seen span a wide spectrum of tactics described as analytics — from the most sophisticated cause-and-effect analysis to the most basic calls and clicks response tracking.
I categorize analytics discussions into three categories: arithmetic, mathematics and statistics:
Arithmetic. The first, and most basic, primarily delves into the primary reporting of response and conversion metrics, such as calls received or accounts generated.
Mathematics. The intermediate, combines reporting with high-level trends and insights obtained through effective data mining.
Statistics. The most advanced, delves into cause-and-effect relationships to determine the effects of the often tangled nature of various marketing stimuli.
None of these is right or wrong, and each level acts as a springboard to the next higher level, but each provides answers that can lead you in different directions. So let's look at three examples and what each area of analytics will tell us.... Read more
One Metric to Measure Them All
1992. Presidential elections. James Carville succinctly delivers the focus of the campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.” To deliver the same for the marketing world today, I say: “It’s the measurement, stupid.”
The importance of measurement cannot be overstated. Organizations spend billions of dollars every year on marketing, so it isn’t surprising that they want to know the ROI of their marketing investments.
Companies that have a good measurement setup — based on a methodical, structured and iterative analytical approach — have a good handle on the effectiveness of different marketing activities. But they’re missing something big: the ability to accurately measure and compare across channels and campaigns. Knowing which email campaign works best is good. Knowing which campaign among all the marketing activities you’ve got going on — from sponsored events to direct mail to your website — is much, much better.
Let’s look at something outside marketing to get a fresh look. Say someone is considering a move from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Dallas, Texas. She finds that Texas has no state tax, housing and groceries will be cheaper, but utilities and transportation will cost more. A formula that combines these different data into a single,... Read more
