I recently waxed philosophically about the wonder of Automated Messages - definitely the focal point of our Spring 2008 Release. Today I wanted to talk a bit about the process of fine tuning Automated Messages and the rules that control them to boost ROI.
Start at the beginning
No matter what your goal, you will be best served if you stop and think things through before you start. Understanding who you are communicating with and why you are communicating with them is critical to crafting an effective Automated Message. If you have planned thoroughly then the creation of your Automated Messages and Rules should be just a matter of selecting the right options & settings (which is why we created our easy to use Automated Message Rule Wizard).
Once your Automated Messages have been mailing for a little while, you will have some baseline metrics. With these metrics in hand you can start to make some changes. Because Automated Messages are continually being sent, you have the ability to easily carry out tests. With each test, change one thing, such as the subject line, intro copy, offer, or creative. Then watch your metrics to see if they go up or down. Through analyzing these results and optimizing the automated campaigns, you will be continually improving your metrics and ROI.
Divide and Conquer
But testing isn’t limited to changes in content, you can also change who you are mailing to. Using segments you easily break up your subscriber base into targetable groupings; perhaps you have a special promo just for women under 40, or maybe you want to vary messages by region. Defining these groups via segments will allow you to treat them accordingly.
Good Automated Message tools will provide this ability to easily select a cross section of your audience for targeted messages. Once you’ve identified who you think can benefit from a more personalized message you just need to make some changes to your content or offer. Within Bronto we allow you to limit who is eligible via segments or even exclude segments, this gives you the ultimate control over who gets which message.
Reporting For Service
Just as I said before, after every change you will need to watch your reports for trends for a few days or even weeks. By viewing a report of your metrics over time, as you can see below, you may very well see shifts in some of your key metrics. Keep in mind that not all changes will affect your metrics, and some might even change things for the worse.
What can complicate this process is that one change may improve conversion for one segment, while reducing it for others. So it’s important to change only one variable at a time, you may even want to keep a control group, a group of contacts who will see no change, so you continually have a baseline to compare to.
Rinse & Repeat
That’s part of the fun of marketing, there are always new ways to optimize your campaigns. This is a process that you will want to continually take part in. But don’t fret, the wonder of Automated Messages is that it helps to free up more of your time by handling much of the minutia of scheduling and content creation. This allows you to focus more on optimizing your messages, and that’s a win-win situation no matter how you slice it.
Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto
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