One of email marketing's greatest strengths? Data. It's instant. It's reliable. It's rich. Best of all, it's yours – not something your competitors can get their hands on.
But here's the catch: there's a lot of it. And while data is powerful, too much of it can be paralysing if you don't know where to start.
Open rates, click-throughs (CTR), conversions, heatmaps, bounce rates, device types, demographics, ROI – and that's just scratching the surface. The sheer volume can be overwhelming, even for experienced marketers.
So, how do you make sense of the noise?
The Three Big Buckets
To make it manageable, email marketing data can be grouped into three core categories:
Behavioural Data
This tells you what your audience actually did. Who opened your email? Who clicked? Who forwarded it? Which device did they use? When did they engage? It's the foundation of campaign analysis and a goldmine for spotting patterns.
Experience Data
This goes deeper. It's about how your audience felt about your emails – what they liked, what they ignored and what made them unsubscribe. A/B test results, survey feedback, heatmaps, and even social media comments fall into this group. It's insight into what your emails mean to recipients, not just what they did with them.
Let's say you segment your list and send two slightly different versions of the same campaign. Which one performs better? That's Experience data at work.
Outcome Data
This is the bottom line. Conversions, revenues, signups, downloads – whatever your KPIs are. It answers the question: Did your email achieve what it was supposed to? ROI lives here, and it's often the number the boardroom cares about most.
You don't need to tackle everything at once. In fact, you shouldn't. Instead, focus on one area at a time. Learn from it, make a change, test it and measure the results. Rinse and repeat.
From Overwhelm to Action
Yes, you could dive into every data set from every campaign. But you'll soon find yourself buried under graphs and second-guessing your every CTA. Instead, focus on one data category at a time. Want to improve conversions? Start with Outcome. Trying to boost engagement? Behavioural and Experience will point the way.
If you've just run a split test on subject lines, dig into your Behavioural stats to see what got opened. If you've changed your offer, look at Outcome data to see if it moved the needle. Curious about why clicks dropped? Feedback and social chatter – Experience data – might hold the clues.
Keep It Simple. Keep It Smart.
Most SMEs don't have dedicated analytics teams. And that's okay. Don't try to do it all. Focus on key metrics that match your goals – whether that's open rates, cart abandonment, or good old-fashioned ROI.
You don't need all the data. You just need the right data, used the right way.
