EP #33 How has email analytics helped to spur email marketing campaign decisions

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ONUOHA GLORY (00:00):

Hello everyone. And welcome to another Netcore cloud podcast, For the Love of Emails, brought to you live from Lagos, Nigeria. Today, we have this special guest from AXA Mansard. I’m going to let him introduce himself.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (00:15):

Hi everyone. Good afternoon. My name is OLADAYO ADENIYI; I am a digital marketer at AXA Mansard, my role is very simple, to drive brand awareness, conversions, and sales for the business using digital marketing strategies, including email marketing, social media marketing, paid campaigns, and of course, analyzing the results from all these channels and more, to optimize, our goals on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. Thank you.

ONUOHA GLORY (00:48):

Thank you so much, Oladayo; briefly, can you give us a little introduction about AXA Mansard?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (00:56):

So, AXA Mansard is an insurance and asset management company in Nigeria. It’s part of the AXA group. We simply sell insurance policies, both live and non-life insurance policies, to interested parties. Of course, we want as many people as possible to protect their future using insurance. We also sell health insurance, and we have investment portfolios that anybody can put their phones into, including money market fund, equity, income fund, and so on. Thank you.

ONUOHA GLORY (01:34):

Thank you so much. Okay. So today, we will be discussing email analytics and how it helps with email campaigns and email marketing campaign decisions. So we are aware that analytics plays a huge role in marketing, be it email marketing, digital marketing, and all that. We need to understand how our clients perceive our products, relate and communicate with us, how they look at our campaigns. If they are happy with what the brand offers, we need to know how many people engage with you and respond to you. Analytics, as I said, plays a massive role in marketing in general, so today, we will be looking at how email analytics has helped support email marketing campaign decisions. And I’m going to go right in and ask you the first question: why is it so important for insurance companies to build rapport with their customers during better times?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (02:40):

So I’ll start by saying that insurance companies are not the only ones that need to build rapport with their customers during better times. We are in the area of customer-centricity. Of course, small companies are building rapport with their customers. The reason is straightforward, it is through building rapport through building personalized communications, you know, with your customers that you can get total value from them, by having personalization, building rapport with these customers, companies, whether insurance, whether not insurance increase their share of wallet. And that’s one of the essential aspects as it can increase their profits and generally increase product understanding. Still, as an extra benefit to building rapport, you can expect to get word-of-mouth marketing from customers that have a personal relationship with your business. So it’s always in the best interest of the companies is to build rapport with our customers.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (03:40):

Email marketing, of course, has become a solid marketing strategy, which is used now. Why? Because it can be personalized, customized, and emails can be sent to customers at the best time when the businesses have higher chances of their emails being open. It is the same for all companies or businesses. They need to build rapport with their customers, you know, to enjoy the three benefits I had mentioned, which I quickly just reviewed again, increase share wallets, increase profits, and increase product understanding. And, of course, word of mouth marketing. Thank you.

ONUOHA GLORY (04:18):

Thank you so much. Okay. So do you think email marketing plays a vital role in developing long-term relationships with policyholders?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (04:27):

Thanks, Glory. I would say yes; it plays a vital role in developing long-term relationships. I wouldn’t say with policyholders because that limits insurance; non-insurance companies don’t do policyholders, right? They do customers. So I’d say it plays a vital role in developing long-term relationships with customers. Email marketing has become a powerful marketing strategy, which is used to build rapport with customers. I had mentioned that earlier. And so the role it plays in developing long-term relationships with customers is very, very Jam into the business itself. For instance, there’s a statistic that says that there are three times more email accounts than Facebook and Twitter accounts because, of course, you need to have an email account before you can open Facebook and Twitter, right? And then your chances of getting clicks is six times higher via email organically than on Twitter. So because of that, that’s why it is essential; that’s why it’s a core part of every digital marketing plan. It is very effective in driving conversions and improving brand loyalty. So yeah, the answer is simple. It plays a vital. Thanks.

ONUOHA GLORY (05:42):

Okay. If I get you correctly, you said, yeah, you get up to six times more clicks via email than you do on Twitter and Facebook. And you use the word organically because I would think that Facebook and Twitter, you know, will give us more clicks. Can you please explain, explain what you mean by organically?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (05:59):

So if you want to compare the two, the two channels, then you have to look at it from the place of, okay, if you’re not doing paid campaigns on Facebook, on Twitter, you are naturally expected to get more clicks via email because the email you are sending to someone is an organic thing. From your perspective, you are not adding money behind it and say, find me 10,000 emails as they do on Facebook, where Facebook shares your campaigns through specific audiences. For email, you have a list of people who have said they’re interested in your business, so when you look at people who say they’re interested in your business on social media and those who say they’re interested in your business via email, comparing the two lists, right? Social media versus email. Email, people are likely to click on whatever you sent to them more than social media; social media, right, is there for fun, for photo sharing, while email, everybody knows, is for work is for something relatively more severe. And people know that you can sell to them via email, but people don’t want to be sold to via social media. But when you do pay campaigns, of course, you get more clicks than on email.

