Marketing.fm » Google Analytics

Analytics for Email

Eric Friedman — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:27:17 +0000

I want the equivalent of Google Analytics for my inbox. I know there are tons startups working on the email inbox and analytics solution – but none that focus on just stats that I know of. There is Xobni, Etacts, Rapportive, Gist, and now even Gmail has Gmail Priority Inbox.

None of these solve for the analytics problem.

I want the following legend – or something similar

Visits = Emails
Pageviews = Threads
Pages/Visit = Threads/Emails
Bounce Rate = Emails never returned
Return Rate = Emails answered back
Avg. time on Site = Average time spent per email
New visits = % of emails from people who have never emailed me before
Previous emails = % of emails from people who have emailed me before

Thats just the first page of Google Analytics! (The items in bold are the inverse of some functions and do not currently have a GA equivalent.)

Some of the other sections that you could continue the same exercise with are Top Content for things like common subjects, common themes and words, and even attachements.

Goals would be the equivalent of how quickly you answer back emails and when you are most productive. You could set your own “conversion funnels” which could be things like:

“How fast do I answer New Emails”
or
“How fast do I answer emails with folks I previously emailed with”

I recognize this level of data granularity is probably not interesting to most, but it would be very cool to start being able to see this data and optimize towards your own personal goals.

Remember Magic Inbox? Yep, That’s What Is Now Gmail Priority Inbox (techcrunch.com)

Post from: Eric Friedman
You should follow me on Twitter here
Analytics for Email

Free and paid services I use

Eric Friedman — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:52:10 +0000

As a follow up to the WordPress plugins post and my 10 tools for web traffic research I wanted to share some services that I use, and pay for.

Disclaimer: where possible I use affiliate links

Hostgator – This is where I host Marketing.fm and refer anyone looking for great shared hosting.

GetDropBox – the easiest to use backup and synchronize file tool across multiple computers. If you are not backing up your work, it is only a matter of time before you learn the hard way.

Digsby – Best multi IM client for Windows. I use AIM, Gchat, and Yahoo chat on a regular basis and Digsby makes it all possible with one multi tabbed client.

Feedburner – best way to track and get analytics for your RSS feed.

TwitterCounter – shows follows and and easy link back to your Twitter profile.

Google Docs – great and easy way to take notes and share documents online.

SiteMeter and Google Analytics – I use both of these services for analytics as they both provide important stats I checkout often. I know that GA is now real time, but I rely on Site Meter for quick and easy referral links to my site(s)

Amazon Web Services – S3 and EC2 – the static storage and elastic cloud solutions from Amazon are somewhat new to me, but I have been working on a project that will be deployed on AWS to avoid some of the headaches of traditional shared hosting.

Google Reader – best platform for consuming RSS feeds. You can see how I use Google Reader here.

What am I missing?

Post from: Eric Friedman
You should follow me on Twitter here
Free and paid services I use

Analytics Matters

Eric Friedman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:03:35 +0000

Analytics matters today, just like it did yesterday, last year, and 5 years ago. In fact, it has always mattered.

People, projects, companies, and teams tend for forget the importance of analytics from the earliest stages of a product or service. Its free!

If you havn’t done so, go drop in free Google Analytics code to your website today.

It accomplishes a few things well and allows for accountability and facts in a world where it is needed most.

1. It lets possible investors wrap their head around the idea and traction
2. It allows monetization strategies to form based on usage trends
3. It focuses features and solutions to where heavy traffic is vs. what people say they want
4. It allows you to iterate on something that is a current pain point
5. It shows you the ebb and flow of transactions throughout your site
6. It shows bottlenecks and areas that need optimization
7. It shows sales and conversion funnel metrics to tie advertising to ROI
8. It presents users with relevant and actionable data if you choose to surface it back to them
9. It emphasizes what is working and with is not
10. It allows decisions to be made based on facts vs fiction

I started writing details about each, but a short top 10 list accomplishes my thoughts on analytics well.

You may not be “public facing” or feel analytics is not “mission critical” or throw any other cliche out, but I cannot think of a solid reason why you wouldn’t want to be tracking everything from day 0. Keep your stats private if you want, but make sure you are collecting them in the first place.

There is no such thing as back tracking stats you didn’t collect.

Download the New Google Analytics Desktop Wallpapers!! (tipsblogger.com)
Import your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords and use them with Conversion Optimizer (adwords.blogspot.com)

Post from: Eric Friedman
You should follow me on Twitter here
Analytics Matters

Google Ad Planner

Eric Friedman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:34:28 +0000

Image via WikipediaGoogle announced their Ad Planner tool today which was an anticipated move and one that many people are looking to checkout soon. It looks to have some very interesting features that I know many traditional and interactive media planners would like to get their hands on. Like many other next generation media products, I have a feeling that this one will take awhile to catch on. Much like Google Analytics, companies will have a hard time believing that a service that is free can actually work as well as a very expensive paid product (this is the case with Google Analytics anyways)

In their own words Ad Planner is …

a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. When using Google Ad Planner, simply enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan.

This service seems to go right up against many others that exist right now, but being free provides a major advantage to media planners. I applied to the Ad Planner service today and hopefully will be able to do a deep dive soon.

As a media planner in a former life I can tell you that a condensed consolidated ad planning tool for websites is something that no one has been able to deliver – yet. The halo effect that happens with Google products is seeming to permeate to Ad Planner as the reviews and opinions continue to roll in.