Engagement—The New “It” Metric

Potential clients often ask us, “What kind of response can I expect from my marketing? Do you have client statistics?”

While unfortunately we can’t look into a crystal ball and provide that information, we explain to clients that “engagement” is the new “it” metric, the new “response rate,” and it’s quite valuable. Even though the majority of Pentera’s clients get excellent response rates to their marketing, the newer concept of “engagement” is a complementary metric that allows clients to see the “behind-the-scenes” activity and behavior of their constituents interacting with e-mails leading up to and in addition to when they actually “request more information.” We have the luxury of knowing from e-mail data what percentage (how many) and exactly who is opening and clicking through on e-mails. With print, we can extrapolate from that and be assured that if we could put a camera in people’s homes and watch them go through their mail, we would see some people open the mailed pieces (open rate) and a subset of those read the newsletter (click-through rate).

  

Think Prius cars. E-mail data allows clients to “look under the hood of the car and see that an otherwise silent engine is indeed running.” High, medium, low, or no response—clients know from their e-mail data that their marketing—their Prius engine—is running. People are engaged and reading materials. Everyone? No. A good number, between 15% and 40% for our clients? Yes. The choice is simple. If you’d like to reduce the number of those you are connecting with and engaging, then stop marketing. Focus on Web site visits or just count response. If you’d like to build awareness, connect, engage, and plant the seed for gifts, then continue your marketing.

  

Pentera provides detailed analytics of critical e-mail data to its clients so they can measure engagement:

• opens
• click-throughs
• undeliverables
• unsubscribes

Clients can also capture data on how many and which donors click from an eMarketing piece to the planned giving Web site and know what pages are subsequently visited on the Web site. Clients can use this data to determine prospects’ interests and establish a plan for cultivation and for moves management.

  

To gauge the success of a specific campaign or promotional effort, Pentera sometimes uses benchmarking in combination with other tools to help evaluate success, and we have robust data on how other like-organizations do with campaigns for comparative purposes. That said, caveat:

  

It is misleading to compare yourself to “like” organizations and rely too heavily on benchmarking data. Many factors influence e-mail engagement even for like-organizations, such as loyalty and level of wealth of a constituency.

  

For example, both University A and State University B have a student body of 5,000.

• University A is renowned for its engineering program, and many of its students graduate and are employed by top engineering firms (and receive high compensation). Ninety-five percent of its students live on campus.
• University B is renowned for its teaching program. Fifty percent of its students live on campus, and the other half commute.

University A has consistently higher open rates and click-through rates than University B, and it receives more (and larger) gifts than State University B. That said, University B has good open rates and click-through rates based on its specific circumstances.

  

Comparing University A with University B is like comparing apples to oranges.

  

Also, want higher Web traffic? Keep in mind:

• E-mail is the main driver of Web traffic.
• Similar organizations have wildly varying e-mail list sizes. Based on client testing and data, we know that organizations that e-mail larger lists typically have significantly better Web traffic.

Need help tweaking your plan? Contact us, and we'll be happy to assist you.