Numbers, numbers, so many numbers

The Constant Contact referral link is on the right hand side of the blog with the permalinks. You can try it yourself and receive the $30 credit (and they'll pay me $30 as well if you sign up.

Today, I produced and sent out the bi-weekly Construction Marketing Ideas Newsletter. It takes me about 2.5 hours to get everything organized, mostly pulling together themes and responses from this blog. (The newsletter may be redundant to many blog readers, I realize, but some people have told me they read the newsletter more than the blog).

Anyways, once things are posted and distributed, the interesting thing for me is to see who is reading what, an how much. I can't exactly replicate the Constantcontact.com documentation here, but at present, here are the results.

Overall data:

Emailed 2,216 names, of which 54 (2.4%) bounced. Four people asked to be removed from the list (.2%). At present, 373 or 17.3% opened the email; and of that 17.4% or 65 clicked through to one or another links.

Drilling down further, we can see which links people went to -- and even more finely, exactly who went where! (I won't share that private information on this public blog, of course.)

You can see the summary of the specific click-through data here.

Email Link
Unique Click-throughs
Click-through Distribution

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
5
5.6%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
4
4.5%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
4
4.5%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
1
1.1%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
1
1.1%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
13
14.6%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
5
5.6%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
11
12.4%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
10
11.2%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
1
1.1%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
0
0.0%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
10
11.2%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
16
18.0%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
0
0.0%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
3
3.4%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
4
4.5%

http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pidwzI87cCLthBey8s-k81euLv63#
1
1.1%

Total Click-throughs
89
100%

Now, what is interesting about all this data is (a) the incredible volume and detail, (b) the speed -- I obtained this material within only a few hours of sending and (c) the ease of access -- a few clicks with my computer mouse and I now have an idea of what people are interested in reading.

Lets say you decide to have your own electronic newsletter. At a regular interval, you send out a combination of useful information and marketing resources; and every time you do it, you gather actionable, measurable data -- with contact information for everyone, including people 'just looking'. How much more effective is this than conventional advertising; especially when you look at it in the context of client relationships and maintaining communication with existing customers.

And the cost. . . well, the program we use is a flat rate deal based on the number of names on our overall list (now approaching 6,000 -- though in line with the policy to only send email when it is requested, the Construction Marketing Ideas newsletter only goes to about 2,300 readers; either people who have specifically requested it, or have purchased advertising in our print publications.) The fees are so low they barely register a dot on our financial reports. You'll of course need to factor in your time and effort in putting together the thing -- for me, this is not a problem, because I enjoy doing it.

Several competing services offer inexpensive email programs -- you can even get public domain stuff at no cost. At present, I use constantcontact.com backed up by bettermail.ca (bettermail.ca offers some really effective and easy-to-manage file management and autoresponder capacities not presently available on Constant Contact.) If you sign up for Constant Contact through the link provided here, they provide me with a small referral bonus, which I'll be glad to accept (and you can save some money as well).