Forget Open Rates; Focus on CTOR

Everyone’s focused on metrics this time of year. Budget battles for 2018 are in full swing as bean-counters and jealous colleagues scrutinize how your precious marketing dollars are spent (or wasted) online. Social media gets all the headlines today, but good old email marketing is still very effective for financial professionals—if done well.

Katrina Manning, author of the Email on Acid blog recently shared seven reasons that Email Marketing Still Works. “Many business professionals are checking their email at work regularly, not going onto all the social media sites,” explained Manning. “Reach out to them directly where they prefer communication for their business transactions and informational needs. Heck, 40 percent of Americans read emails while in bed. That means you already have their attention in their inbox, so use it!”

McMetrics

Sure, it’s important to track opens, clicks, unsubscribes and forward, etc., but you can artificially inflate your open rates with provocative email openers such as: “Salary Survey,” or “New Sex Position” or “Celebrity Slips” or “Top-10 Overrated Colleges” or “Do this now to get a raise!”

That’s just Kardashian-esque click bait.

If there’s no meat on the bones when people take time out of their busy day to open it, then you’ll be punished in several ways: low click rates and possibly and unsubscribe.

That’s why open rates are essentially a McMetric—easy to measure, but low on substance, as my colleague Rick Telberg and I addressed in a podcast. There’s another more meaningful metric, the Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR), that I’ll explain in a minute.

First of all, open rates are deceptive. An open is recorded when images are downloaded, even if the recipient didn’t click or take action. Or, the recipient may have the “auto preview” feature turned on (which automatically registers an open). Recipients may have inadvertently clicked on your email when they really wanted to open the one just above or below it in their inbox….i.e. they bailed just a split second after reading yours.

CTOR levels the playing field

What you really want to know how many of the people who opened your email actually clicked on at least one of your content element?  CTOR measures the relevancy and context of an email by taking the number of unique clicks divided by the number of unique opens, and then multiplying by 100 to show it as a percentage.

Example

Email A: Let’s say you sent a mailing to 1,027 clients, past clients and prospects. Of those 1,027, let’s say 27 bounced or were out of office replies, giving you 1,000 sent. Of those 1,000 delivered, let’s say 260 opened your email, i.e. 26% open rate. Not bad, but suppose only 10 of those 260 people actually clicked on something giving you a 4% click-through rate.  Therefore, your click-to-open rate (CTOR) would be 15.4% (i.e. 4% ÷ 26%).

Email B: Let’s say the following week you send a new email to the same list of 1,027 and the same 27 bounced or were out of office, giving you 1,000 successfully sent (same as last week). Of those 1,000 delivered, let’s say only 190 opened your email, i.e. 19% open rate—7 percentage points worse than last week. But of those 190, a 20 individuals clicked on something giving you a click-through rate of 10.5%. Therefore, your click-to-open rate (CTOR) would be 55.2% (i.e. 10.5% ÷ 19%)…..significantly higher engagement than last week’s mailing despite a lower open rate.

Even though Email A had a much higher open rate than email B, which do you think had a higher engagement rate and was ultimately more successful?

	Sent	Bounced	Deliv.	Unique Opened	Unique Clicked	CLICK to OPEN Rate
Email A	1,027	27	1,000	260 (26%)	10 (4%)	15.4%
Email B	1,027	27	1,000	190 (19%)	20 (10.5%	55.2%

Source: HB Publishing & Marketing Company, LLC 2017


Improving click-through

The best way to improve your CTOR is to improve the nominator; your click through rate. Here are some time-tested techniques. No magic, here. Just basic blocking and tackling.

1. Relevant content. The easiest step is to make sure you have content that’s entirely relevant to your audience. Don’t try to send a one-size-fits all email to your entire list. Take the time to segment your list and send highly relevant campaigns to each.

2. Don’t be a click baiter. There’s nothing more annoying to a busy reader than opening an eBlast or enewsletter and finding nothing inside that relates to the provocative subject line. Again, you’ll be ignored and possibly unsubscribed to.

