Last week Lynn commented on the strategic merits of interoperability allowing for best-of-breed integration.

First, ESP’s provide the very basics of analytics with a direct email campaign; bounces, opens, and click-throughs.

Bounces – Hard bounces vs Soft bounces.  Always something you need to pay attention to with your house list.  This probably signals a change/ who is the new person assuming the role of your previous contact? Is the new person someone that is interested in additional services or product from you? Has a previous customer moved onto a similar role in a new company presenting the opportunity for the addition of a new customer?  Change presents an opportunity for the sales person.

Opens – An open with your ESP is triggered by the ‘downloading’ of an image.  If you’re working with a marketing automation solution, the open is the point at which you establish a digital connection to the lead.  From this point on, whenever the lead visits your website you will have the ability to monitor the digital track they follow on your site.

Click through – Significant?  Possibly.  Did they do more than hit the landing page?  Did they navigate your site, did they convey any ‘buy signals’ through their navigation? Having visited the site, did they come back again the same day, a day later, or even weeks later?  Only with a post-click management solution are you able to determine the answers to these questions.  Questions that most would argue are key in prioritizing your lead, and ensuring your sales team are focused where the conversion to ‘qualified’ is the highest.

With post-click management tools, like ActiveConversion, you are able to evolve your ESP direct emailing campaign to the next level and gain more intelligence on your leads and understand in greater detail which of your campaigns are truly providing a return on your investment.