Last October we launched ‘Segment Reports’, a feature to allow you to analyse results in a single or series of emails broken down by segment of your database.

Now we have taken this further and launched ‘Cross-tab Reports.’

This allows you to take 2 separate types of segmentation and view email performance between them. For example you might have used Segment Reports to view performance between male and female customers, and created a second report for performance between age groups. However what differences do you see between males and females of different ages?

Here is how that report might look:

This shows we are getting good results for our older audience, but more problematic for younger groups, and in particular young males. Interestingly older males outperform females in the same age bracket. So what can we do to change if anything? How about:

• Look at the data collection process; are we getting the same quality of sign-up within these age groups to explain the difference in performance?
• Does the content appeal to all groups? If not, try utilising more targeted sends or tailored content using the Dynamic Content functions.

Using this analysis we can start to move away from the idea of each email having a target open and click rate, and move towards having targets for each specific segment of customers. As soon as we see it in this form, then it is easier to identify & measure strategies to improve smaller, specific segment performance, rather than the daunting question of how to improve the performance of the whole customer database.

To have a demo of the Cross-Tab & Segment Reports features, or have them enabled please get in touch with our Client Services team.

You may already know, but the Canadian Government has recently introduced a new bill called: FISA, the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act (Bill C-28).

The bill is aimed at bad senders and spammers but it will affect anyone who is using electronic messaging for marketing in or to Canada. Read More

Out of the 54,000 runners that participated in this years Bupa Great North Run, one of them was from Emailcenter. Flying the flag for Emailcenter and running to raise money for  ‘Cash for Kids’ who provide support to thousands of children across the North East, Simon completed the course in 2hrs 31mins.

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In this article I will explain how you can now host sign up forms for your email marketing on your Facebook fan page.

What’s the big deal?

There are more than 500 million people across the globe using the social media power house that is Facebook, spending more that 5 billion minutes online per month!

To put that into perspective if Facebook were a country it would easily eclipse the United States!

If you also take into account that the average user is connected to 80 community pages then you’ll begin to understand what all the fuss is about. Read More

Over the last few weeks various brands have decided it’s a good idea to fill my inbox with irrelevant junk which tries to work on the back of the World Cup. The problem with this is many of the links are extremely tenuous – ‘England are out so treat yourself to something nice’ has been the constant theme this week. It’s so predictable I know the email is coming before I receive it.

No value is  added to the email by mentioning the World Cup, it just seems marketers think that this  cuts through the clutter and empathises with their customer base. It doesn’t – it just adds to the clutter of all those other brands and their tenuous World Cup links. It all just reminds me of a politician claiming to like the coolest band of the moment in case it improves their street cred.

Just like I don’t want our politicians spouting on about their hip music collection I don’t want my favourite clothing retailers talking to me about football – that’s why the BBC Sport website and talkSPORT radio exist.

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