ONUOHA GLORY (07:18):

Okay. Okay. That was wonderful. That was a very excellent explanation. All right. So, can you describe, you know, the Ideation process for your email content?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (07:29):

So for the Ideation process of our email, it is straightforward; we only need to answer three questions. Question one would be, what messages do we want to pass to our customers? What products do we want to sell more of, And how do we want to craft this message to sell this product? , once we are done answering these three questions, content addition for email becomes simple, right? , because we then know the right content to write, we know the right image to use. And of course, we can specify what the major aspect of email marketing should be. So we know the email subject, the send time, the customization, you know, to use for all of this. For instance, if I know that a particular campaign that went out last week at 2:00 PM got the most clicks at 6:00 PM and between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM, I can ask, well, see, maybe next time I’ll just send the email at 5:00 PM, right. Or maybe I can look from another perspective; okay, I use this particular email subject and add over 30% open rates. Right. So I should use a similar email subject. So the additional process for our email content is very simple. We just answered three questions, and we are good to go. Thanks.

ONUOHA GLORY (08:49):

Thank you so much. Okay. So what are some campaigns that have stuck out to you in the past, and what did you learn from them?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (08:59):

So, I wouldn’t say a particular campaign cause we email campaigns almost every week, but we try to look out for significant performance metrics. We do performance marketing on this site. We do primary performance metrics every week. The reason is simple, so we can further optimize our campaigns, so every week, I look at the best-performing metrics, right? I look at our open rates or the campaigns that have the best-performing metrics. I will look at our open rates, click-to-open rates, open times, all of those things, you know, subjects that perform the most. And once I look at all of those significant metrics, I can then know what needs to be optimized and optimized next time dig. So the learnings from there is simple, all campaigns, most big performance-based campaigns. That’s how you can optimize and improve it. Thanks.

ONUOHA GLORY (09:58):

All campaigns must be performance-based campaigns. That was lovely. Okay. So what influences your content creation?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (10:09):

So, I would say that content creation is an ongoing strategy, so what we do, again, I might be simplifying it, but we combine active listening to our customers and give them what they want. Right, if we have a new product, for instance, we tell them about it, and we try to provide them with what information we think they will need to make the buying decision. Right? So, and you know, that businesses live in the customer’s world now, it’s a customer-centric world now, so, our content creation way is listening to customers. We listen to our customers to ensure that we can create the right content for them that can make them aware of our products, give them an understanding of our products, and of course, content that helps them make the buying decisions. Thank You

ONUOHA GLORY (11:12):

All right. Thank you so much. So let’s talk about analytics. I’m sure you have a system and your process for analyzing your email engagement. So, how important do you think it is to review analytics generally?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (11:30):

Thank you, Glory, you know, I can start by saying that digital marketing, what makes digital marketing different right. It has data that can be analyzed, which makes it different from traditional marketing. You know, it can analyze every digital strategy performance. Right. Okay. So generally, I would say it is very important to review analytics right; now, analytics is available across all digital marketing strategies, including us, and Google Analytics is at the core of everything we do. It is used for our performance marketing centralization. So at a glance, I can view our social media, email content, page media, everything is performing so I can analyze data from there. And the same thing with email marketing, we use Netcore data to analyze with Google analytics, to understand our marketing campaigns, how they’re performing, and then we optimize from there.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (12:39):

So how important is it to review your analytics? Generally, the importance is simple. You want to do performance marketing. If you want to do performance marketing, you need analytics. If you want to review your analytics, you need to understand how your campaigns are performing. And then finally, you need to optimize then using the data you analyze. Do you understand? So, let me put it step by step again. One, you need to put analytics in place. That’s number one, number two; you need to understand this data, right? Number three, you need to optimize your marketing campaigns than using these analytics. Do you understand? So, a very good example, the analytics we get from Netcore’s platform and what we get from Google analytics, inspired our image campaign, which we currently run for some of our products. And the reason is simple. So we can and increase conversions, product understanding, and brand loyalty. We’ve got some good results in that aspect so far, but that’s why analytics is very important. It allows you to optimize your marketing campaigns or even to create new campaigns entirely. Thanks.

