No, your eyes do not deceive you. This blog post really is a response to a New York Times article about hospitals that broadcast and tweet from operating rooms as a marketing tactic.
As with previous blog posts, my aim is not to make any sort of value judgement about the moral basis of this type of action. I'm interested in metrics (although the idea of the live broadcast of a surgery does fascinate me).
According to the article, although little data is published therein, webcasts of surgery and other such reports via social media of the ins and outs of surgery seem to be working. They're attracting viewers, followers and even new patients - all quantifiable points of analysis. And for hospitals in the US, attracting patients is key to maintaing a healthy bottom line. Health care is, afterall, a business.
It is so interesting that with all of the talk about how social media is difficult to measure, that the hospital mentioned in the above mentioned article uses such simple web-based metrics as well as "customer" (patient) feedback.
Showing posts with label metrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metrics. Show all posts
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Are Email Open Rates Still Relevant?
I launched my first-ever email marketing campaign in 2004 (just call me a late bloomer - the industry I was working in wasn't an early adopter to say the least). At the time, the most common metrics, and the ones I used to measure the success of my email campaigns, were click-throughs and ... yes, it's true... open rates.
Today open rates are viewed by many of my esteemed colleagues as passe and irrelevant. Afterall, it's not practical to assume they are anywhere near accurate due to factors such as the "preview" option that many email clients allow and the option to open an email without downloading images. (For the uninitiated, an email "open" is recorded when a server requests the download of a hidden image.) Open rates, though, used to be all the rage. Well, really, they were pretty much the only metric marketers had in their arsenal at the time.
Another major issue with using an open rate as a key metric is that it does not show any sort of "engagement", and therefore many pros dismiss the idea that open rates can tell us anything about the success of a campaign, since engagement is really what we're after.
There may be hope for open rates, yet, however. Although they may not be the be-all and end-all of email marketing metrics, they are still good for something. In a guide on email open rates written by Mark Bronlow in August 2006, Bronlow suggests that although benchmarking is perhaps not very useful because of a lack of standardization in the way open rates are calculated, that open rates may still be used effectively for comparison of different email campaigns launched for the same product at the same time. For example, it may be used to determine the best subject line for an email if the subject line is the only variable between two otherwise indistinct email creatives. Falling open rates of a regular newsletter, are also a good metric to watch, as this can indicate reader fatigue, and suggests that you may need to refresh your content.
Bronlow also suggests that open rates may be examined by market segment, and that this can yield some useful information. For example, Bronlow's advice is to monitor the open rates of groups from different sign-up sources. If they are low from a particular group, then this should be investigated.
Taking this one step further, I suggest that open rates might be looked at in relation to the different segments of your list divided by seniority, industry, geography, etc. If any of these groups show a low or high open rate, it may be time to gear a piece specifically to serve this segment.
Today open rates are viewed by many of my esteemed colleagues as passe and irrelevant. Afterall, it's not practical to assume they are anywhere near accurate due to factors such as the "preview" option that many email clients allow and the option to open an email without downloading images. (For the uninitiated, an email "open" is recorded when a server requests the download of a hidden image.) Open rates, though, used to be all the rage. Well, really, they were pretty much the only metric marketers had in their arsenal at the time.
Another major issue with using an open rate as a key metric is that it does not show any sort of "engagement", and therefore many pros dismiss the idea that open rates can tell us anything about the success of a campaign, since engagement is really what we're after.
There may be hope for open rates, yet, however. Although they may not be the be-all and end-all of email marketing metrics, they are still good for something. In a guide on email open rates written by Mark Bronlow in August 2006, Bronlow suggests that although benchmarking is perhaps not very useful because of a lack of standardization in the way open rates are calculated, that open rates may still be used effectively for comparison of different email campaigns launched for the same product at the same time. For example, it may be used to determine the best subject line for an email if the subject line is the only variable between two otherwise indistinct email creatives. Falling open rates of a regular newsletter, are also a good metric to watch, as this can indicate reader fatigue, and suggests that you may need to refresh your content.
Bronlow also suggests that open rates may be examined by market segment, and that this can yield some useful information. For example, Bronlow's advice is to monitor the open rates of groups from different sign-up sources. If they are low from a particular group, then this should be investigated.
Taking this one step further, I suggest that open rates might be looked at in relation to the different segments of your list divided by seniority, industry, geography, etc. If any of these groups show a low or high open rate, it may be time to gear a piece specifically to serve this segment.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Measuring Social Media Marketing
In doing some research for this blog, I came across a great little article, written over a year ago by Michael Brito, Senior Marketing Manager, Yahoo! for the Search Engine Journal.
It's worth a read.
Brito suggests that measuring the effectiveness of social media isn't all that complicated. If you're using social media to drive traffic to your website, then you can use traditional web marketing measurement metrics (say that three times fast) such as "unique visitors", "time on site", etc.
In terms of measuring social media "at the source", so to speak, the metrics are quite similar and essentially boil down to how many interactions are had between target audience and interface.
At the end of the article, Brito points to the idea that these metrics still have to be related back to revenue, but doesn't give any suggestions as to how this might be done. I see this as key - afterall, if we don't know how much money ouractivities are bringing in, then is there a point to participating in the whole social media sphere at all? Looks like I'll be doing some more research on this topic.
It's worth a read.
Brito suggests that measuring the effectiveness of social media isn't all that complicated. If you're using social media to drive traffic to your website, then you can use traditional web marketing measurement metrics (say that three times fast) such as "unique visitors", "time on site", etc.
In terms of measuring social media "at the source", so to speak, the metrics are quite similar and essentially boil down to how many interactions are had between target audience and interface.
At the end of the article, Brito points to the idea that these metrics still have to be related back to revenue, but doesn't give any suggestions as to how this might be done. I see this as key - afterall, if we don't know how much money ouractivities are bringing in, then is there a point to participating in the whole social media sphere at all? Looks like I'll be doing some more research on this topic.
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