MASS EMAIL AUTHORING & DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
With ICON's Email Campaign System, customers can schedule, develop, and monitor electronic distributions to the target audience on a continuous and timely basis. This service includes development of one template, distribution and return address management. This system tracks valuable information for current and future campaigns. These metrics will be recorded for each campaign. Statistics will be reported through a web-based reporting template. These reports will pull information directly from the database, giving administrative users a real-time look at cumulative data at different points in time. Following is a summary of the metrics covered and the reporting:

System Information: These metrics include how many E-mails were distributed, how long the server took to send all E-mails, and the bandwidth used. Tracking these metrics helps determine the impact of increasing or decreasing distribution.

Click-Throughs: These transactions are the most valuable to the customer, not just for information transfer, but identifying users who will actively use E-mails to follow up on information. Not only the quantity, but individual customer codes should be captured in click-through events.

Remove Requests: Each distribution will yield a certain number of requests by customers to have their names removed from subsequent distributions. Measuring the rate of attrition, number of new E-mails versus number of requests for removal, is important in assessing a program's success.

Returned E-mails: The data from an E-mail campaign is only as good as the addresses put into the system. Tracking this metric for each distribution will help identify problems with core data and can help improve data collection at the source point. High return rates also increase overall bandwidth use.

Opened E-mails: Even if customers do not click through to the customer’s website, opening the E-mail still provides them with valuable communications material. Measuring opened E-mails helps quantify the information transfer. Measuring click-throughs as a function of opened E-mails helps validate the layout and content of the E-mail.

Reopened E-mails: Customers who open the same message more than once might have a higher potential to act on the information. Although the activity is not as complete as a Click-Through, re-opening an E-mail usually implies the user is referencing some piece of information for use at some point. Also, Click-Throughs from reopened E-mails can be tracked.

Repeat ClickThrough Rate: Here we track how many customers have clicked through from the E-mail to the website more than once. This metric identifies the value of the information found by the customer after they click through and their propensity to continue to use E-mail as an information resource.

Repeat Open Rate: This metric is similar to Repeat ClickThrough except it identifies the user's propensity to open up E-mail over time, or habitually opening E-mails from a customer’s campaigns. A high repeat open rate would indicate that E-mail is an inexpensive, quick way to communicate effectively to customers., increasing rates show content is improving.

Privacy Requests: These metrics show how many customers were interested in a customer's privacy policy. A high percentage rate implies people are concerned about being on a mailing list, and are worried the information may be used elsewhere. Total No Shows: After E-mails that are opened or returned are deducted from the total, the remainder indicates E-mails that arrived at some destination, but were not opened. These E-mails can be considered deleted, or delivered to a dormant/unused E-mail account.

User Information: Like a webpage, other useful customer information can be gathered related to their operating environment including: E-mail Client/Browser, HTML versus Text.

ICON will develop a secure area online where a customer’s email/marketing administrator can log in and review the data based on the listed metrics, in real time. The HTML pages will pull data directly from the database, giving the administrative user the latest calculations and data results. These initial reports will be static: the admin users will not be able to build their own queries or cross-reference data. These tools will be reviewed and developed in the next phase of the project.