3. Design issues. When reviewing the content and creative of the campaign, you might see that an email with a poor performing click-to-open rate did not include enough links, or possibly the clickable areas were unclear to the subscribers, causing the low level of engagement.

4. Too many “asks.” Another mistake we see in this era of “do more with less” is asking the recipient to do too many things in a single email (i.e. sign up for a webinar, check out a video and register for a conference).

QUICK TIP: It’s great to have multiple links to helpful content and resources, but NEVER include more than one call-to-action (CTA) within each email.

Benchmarks

So, what’s a good CTOR? According to digital market consultant, Cara Olson, it depends on many variables including industry, type of email, segmentation, number of links in an email, etc. She said, a good CTOR can vary from 20% to 30%. But, rather than benchmarking against your peers, benchmark against yourself. Establish the CTOR for your own newsletters, triggered campaigns, promotional campaigns, transactional emails, for each email in a series, and then compare your improvement (or lack thereof) over time. Measure often, tweak, and re-assess.

Drilling down into industry specific email benchmarks, MailChimp says the CTOR for the Business & Finance category is 13% (21.0% open / 2.7% click through). GetResponse says CTOR for the Financial Services category is about 24% (i.e. 22.0% open/ 5.3% click through).

Conclusion

Business email is something that your client chooses to open and read; they are not being forced to do so. You work hard to build client and prospect relationships. Respect their privacy and how busy their schedules are. If you do, and consistently offer valuable content and insights, readers will refer you without hesitation to like-minded peers.

*** Are you a Finder, Minder or Grinder? Take our Insta-Poll and see how you stack up to your peers.

Do You Know Why Your Marketing’s Working (or Not)?

Picture this. A CPA, an attorney and a hedge fund manager are chatting over drinks at an investment conference. Looking out the window, a bartender exclaims, “Check it out, hundred dollar bills, just lying in the parking lot!” The CPA smirks, “I doubt those are real $100 bills; if they were, someone would have grabbed them by now.” The attorney says, “They might be real bills, but you’ve got be careful about touching stolen property or being accused of instigating a riot.” The hedge fund titan laughs, “Maybe if they were thousands I’d go down and scoop ‘em up. I’m not wasting my time with hundreds.”  

Meanwhile, an alert taxi driver opens his door, reaches down to the asphalt and stuffs several days’ worth of fares into his pocket. “I love when this convention comes to town,” he says laughing to his dispatcher. “They’re always great tippers!”

OK. Maybe we embellished this story a little, but for so many of us, perception does not equal reality. The bartender is too passive. The CPA is overly cynical. The attorney is cautious. The hedge fund manager is too greedy and the lucky cab driver? He’s not likely to replicate his good fortune as he misunderstood the cause and effect of his windfall. Does any of this sound familiar?

How many marketing touches does it take?

Let’s say your firm decided to take its marketing more seriously this year. Since January, you’re doing everything by the playbook just fine. Weekly blog posts, regular participation in relevant LinkedIn discussions. You’re sending out a nice monthly client newsletter, a thought leadership white paper and even some videos. But, after four months, still new clients.

Let’s say you send out a quick email blast next week about a webinar you’re having and two prospects call to schedule discovery meetings. A day later, you get a great referral and then a longtime client who’s getting up there in age wants to bring his son and grandson in to meet you for some estate planning discussions.

Must have been the email blast, you tell your team. So, this quarter you heavy up on your email blasts and webinars and drop the other stuff, right? Wrong.

According to the Online Marketing Institute, it takes 7 to 13+ touches to deliver a qualified sales lead. Possibly longer when it comes to marketing professional services. Our experience is that it takes consistent, relevant “drip marketing” to reach the time-pressed, influential decision makers you need to impress. No single ad, email or event—no matter how clever or well executed—should be credited for “making the sale.”  It’s the cumulative effect of all of your touchpoints that’s going to push prospects through the various stages of the purchase decision cycle.

