email & analytics

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  • johndiggity

    not sure if anyone can figure this out, but any help is appreciated.

    we contracted with an email marketing service to send out a newsletter on behalf of one of our clients to a list of people (400,000) who had opted in. no spam.

    after the newsletter (which drives to a contact form) there was no great increase in site traffic according to or google analytics. however, the email sender is saying that a few thousand recipients opened the email and clicked through.

    there is a huge discrepancy and no one can figure out why this is so. a few people here have received the email, clicked through and shown up in the google analytics. so we know the email goes to the right place.

    any ideas what is going on here?

  • DrBombay0

    Not sure but you could have used a URL shortener like bit.ly to easily track click-thru metrics.

  • johndiggity0

    true. but i'm starting to wonder if this email was even sent to the correct list. we will probably use bit.ly and landing page just to test and make sure the email works.

    any other ideas? maybe the mailer got flagged as junk?

  • JazX0

    I wouldn't recommend using GA professionally. Of course, that's my opinion but... So you're seeing a large amount of people opening the E-mail but not following the calls-to-action (HREFs), which you should be able to track obviously, within the E-mail?

    1. Was the dB legit, ie., E-mail addresses real?
    2. Did the 3rd party group actually send out 400,000 at once? That sounds awfully large.
    3. Was the content compelling?

  • johndiggity0

    yes, i agree with everything that has been said. i am always reluctant to do email marketing because of just this fact. other people have been involved to this point and have asked me to help them figure out what happened.

    1. we were informed that it was, as it was purchased for this reason (geography, incomes, etc)

    2. not sure. it was within the span of a few days possibly.

    3. probably not. (but there was a free offer on the email and people love free shit—supposedly)

    i am told we have used the email vendor before for another client and that the number usually jive every time we send a blast out. the problem here is the large discrepancy between the analytics and what the email is saying.

    we do not host the site and the site hosting company is telling us they don't have any analytics (nothing like urchin) for the site as well.

  • JazX0

    So, your answers to 1. and 2. are out of your control and 3. might be because the target audience's E-mail clients might have blocked the content or they read it as SPAM. One of the two? I don't know, I'm just saying, trying to help dude. o_O

    Obviously, better to control your own mailings and such.

  • johndiggity0

    yeah, i totally agree and appreciate your help and insight. wasn't trying to be rude at all.

    i am thinking that the email vendor sent out the wrong creative to our list. that is really the only explanation at this point. if that is the case, they are not admitting it. any way to verify this?

    • No, I thought I was coming across as rude, LOL! ;)JazX
  • dMullins0

    There are so many outer lying factors in email marketing. I can't even begin to diagnose the problems without being involved.

    It could be grey bounces, lack of tracking on your form page, people opening emails with Preview Pane, etc etc.

    List goes on...

  • JazX0

    Send unique E-mails to 50K at a time, easier to manage these than 400K at a time. Test the E-mails on a number of different E-mail clients, unless the 3rd party tool does it for you (some do). I agree, if there was a free offer, chances are people will sign up for it, if it's a good prize item or whatever, which makes me think, even more, that this didn't go through properly. It's not very practical, but if you could test the E-mail on a test group that might help.