If you've been sailing the high seas of email marketing, looking for a cost-effective way to increase your ROI, create more profitable campaigns, improve customer retention and enhance your customer engagement levels, there's a good chance you already have your treasure chest - it's called your Web analytics data. 

Web analytics data can help you determine campaign offers, grow your email list, understand where you need to make tweaks to your site and show you just what visitors do after they click through...if you know where to look. Here are the top four Web analytics metrics that can turn your email marketing campaigns into gold!

Most Visited Pages Inform Campaigns, Grow Email Lists

The best place to begin looking at your Web analytics data is at a metric called Most Visited Pages. Like the name suggests, this metric shows you which pages of your site received the most visitors, effectively showing you which pages are the most interesting to them. Taking a look at your site's most visited pages can allow you to draw some data-based conclusions that can inform future decisions about campaign elements like content and offers.

For example, imagine that your most visited pages report shows that people are going to your 'Pirate's Perspective' review page more often than other pages. Interesting, but how can you take this piece of info and integrate it into your email marketing? By letting your most visited pages drive content in your email campaigns. In our current example, a savvy email marketer may decide to put a 'Pirate's Perspective' review in an upcoming email campaign and see if conversions increase.

Knowing your site's most visited pages can also help you grow your email marketing list. The most visited data report pinpoints your site's most popular pages--areas that would be perfect for the placement of special purchase or lead generation offers, newsletter or email sign up forms, or other special conversion-related events. After all, what better place to gather new subscribers or close additional sales than on pages that already receive high volumes of traffic?

The most visited pages also give you a pretty good idea of the paths that people are taking through your site, so you can identify traffic patterns and determine if visitors are going to the places that you really want them to see. Do you have a high number of visits just to your homepage, or are your product catalog and customer service pages also receiving a high number of visits? If one of your site's main pages is not on your most visited pages list, it's a sign that you need to work on better developing your Web and email campaigns to funnel people to the ignored page.

Time on Page Shows Visitor Interest, Highlights Opportunities to Entice

Just as knowing the pages that visitors viewed is important, so is knowing the amount of time that visitors typically spent on a page. Why? Because time on page is a pretty accurate indicator of how interested people are in that content. If visitors spend little time, chances are there's little interest - but if visitors stay for longer than average, it's a good indication that the information and content on the page is relevant to them.

Take a look at how long visitors are spending on some of the most important pages in your Web site's conversion cycle - perhaps a catalog overview page or a page that describes the whitepaper available for download. If they are not spending more time here than on other pages of your site that aren't as relevant to the conversion path, you'll want to make tweaks. You may decide to make some changes to the page's content as a way to make it more interesting, or you could even use offers and email campaigns to drive visitors to spend a longer amount of time on these important pages.

But what if you have a different issue - people are spending plenty of time on an important page (like a specific product page) but they aren't buying? Rather than throwing up your hands in exasperation, consider this a challenge to specially entice these visitors to take the desired action. For example, this would be a perfect situation to follow up with an email after the visitor leaves, encouraging them to come back and take the action you'd hoped for. Alternatively, you may even consider a small pop-up window that appears as the visitor is exiting the page, reiterating a special offer or specific offer timeframe to create a sense of urgency.

Finally, learn what specific times on site mean for your site and then make decisions that take advantage of that knowledge. Imagine that your Web analytics data consistently shows that visitors who spend more than three minutes on a particular page are twice as likely to make a purchase than visitors who spend less than three minutes. Armed with that knowledge, you can craft future email campaigns using the product on that page as the offer, as well as further optimizing your page to gain more search engine visitors.

Abandoned Carts Drive Site, Campaign Changes

Abandoned shopping carts are the bane of many marketers' existence, but they're also a fantastic resource for getting into the minds of your visitors and delivering more relevant offers. Think about it this way: The person was at your site with the intention to buy, but then, for some reason, they stopped before they completed the purchase. Why? Thankfully, you can rely on your Web analytics for clues as to what happened.

Perhaps the visitor was confused because the offer in the email they received wasn't reflected on the Web site? Or, they may simply have been shopping with no sense of urgency to take advantage of an offer by a particular time? In these cases, simply making some tweaks to your email marketing campaign - ensuring that offers are consistent on the email and Web site, or adding an offer end date to encourage people to act quickly - may be just the boost you need to reduce those orphaned carts. This is also a case where a well-timed pop-up window offer or survey offer may help you reign in visitors who were on the fence, or at least gather some additional data that will be useful for you in the future.

Clickstream Data Shows Where they Go After the Clickthrough

A clickstream is the path that a visitor takes as he or she travels through your Web site. Email marketing produces really valuable clickstream data, as it allows you to literally see where subscribers went and what they did as a direct result of receiving your email. Are visitors clicking through the link in your email that directs them to a specific offer, then clicking through and browsing other items in the same section, or are they clicking through the email and then leaving the site after visiting just that one page? Seeing the paths that people take after they've clicked through on your email campaign will allow you to further refine your messaging and offer in the future - making it that much more relevant to recipients, who are then more likely to have just the clickstream path you want them to have.

The Riches of Web Analytics

For email marketers searching for campaign treasure, Web analytics offers its own types of jewels. Marketers simply need to pay attention to the metrics - understanding which pages get the most visitors, which pages seem most interesting to visitors, why a visitor walked away from a shopping cart and where a visitor went after arriving on the site - in order to enjoy the riches that Web analytics can offer!

For more tips on how to use Web analytics to improve email marketing campaigns read:

• Motion Metrics: How To Turn Data Into Dollars
• Measuring Engagement: Go Beyond Email Open and Click-through Rates
• Web Analytics for Fine-Tuning Email Marketing Campaigns 

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About the Author

Cathi Mason is director of marketing programs for Lyris. Her team is responsible for executing programs that deliver quality leads to the sales team.  

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