Table of Contents
Definitions
Lead Magnet = freebies you use to get a prospects email address.
Deliverability = a way to measure whether your email ends up in the inbox of your recipients.
Open rate = once the email hits the inbox, a way to measure hw many recipients actually oepened it. (Opne rate is not what it used to. I’ll explain further down this article.)
Click rate = how many email recipients actually clicked on the link in you email.
Conversion rate = the holy grail of the customer’s journey! Did the recipeitns actually bought something.
Customer’s Journey
From lead magnet to conversion, you can classif that as the customer’s journey through your brand’s narrative and efforts to engage. It’s also worth mentioning that this is an overview of your customer’s journey. Later articles will expand on each marker.
Lead Magnet
A magnet attracts, right? That’s the purpose of leading your prospects to giving up something (email) for a freebie, like an ebook or something.
This is the most honest and legal way (yes, legal) for you to get someone’s email address. They have to optin first before you can contact them. Otherwise, you’re violating the CAN-SPAM Act.
Deliverability
Measuring email deliverability is super important. Getting your email into someone’s inbox is not as easy as you may think.
The email security ecosystem (aka, spam filters) is defensive in nature, and if your email profile doesn’t meet certain basic requirements, it will end up in the Promotions or Spam folders.
I’ll get into more deets of what spam filters and other defensive measures email providers do to keep your email from hitting your recipients’ inboxes. I’ll also teach you how you can get around those protective tools–legally.
Open rate
So, here’s the deal with open rates and why it matters less now than it used to be a year ago. Thanks to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection initiative, open rates are no longer as reliable as they used to be.
What is MPP?
MPP (or Mail Privacy Protection) is a new option in the Apple device settings of iOS 15 that allows iPhone owners the ability to prevent email senders (you) from using invisible pixels to collect information about the email recipient.
Open rates used to be the primary metric used to measure email marketing performance, but Apple’s privacy changes have killed open-rate accuracy.
You’re going to be ok if your email recipients have non-apple phones. Moving ofrward, ust don’t get too exicted about your high open, you should at least discount up to a 3rd of it to factor in recipients who use Apple Mail.
Click rate
Thank God click rates are still reliable! Apple Mail just opens all the emails its servers receive. But once your recipients open your email and click on the link you provided, that metric is not blocked by Apple.
So open has become even more important now and reliable. Click rates also put you closer to conversion rate, when the client actually buys something from you.
Conversion rate
This is why you’re in business. Imagine conversion as that moment in your customers’ journey when, at your physical store, they actually pulled something off the shelf, bring it to the counter, and that sweet cha-ching sound from your cash register.
But once they bought something. Then what?
Return rate
Conversion rate is to return rate–like a wedding is to a marriage. Getting that first sale from a customer is great, but how do you keep them coming back for more? Well, that depends on your product or service. We’ll cover that aspect of marketing in a later post.
Are you offering a product or service that’s a one-time buy thing or is what you selling perishable and therefore lends itself to a subscription price structure?
Your product or service has to have a lock-in kind of