If you have been publishing your newsletter for the better part of 2003, now is a perfect time to sit back and reflect on what you’ve accomplished. Through these five easy steps, you can find out how you’re doing and where your strategy might need to improve as you head into 2004. We also have included a sixth bonus tip that could make or break your 2004 program.
1. Start with your open rates.
Open rates give you statistically relevant information about how many people are opening each of your newsletters. Take this a step farther and compare open rates over time and now you have trend data that will help you refine your overall strategy. With open rates from a series of issues or mailings (2 or more, at least) from your 2003 program, you can spot upward and downward trends that you can track back to your Subject line, From address, and time/day of send. You’ll be able to see what worked and what didn’t and, moving forth in 2004, you can optimize your open rate by incorporating more of what worked. And if you’re not doing so already, make sure the From address is recognizable to your subscribers and that in either the From or Subject line you include your company brand.
2. Find out if subscribers are coming…or going!
When subscribers are coming in faster than they are going out, that is a good sign. Look for 2003 issues or mailings that had a high number of new subscribers and a low number of removals. You can also look at issues/mailings that have a high number of removes. What made these readers lose interest? What kind of differences in the issues can you spot? Was there a significant change in substance or in format? By comparing the successful issues with those less interesting, you’ll be able to see trends that can help you keep the subscribers coming in.
3. See what the most – and least – popular topics and articles are.
By tracking the most and least popular articles of 2003, you’ll find out a wealth of information about your subscribers’ preferences. For 2004, find the top five most popular articles/topics and then add more just like them into your editorial calendar for next year. You can also use the popular topics/articles for future Subject lines to pump up your open rates.
Don’t forget to review the five worst articles or topics. First check to see if placing them in other regions of your newsletter helps them get better readability. For instance, does content in the right column do better than content in the left? If positioning does not seem to be a factor and you see similar articles in the lineup for future issues, take them off the list. Every ounce of space in your newsletter is valuable and extra articles that draw little interest are hurting you.
4. Find out how long people spend with your newsletter.
Like open rates, “time spent” statistics will give you trends that can help you refocus your 2004 strategy. Time spent data has little meaning by itself but if you found your readers spent more or less time in 2003 than average with your newsletter, it gives you a good idea of how compelling your content is. The people who have spent a minute or more reading your newsletter are the most engaged. You can segment them into a separate list and leverage their interest level by sending them special promotions in 2004.
5. Look at total and unique values.
An interesting analysis is to compare total values to unique values, especially with clicks and opens. The difference between a total and unique value shows you how interested your readers are. By dividing the total value by the unique value, you get a multiplier that indicates how many additional steps people are taking with your content on average. For instance, if your newsletter has a total of 1500 clicks, with 650 unique clicks, then each unique visitor is clicking an average of 2.3 times. You can compare your 2003 issues and find out which ones had the highest average number of clicks. Look at the editorial in that issue and see if you can include more of it in your 2004 program. And of course, don’t forget to also look at the lowest averages for topics you want to avoid.
6. Review your reporting techniques.
Here’s our bonus tip for you: if you are unable to perform the first five analytic techniques listed here, it’s time that you found yourself a better reporting system. Without the tools in place to give you the information you need to optimize your newsletter strategy, you end up guessing what your readers want. Sometimes you’ll get a big hit, but other times you miss widely and you’ll begin to lose the interest of your subscribers. Ask yourself as you finalize your 2004 strategy: Is it worth the risk?
Editor’s note: All of the above reporting capabilities are available through IMN and, for IMN customers, you can apply all of these techniques to the refinement of your 2004 strategy at no cost through January 31, 2004.
