Hello,

I am analyzing my email marketing stats and would like to check that our software is using the correct data to work out conversion. It takes orders divided by clicks x 100. It also has the data for unique clicks however - so would it be a more accurate conversion figure to take orders divided by unique clicks x 100

The latter obviously gives a higher conversion. This matters a great deal in terms of benchmarking our performance!

Many thanks for any advice you can offer

There's some more aspects. Is this conversion for the campaign or conversion of new customers.

I'd have segmented the campaign into 2 parts - for aquisition and retention.

You need to calculate how many emails were RECEIVED [not hard bounced]. This figure is your BASE!

Next make sure all clicks can be tracked in text and rtf and potentially using any other analytical tool [like Google Analytics] to see who's clicked through.

I'd perform a check at conversion 1,2 and then 4 weeks [or the end of the quarter]. This ought to give an insight into the buying cycle of your market. Most sales happen 1-2 weeks after. I've seen buying processes take up to 1 month.

As stated above, you need to see different elements within the email. So, all clicks might be minus those to your homepage or privacy policy etc etc.

Per product you can gauge the clicks and reaction to different calls to action [buy now or more information].

For an overall view, I'd divide calls to action to convert via products/services to clicks and publicity -decision making. The latter are of little interest now, but later can provide scope to aim different campaigns later. The others are referrals - these need to be seperated. What you're really hoping to do is get traction from your database and to build this.

Bottom line CPA will be lower to calculate and obviously revenue generated.

Your real task is to send targetted emails based on past behaviour or stated preference. Then you can gauge more realistically what you hope to achieve!