ONUOHA GLORY (13:52):

All right. So you are trying to say that historical data plays, you know, a huge role in your campaign decision-making, having to see how people have reacted to past campaigns that have been sent out. It helps you, you know, have a brighter view of what next, what can I do next for this customer? How can I please this customer? If they’re reacting well to this, that means they like this line that we are going through, right?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (14:15):

Yeah. That’s it. That’s it.

ONUOHA GLORY (14:17):

Thank you so much. So yeah. Content analytics and image, you know, which do you think plays a significant impact? You know, we have to put so much attention on content. We have your graphics guy coming up with designs. You still have the analytics that tells you how to target these people. And then you have your copywriters giving you what will be the response to this subject I’m using. Is this something that we’re going to respond to positively or negatively? So, you know, which do you think plays a significant impact on your campaign decision-making.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (14:55):

Content analytics or images? The answer is straightforward analytics plays the most important impact in our digital marketing activities. You know, analytics covers everything, content, images, subject line, available time, your click-through rate, everything, right? Analytics covers all of that, so that’s why it plays; it plays the most impact in digital marketing activities. As a digital marketer, analytics must become out on your performance. I had mentioned earlier that, on this side of the business, we are performing. We focus more on performance marketing, so analyzing our data plays an important role in our success to date. And that’s why analytics will always trump every other aspect of email marketing, right? For instance, as I said earlier, analyzing our data informed us that we needed to create an email drip campaign, which we have done. Right. And email marketing is also the top three best performing channels for us.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (15:57):

We only know this information through analytics; how would we know it if there were no analytics? Right, and if, for instance, we also know that some images are performed historically well, there’s no reason for us not to repeat those images in new campaigns, right or if we know that some content has performed historically well, whether the subject line or even the content itself, then it’s very important just to give the customers what they’ve related with again. So analytics is the most important part and the one that plays the major impact in digital. Okay. Thanks.

ONUOHA GLORY (16:33):

All right. Thank you. So in order, does these three work, hand in hand, but you know, without analytics, we can’t even pinpoint and say, okay, this content performed well in our last campaign, I think we should, you know, drive more to this. I think we should give images related to this and that. Yeah. I understand what you’re saying, but I’d also like that these three can also work hand in hand. Right?

OLADAYO ADENIYI (16:58):

The three of them work hand in hand, but I’m saying that you can have content and images on analytics because you can analyze both of them. And so what content are people relating with? What images do they like? It’s just like social media analytics; if you post a particular image and nobody interacts with it, Why do you want to post that same type of image again image? Yeah. If you post that image and many people retweet it, like it, download it, and share it. You should know that that’s the kind of images people want to be seen. For instance, we can quickly compare codes, which is very popular among the motivation versus maybe infographics. , if you postcodes and people don’t relate with it, maybe it’s not something you want to be regularly doing again. But if you post infographics about data in your industry or your business and people are so happy to download it and share it, you know that more people want infographics, and you can do more of that. Right?

ONUOHA GLORY (18:02):

Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you, Oladayo, for coming on this episode of the #FortheLoveofEmails podcast and giving us this wonderful insight into analytics, helping us understand why we need to pay attention to our analytics, why we are even gathering this data,  to understand how our campaigns and how our products are doing out there in the market. Thank you so much. I don’t know if you have any final words so we can wrap it up.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (18:32):

Yeah. So I would just say that maybe two things: email marketing has remained a core part of every digital marketing strategy. So, take it up as a business owner, personalize it, customize it as much as possible, and keep analyzing your data to know improvement opportunities and grow the company’s profits, brand loyalty, and product clarity, right? So two very important things, if you have not implemented email marketing in your strategy, include it. If you have, then analyze your data to know improvement opportunities to grow the company’s profits, brand loyalty, and product clarity. Thank you very much, Gloria.

ONUOHA GLORY (19:18):

Thank you so much, Dayo. Thank you for coming on this podcast. We love what AXA Mansard is doing, and thank you for sharing this wonderful insight. I will hope to have you again as a guest for another podcast.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (19:34):

Sure.

ONUOHA GLORY (19:35):

It was lovely having you here. Thank you so much.

OLADAYO ADENIYI (19:38):

Thank you so much, Glory, for having me. Thank you. Do have a fantastic evening.

ONUOHA GLORY (19:44):

You too. Bye-bye.

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