Half a dozen years ago, CPA Trendlines founder, Rick Telberg and I collaborated on a comprehensive survey of banner ads in financial newsletters. Here’s what we found: More than one-half of follow-up to online ads occurred up to 30 days after the ads had appeared. Readers who were exposed to online newsletter ads but did not click on them could recall the ads almost as frequently as readers who did click on the ads (22% versus 28%). Click here for the podcast about our “Beyond the Click” study.

Conclusion

Having a successful marketing campaign without knowing why it’s successful is just as bad as suffering through a lousy campaign. If you don’t know why something’s working and you can’t replicate that success, then you’re just playing the lottery and praying for luck. Be smart. Measure what counts. And don’t forget to talk to clients, prospects and industry watchers in person every chance you get. Real verbatim feedback is what makes your numbers and metrics even more powerful.

Have a great week. HB

Our blog has more, as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

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TAGS: Online Marketing Institute, Beyond the Click, 7-13 touches for qualified lead, Rick Telberg, CPA Trendlines

Are We Too Deep into Data?

Numbers are only part of the equation when it comes to smart B2B decision-making

David Brooks’ NY Times op-ed piece today got me thinking. Our society’s obsession with gathering huge amounts of data fosters “certain cultural assumptions that everything that can be measured should be measured.” He also notes that data is a “transparent and reliable lens that allows us to filter out emotionalism and ideology.”

Here at HB, we sometimes get labeled as data junkies because we generate a growing portion of our revenue from rigorous benchmarking research and gap analysis studies that we do for our clients. We also try to help online advertisers, agencies and media owners separate the numbers that matter from the numbers that are simply easy to gather—we call those McMetrics. We also urge our clients to supplement all their surveys, polls or other research initiatives with verbatim interviews with respondents. Why? To make sure the human side of the data comes through.

Full disclosure: Our Super Bowl office pools are a little wacky, including one based on the probability that certain categories of commercials will run at specific times of the Big Game. No we didn’t have an over-under on the chances of a second-half blackout. But data showed that a tidal surge of tweets and posts about the bizarre Superdome snafu helped re-kindle interest in an apparent blowout victory for the Baltimore Ravens and brought an estimated 5 to 6 million viewers back to the game.

Beyond the Click

Back in 2002—the dark ages of online media—I co-authored a rigorous research report with Bay Street Group president, Rick Telberg, entitled “Beyond the Click.” The ideas was to help online advertisers, marketers and agencies better understand the “latency principle” of banner ads. In sum, online consumers don’t necessarily visit your website the instant they see your banner ad and if they do go to your website on the day your new banner ad has run, it’s not necessarily because that particular ad is the most effective one in your campaign, i.e. the one that prompted the consumer to take action. We still get contacted for copies of Beyond the Click and the research also explores the “build effect” of a campaign and the weekend “catch-up” effect of busy professionals.

Brooks admits he’s still trying to figure out when it’s best to rely on intuitive pattern recognition and when we should just ignore intuition and follow the data.  Data, he argues is good at helping us understand when our intuitive view of reality is wrong. Second, he posits that data can “illuminate patterns of behavior we haven’t yet noticed.” For example, does frequent use of such word as “I,” “me,” and “mine” mean you’re more egotistical than people who don’t?  Turns out, when people are feeling confident, they are focused on the task at hand, not on themselves. High status, confident people use fewer “I” words, not more, according to University of Texas prof, James Pennebaker, in his book, “The Secret Life of Pronouns.”

I recently spoke with Eric Wulf, CEO of the International Car Wash Association (ICA), about his organization’s industry benchmarking data initiative which has become one of the ICA’s most popular member benefits.  Wash Count™ is a tool ICA developed to help car wash operators benchmark and compare their business results by market, by geography, by type of facility and many other factors. That’s important to an industry that’s increasingly going from mom-and-pop operators to corporate conglomerates. More than 800 sites contribute data to ICA’s research initiative. But here’s the key, said Wulf: “Our staff spends a lot of time onsite with members, picking up pieces of intelligence and always asking them, ‘How’s it going?’ It’s very important to add the face-to-face interaction to the raw data.

