Fall 2010 Release Sneak Peek: Message Reports

When we set out to redesign the Message Reports in Bronto, we began with two primary goals in mind:

1. Have the report focus on your customers and what they are doing.
2. Clearly identify the steps in the marketing process that need attention.

From these two goals, we reconsidered the metrics and the presentation of the current Message Report. I think you will see that the changes we’ve made will give you the information you need to improve your email marketing efforts.

Summary Metrics

The first thing on the new Message Report are the summary metrics placed in a bar across the top of the report. These metrics show you at a glance the number of contacts who were sent, delivered, opened, clicked, etc. 

The purpose of this bar is to provide you with an overall view of how your contacts responded to your message. You’ll notice I say “contacts” because these metrics are what we used to refer to as “unique” counts, that is they do not count multiple times a contact opens, clicks, or converts. (You can relax, these “total” metrics are still available on drill-down pages and in the downloadable report.) This focus on contacts allows you to better gauge how your customers are responding to your email marketing efforts.

From Sent To Conversions

The next section of the new Message Report shows the critical steps in the email marketing pipeline and how your message performed at each step. To summarize, the steps:

1. Get your message delivered to your contacts.
2. Get your contacts to open your message.
3. Get your contacts to click through.
4. Once on your site, get your contacts to convert.

 Each pair of bar charts shows you how many contacts progressed through each step in the pipeline, comparing the number of contacts that entered the step to the number of contacts that exited the step. You can quickly identify the main areas to focus your improvement efforts by looking for steps that show a low rate of progression.

For example, a significant drop from Delivered to Opened indicates that your subject lines, from names, and pre-headers may not be as strong as they need to be to induce your contacts to open your message. Or, perhaps, your contacts may not be reading your messages with images enabled. A/B Split testing on subject lines and from address, or specific calls to add your email address to your contact’s address book can help improve your performance here.

The Opens vs Clicks chart shows how many contacts clicked through after opening your message. A significant drop off in this area might indicate that the content of the message may need to be strengthened. You can drill down on this metric by going to the Clicks page of the report, where you can see Total Clicks, a “heat map” for the message, as well as clicks by each link in the message.

Gauging Message Performance

The next section gives you more details about the message’s performance. The left column shows various actions that a contact may have taken beyond opens, clicks, and conversions. Often contacts may not convert themselves, but may take other actions that positively affect you. Details on the summary information presented here can be found on the Sharing page of the report.

The center column shows details on why certain messages were not delivered. This is the area you should look if your first comparison chart from above shows a large drop from Sent to Delivered.

The third column shows a summary of how, and how many contacts were lost for this message. Gaining contacts is an expensive and time consuming process, so minimizing contact loss should be a primary goal of any marketing effort.

Drill-Down To Deliveries

Finally, the table at the bottom shows the same high level metrics for each delivery of this message. You can click on any individual delivery to get this same report. You can also see all deliveries contained in this message report on the Metrics by Delivery page of the report.

Message reports are certainly not the only new thing coming your way for the Fall 2010 release on September 20, so stay tuned for more blog posts and be sure to keep an eye out for the release notes. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist at Bronto
Editor of Brontoversity