Marketers love delivering email open rates and click-through rates that go through the roof and beat industry standards.  The smallest percentage increase in click-through can be exciting, especially as your list size grows.

We like to obsess over opens and click-throughs because they’re simple to measure.  Even the most basic batch & blast email marketing tools track clicks and opens, and even show you who has clicked.  

But do you ever feel like something else should be there?  Small business marketers are itching to reach more meaningful metrics, metrics that go beyond click-through rates to measure how email campaigns are driving sales and generating revenue.

Sure, you know that they’re clicking.  But are they converting?

Email opens and clicks are the first steps to conversion.  With these metrics in hand, there are still questions left unanswered:

Are you sending the right mix of content?

The modern marketing approach is to provide value-added content that informs, educates or entertains your audience.  However, we can’t forget to ask for the sale as well.

As you build a track record of delivering awesome content to your list, your email opens and clicks will rise.  At the same time, only sending value-added content may not lead to conversions.  

Email clicks can tell you that your list loves your content, but they can’t tell you if you are sending the right balance of value-added content and call-to-actions that ask leads to learn more about your product and services, shop or buy.

What happens when leads reach your landing page?  

You may have become a master at crafting calculated email content that gets opened and clicked.  But do leads hit your landing page and drop off?  Or do they follow through with the next call to action, such as signing up for a service, tweeting out a blog post, or making a purchase?

If you can’t tie clicks back to a completed action on your landing page, you can’t know if your emails are really driving increased awareness, new opportunities and sales.

Clicks can’t tell you that you might need to adjust your email content to match what’s delivered on the landing page, or that a little landing page optimization might help convert more visitors.  Email clicks alone do not indicate that leads actually convert on your landing page.  

Are your email campaigns generating opportunities and customers?

Clicks and opens are not currency – customers are.  Clicks and opens can indicate the health of your emails and campaigns, but they don’t tell you if engaged contacts are converting to customers.

Beyond Clicks:  How To Measure the Success of Your Email Marketing

Using an email marketing tool integrated with a CRM for your small business closes the gap between email clicks and customers.  CRM tracking gives you the full scoop on how your customers, well, became your customers.

With CRM, you have insights into:

  • Where your customers originated from
  • What emails they have opened
  • The links they have clicked
  • The pages they have visited
  • The forms they have filled out
  • The sales people they have engaged with

Measuring opens and clicks is the foundation of revenue-generating email marketing.  But small business marketers feel like they need something more to correlate email activity to revenue.  CRM brings these metrics full circle, helping marketers reach the analytics they need to demonstrate the ROI of email marketing campaigns.