If we want to succeed and sell, we need to garner as much data on the subscribers to our email marketing lists as we can. It’s hardly something that will be a revelation to you, but what you might find surprising is that there is a significant danger of depending on one metric. In other words, be careful what you believe.
To take a simple example, one that I heard quoted on the radio last week, with conclusions drawn that were not justified by that one simple fact. We were told road traffic is at 87% of its level of 2020 pre-Covid. The conclusion? That working from home (WFH) is at an end. And who could argue? Hopefully everyone in email marketing.
It doesn’t take a lot of working out that other circumstances should be taken into consideration before writing off WFH as the new norm. For instance, six months ago I read that less than 20% of the population can effectively work from home. That makes the drop of 87% more or less on the ball. Also, you have the low public transport usage because many are concerned about close contact. Further, there’s the fact that in order to generate footfall in high streets, some local authorities have suspended parking charges.
Not only do you have to consider a number of factors before coming to a conclusion, particularly one which will affect planning, Covid-19 and lockdowns have changed the basics in many ways, and the full effects of Brexit are still a matter of conjecture. The returns from your latest email marketing campaign need to take into account the likely effects of the current situation with regards these new factors.
In the weeks and months ahead, with the lifting of restrictions, the, hoped for, limiting of challenges to exporting to the EU, and the increasing confidence from vaccinations all coming online, there could be any number of reasons why a single metric returned from an email marketing campaign changes. It might be nothing to do with any initiative. It will be some time before the situation settles and it will require care to interpret the various metrics.