Macro View

Despite yesterday’s report that the economy shrank slightly in the October to December quarter, don’t start sounding the recession alarm bells yet. Housing had another strong month and business investment in equipment and software, rose at an annual rate of 12.4 percent, the best showing in more than a year, the Commerce Department said. Meanwhile, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reported that manufacturing grew a lot faster in January thanks to an increase in hiring and new orders. The ISM’s widely watched index is now at 53.1, up from 50.2 in December and its highest level in almost a year.


Conclusion

Data used responsibly is an essential tool for gut checking our assumptions and preventing emotional bias from clouding our decision-making process. But, remember, it is just one tool in a smart B2B marketer’s tool kit. At the end of the day, we’re all humans, trying to get the right products and services into the hands of the right kinds of humans at just the right time when they’re ready to buy.

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TAGS: Institute for Supply Management, Super Bowl Blackout, Eric Wulf, International Car Wash Association, David Brooks, New York Times, Rick Telberg, McMetrics, Beyond the Click, James Pennebaker, University of Texas

Do Busy Professionals Have Time for Social Media?

Most will tell you it’s a ‘must do’, but tweeting and posting is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re not carefully planning, adjusting and measuring the right things, then you’re just adding to the noise and making yourselves look worse



Chief Marketer’s recent survey of CMOs found that friends, followers, likes, shares forwards and retweets are still the most popular social media metrics. Why? Because they’re easy to measure. But, as Internet Marketing Report (IMR) revealed in today’s print edition, these easy metrics (we call ‘em McMetrics here at HB) just tell you how wide your reach is. IMR said leads and sales are far more accurate indicators of ROI. For instance, 60 percent of CMOs surveyed said they looked toward “friends, followers and likes” as indicators to measure social media success, but only 35 percent said they monitored qualified leads from social media and only 25 percent measured sales attributed to their social media platforms.

Communicating in a microwave society

And that’s a challenge, because technology is changing so fast. We’re so busy trying to keep up with technology that we’re not really becoming more effective communicators—let alone brand builders or reputation enhancers. “Our culture moves at warp speed, no question, the weekly or even daily news cycle long since replaced by an up-to-the-second Twitter feed of Facebook update,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Richard Hoffer last week. “We said goodbye to thoughtful consideration the day we moved over to microwave popcorn.”

Fortunately Google Analytics and others will soon enable users to track how well their social media efforts are paying off in real e-commerce dollar terms. Disclosure: Our firm has no commercial ties or partnerships with Google.

Companies that enable the e-commerce tracking feature on their free version of Google Analytics will soon be able to produce a “social value report” that shows conversions or sales that came directly from visitors to your social media site and “assisted conversions” that come within a set interval (say 30 days) of when a visitor interacted with one of your social media pages.

As Hugh Duffy, head of a practice development firm for CPAs noted on his blog last week, time is one of the biggest resource investments you have to consider when embarking on a social media strategy. Citing research from my good friend, Rick Telberg, of Bay Street Group Research Duffy noted there’s a strong correlation between high performance and technology adoption at firms.

To do it well, it will take up a great deal of your organization’s time and energy to launch it, maintain it and perfect it. But will it bring you more business? And how long do you keep trying until you know whether or not you’ll be successful at developing a meaningful and profitable online presence?

Only you and your colleagues can be the judge? But before you start throwing stuff on the wall to see what will stick, you must have a clear timeline, clear assignment of responsibilities and clearly defined success metrics that everyone can buy into. That way you’ll know when it’s time to ramp up or clean up the mess, if it’s just not working out.

Your clients and stakeholders are depending on you. They’ll respect you for trying new ways to reach them. And they’ll respect you even more for not throwing good money (and time) after bad when it becomes apparent that some of your social experiments may not be their cup of tea.

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