Getting "SAM" Wise: A Quick Way to Set Email Marketing Goals for 2005

You may have noticed lately that legitimate email marketing has been evolving from a mass-scale, blast-happy medium to a much more sophisticated and selective one. That's because marketers everywhere are realizing that purposeful, goal oriented email programs tend to yield better results than the amorphous, "just because" approach of yesteryear.

So, how well is your email marketing program keeping pace with these industry-wide developments? The end of the year is the perfect time to explore this. Our short, memorable acronym —S.A.M.—provides a quick and easy way to sharpen your objectives, and develop a solid plan for achieving them.

"S" stands for setting specific goals. Your email marketing goals should not only fit well with your organization's overall business objectives, but also within the context of your program's performance to date. Look over key campaign metrics for the previous year. If your average response rate hovered around 1 percent, it's probably not reasonable to set a growth goal of five percentage points in the new year. Instead, set an incremental goal. These are more attainable. Remember, the whole point of setting goals is to achieve them.

"A" involves how you will act on your new goals. Come up with several well-defined ways that you can tackle the new goal you've just set. To boost subscription rates on your company's newsletter, you might streamline your sign-up process or start asking for email addresses during customer service phone calls. Come up with as many specific actions as you can for attaining your goal, and try to include a couple of creative, outside-the-box strategies in order to keep things fresh.

"M" relates to how you will measure your progress. Whether you'll be relying on hard-and-fast numbers like clickthrough rates or more subjective markers like customer feedback, be sure to set a regular time for doing this, such as the end of each month or each quarter. Evaluating data at random times can lead to an uneven impression of how things are going.

Common Marketing Goal	A More Specific Marketing Goal	Actions	Measurability
Increase the number of newsletter subscribers	Increase net subscriber base by 2,000 addresses	Start offering email-only promotions to subscribers Add a “refer a friend” link to all publications Participate in ad exchanges with three compatible companies.	Note net subscription changes after each mailing and at the end of each business quarter
Increase customer response rates	Increase email campaign ROI by 15 percent.	Test email offers customized to the recipient’s location Add customer testimonials to email messages Create custom landing pages for email promotions	Track purchases associated with specific email campaigns through use of promotional codes or ListManager’s purchase tracking feature
Add to perceived value of established products/ services	Achieve a 40% average click to open ratio	Develop content exclusively around the four top-performing topic areas Include more real-world examples and live data in articles	Evaluate the click to open ratio on a monthly basis; perform quarterly review for any noticeable trends.
Promote the organization as a thought leader in the industry	Get quoted in five to seven major publications in 2005.	Establish an in-depth monthly column by the VP of Marketing. Promote the column to journalists and other business columnists at the top 50 daily newspapers.	Monitor press on daily basis.