Easy Ways to Make Your Analytics Program Work for You

First off, if you have someone internal who does analytics for your company, it is worthwhile to log in and do some exploration yourself. Many analytics people have to be focused on several departments' goals at once, and may not have the same ideas in mind that you do about what is important for your email program.

Looking at customer behavior in depth can give you some amazing insights into buying habits and engagement. Here is an example from my own experience.

We send 5 consumer emails on a regular basis. One of these emails converts at a significantly lower rate than the others. In digging into the data, I discovered that the most popular time historically for sales on that site is around 5 PM on Wednesdays. We had been sending our emails out on Wednesday mornings. This week, I ran an A/B split test, with half of the emails going out at the regular 10:30 AM, and half at 3 PM (allowing for ESP throttling, so that the emails would definitely arrive by 5).

Since the emails were just sent yesterday, I don't yet have the data back to see which was the winner. I'll share those results next week. The point of all of this is, you never know what you are assuming about your customers and your program until you dig into the numbers yourself. And, of course, test like crazy.