Metrics for email and social media
Email marketing analytics
Permission-based email marketing offers rich behavioral data compared to traditional or outbound marketing. Similar to website activity, the most important metric in email marketing is the conversion rate for the desired action, be it inquiries, registration for an event, or making an appointment. The conversion rate not only indicates which email content was of most interest to subscribers, but also the best days and times to send out emails, which could help cultivate more conversions.
Most email software provides rudimentary data such as the delivery rate (the number of emails that were delivered), soft v. hard bounce rate (the number of emails that were not successfully delivered), CTR, the number of email subscribers, and the number of emails that were shared or forwarded to a friend or colleague.
Some software has the ability to set up behavioral scoring for individual email subscribers and visitors to the site. These are based on different values for different pages of the site (some are more relevant to converting than others), filling out specific forms, downloading content, and clicking through multiple emails. It can also create negative scores for individuals who are not exhibiting patient behavior, such as visiting the career page.
Tracking Social Media
Historically, people have made a big deal about “likes” and follows, but those numbers are somewhat meaningless for big picture goals. Social media marketing is measured by engagement, which can be quantified, but the numbers alone are not concrete. To truly measure social media engagement, it’s important to listen to the conversations and feedback about the hospital brand to see if they are generally positive, neutral, or negative, and what buzz surrounds its content.
While it’s difficult to measure social media’s direct influence on hospital business goals (marketshare, patient volumes), assigning measurable goals and metrics can demonstrate the impact of social activity.
On social media, engagement demonstrates if listeners are interacting with the information shared. This can be measured through retweets and @ replies or mentions on the Twitter account, shares, likes, and comments on social media posts, views and embeds of videos, content reposts on social bookmarking sites, downloads of content, and quality of conversation surrounding the brand.
The ROI of Inbound
Always ask for hard data on your marketing campaigns. While some outbound marketing analytics are more obvious, inbound marketing awareness and brand building can be measured if the campaign is set up around measurable goals and has a clear strategy.
Identifying the relevant metrics that will be used to determine campaign success or failure at the beginning of the process will save requests for justification and proof of ROI upon completion.
Measurement is the only way to truly know how to improve upon your hospital’s marketing efforts. Just be careful not to over measure – not every metric applies to your individual campaign. It’s best to look at trends of one or two metrics over time and analyze those for insights.