Australian franchises employ more than half a million people, with many stepping into roles as business owners and key decision-makers.

This diverse sector thrives on entrepreneurial spirit, yet many franchise owners struggle with the marketing expertise needed to analyse and optimise campaign performance.

How can franchise brands effectively foster growth across a decentralised network, where skills and capabilities vary widely? To succeed, franchises must tackle a range of challenges, including:

  • Striking the right balance between centralised control and local autonomy
  • Maintaining consistent branding across store locations
  • Navigating regional differences and local customs
  • Crafting effective marketing strategies that resonate with all franchisees
  • Managing and protecting online reputation

Here’s where challenges can turn into opportunities: harnessing the power of analytics from Constant Contact’s email and digital marketing platform. 

These insights equip you to confront each challenge head-on, turning potential roadblocks into genuine opportunities for growth.

Start by Defining Your Goals 

Before diving into analytics, it’s essential to define what you want to achieve with your email campaigns. Are you looking to increase local engagement, boost sales, or strengthen brand consistency across franchise locations? Clear goals will guide your efforts and ensure you’re measuring the right metrics to achieve them.

Once you know your goals, here’s how to measure your progress:

Goal: Website Traffic 
What to Track: Go Beyond Clicks and Click-Through-Rate

When it comes to email marketing, most people know the drill: the mission is to land in the inbox, catch the reader’s eye, and spark some interaction. It’s all about getting that first click and then inviting them to dive deeper into the content. To gauge effectiveness, consider this: the average open rate hovers around 44%, while the average click-through rate is about 7%. So, do you know where your metrics currently stand?

With the right analytics platform, however, these metrics are just the start, and developing a more granular level of understanding about how people interact with your content will help you generate more targeted campaigns. 

Heat maps, for example, don’t just tell you that someone clicked on something; they tell you precisely where that click occurred. By combining this insight with click segmentation, you can create targeted lists that deliver tailored content aligned with the preferences of different audience segments. As a result, you’ll have a mailing list that significantly outperforms industry averages. 

Here’s a final couple of statistics that you should remain razor-focused on: the average conversion rate for email marketing is around 3%. Meanwhile, 63% of marketers see an increase in conversion rates with personalisation and 71% of Australians expect personalised experiences online. 

There’s no more powerful way to enhance the effectiveness of your messaging as a driver of business growth than through personalisation and segmentation.

Goal: Attract More Customers By Ensuring Subscriber Count Out-Paces Unsubscribe Count

Growing your customer base is essential for expanding your franchise’s reach and boosting revenue. Email marketing plays a vital role in attracting new subscribers and engaging existing ones. To gauge your success in building a larger audience, focus on tracking these key metrics:

Number of Subscribers: This metric shows how many new people have signed up to receive your emails. A growing subscriber list shows that your email marketing efforts are successfully attracting interest from potential customers.

Number of Unsubscribes: This tells you how many subscribers have opted out of receiving your emails. While some level of unsubscribes is normal, a high number could signal issues with your email content or frequency. Monitoring this metric helps you understand and address any reasons why people may be choosing to leave your list.

Overall, however, focusing on growth means focusing on increasing your subscriber list. If you’re paying attention to your analytics and personalising content, the unsubscribe statistic should remain reasonable, and growth comes from having more subscribers.

There are several ways that you can achieve this:

  1. Incentivise the sign-up process with an offer: Perhaps you can provide a discount, a free tool, or bonus content in exchange for joining your email list. Email subscribers always appreciate added value. 
  2. Create a pop-up on your website: To avoid coming across as spammy, ensure the pop-up is timely and offers genuine value. A well-designed reminder can gently encourage sign-ups without overwhelming your audience. 
  3. Leverage social media: Followers are already engaged with your brand, making them more likely to sign up for your emails based on familiarity with your content.
  4. Create a QR code: QR codes can be  placed anywhere, from websites, to business cards, and storefront windows, encouraging people to scan and access the mailing list sign-up form. The more positive interactions a customer has with your brand, the more inclined they are to join your mailing list.

In short, the key to growing your email list lies not just in asking people to subscribe, but in providing them with a compelling reason to join. Additionally, ensuring that the subscription process is seamless and instantaneous will greatly enhance sign-up rates.

Goal: Increase Email Deliverability 

A bounce rate is fairly straightforward: if an email fails to deliver due to an invalid address, it’s considered a bounce.

What is less clear, but far more important to monitor, is email deliverability. An email that ends up in spam has been delivered – so it won’t count as a bounced email. But it’s almost certainly not going to be read and in the long term, this can harm the reputation of your email list.

For the sake of email hygiene you should manage both of these metrics. When emails start bouncing it’s important to determine whether it’s a hard bounce (because the email address simply doesn’t exist) or a soft bounce (because the email was temporarily full or otherwise). Deleting hard bounce emails from your list is essential. It’s also important to monitor soft bounces and be prepared to clean those away if it happens too frequently.

Meanwhile, a bit more work needs to be done to manage deliverability. Firstly, it’s important to use authentication to build trust. This means achieving these three key protocols:

  • Sender Policy Framework: SPF ensures that only authorised IP addresses can send emails on behalf of your domain. This prevents spammers from using your domain to send fraudulent emails.
  • DomainKeys Identified Mail: DKIM adds a digital signature to your emails, verifying that they haven’t been altered in transit and they’re actually coming from your domain. 
  • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance: DMARC builds on SPF and DKIM by adding a layer of reporting and enforcement. It allows you to tell email service providers (ESPs) how to handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks.

Optimising emails for delivery is crucial. This involves steering clear of words that may trigger spam filters, such as “free,” “urgent,” “win,” and “limited time offer.” Additionally, it’s important to minimise the use of symbols and maintain a balanced text-to-image ratio.

Above all else, the secret to maintaining excellent deliverability is to ensure your emails are personalised and valuable enough for subscribers to eagerly open them every time.  Enhancing interactivity is another effective strategy—don’t hesitate to incorporate polls, puzzles, or other engaging elements that invite your subscribers to participate.

Bringing It All Together: Simplify Your Analytics with Constant Contact

Clearly, there’s a lot to consider when aiming to drive website traffic, increase sales, and enhance deliverability. Constant Contact simplifies this process with its intuitive tools and comprehensive analytics.

  • Centralised Dashboard: View all key metrics, like clicks and conversion rates, in one place for quick performance assessment.
  • In-Depth Reports: Access detailed reports on campaign performance and audience engagement for data-driven decisions.
  • Actionable Insights: Get practical recommendations to improve metrics like bounce and click rates.
  • Easy Integration: Seamlessly connect with sales data, CRM systems, and other tools for aligned marketing efforts.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Navigate analytics easily, whether you’re new to email marketing or managing multiple franchise locations.

By using Constant Contact, you can streamline your email marketing efforts, get a clear picture of your campaign performance, and take actionable steps to achieve meaningful results for your franchise.

Start Measuring What Matters 

Ready to take your franchise marketing performance to the next level? Sign up for a free trial today and start experimenting with personalised content to drive more clicks and engagement with your local audience! 

Along with Constant Contact’s robust platform delivering crucial analytics to fuel your business growth, you’ll also enjoy the support of a dedicated team of local experts in your time zone.