Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Control Groups To Assess Impact Of Email Program

Posted by Anonymous on 12/28/2004 at 3:28 PM ET 250 Points
What are some ways that you have successfully constructed control groups to measure the incremental impact an email program has on conversion/product use?

Situation Overview: Consumers who visit my brand’s website will be given the opportunity to register for monthly newsletters (via email). Emails will be sent out every 4 weeks based on a consumer’s date of registration for at least 6 months. Conversion will be measured after 3 and/or 6 months of being in the email program. The product of interest is a prescription medication.

I am interested in hearing the positives of different approaches you’ve used (from control group suppression to panel matching) and how you overcame any negatives of the approach. If you have vendors that have successfully designed and executed test-control measurement of email programs, I am also interested in your referrals.
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  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 12/28/2004 at 11:23 PM Member
    Hi Dawn,

    Excuse me for not directly answering your question, maybe I am interpreting it incorrectly.

    My initial reaction is you might be approaching this with goals and objectives that are not, in the early stage you are in, optimizing the strengths of what email marketing is about which is strengthening and deepening existing customer relationships.

    In short, it seems like worrying about control groups is a little premature.

    First, make sure that your call-to-action(s) are so strong that the majority of site visitors cannot resist signing up.

    Then delivery on this promise to bring value to to their business and life.

    This is because without a strong database of permission-based opt-in subscribers that continue to open your email month after month, nothing else really matters - there will be nobody to control.

    During the registration process give your soon-to-be subscribers a few select areas of interest to choose from. Keep it simple, you can always drive them to append later, for example, by including a special offering or contest.

    Likewise, keep the amount of mandatory personal information they need to supply to a minimum, you can also append this later.

    Then, you can use this as the basis for segmentation and targeting later - basing it off needs and preferences and tweaking incremental changes as such.

    Keeping them subscribed all depends on what your content will be - how will you add value to their business and lives? That "unsubscribe" and "report as spam button" is just a click away, so this is where I would focus (content) for the first 3- 6 months, especially since you are only sending 1 campaign a month.

    BTW, since you can only accurate measure the effect of a control(s) when changed one at a time, 3-6 campaigns is not a very large sample to really do anything with. You might want to consider beefing that up a little, or if you can build your database quickly do split-runs.

    Once you have a strong subsriber base there are all kinds of things you can do with tools like the just mentioned split-runs and using dynamic content deliver and rotating landing pages that will allow you to measure and optimize conversion.

    Again, if I have missed the point of your question, set me straight, or better yet, if you want to discuss this offline, contact me by clicking on my name.

    I hope that helps.

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