Vero’s April 2015 Blog Report

This is our fourth blog report. You can read the others here.

• January 2015 report
• February 2015 report
• March 2015 report

I’ll get into some numbers but first, there are a few other things I want to touch on.

Adjusted Bounce Rate

I’ve always hated the way Google Analytics handles bounce rate but never knew how to fix it. In early April, I received an email from Caroline Krolicka from Growbots. She noticed in our March report that our bounce rate was over 80% and pointed me to a new metric: adjusted bounce rate.

Instead of using Google’s standard formula – anyone who views just one page is counted as a bounce, even if they stay for five minutes – I created a new one. In our case, I decided to count all visits shorter than 30 seconds as a bounce.

Our bounce rate immediately dropped from over 80 percent to below 20 percent. I believe this to be a much more accurate indicator of interest. Thanks, Caroline!

Quality Over Quantity

We only published eight posts in April, down from our normal 10 or 12. The reason is that we’re making a few changes in the way we approach content. That means deeper dives into specific topics, nitty-gritty tutorials (like our Airbnb one), more attention to design and, in general, fewer posts. Keep an eye out for some great resources coming soon.

The Numbers (on the blog subdomain)

• Pageviews: 67,195 (-2.87%)
• Average time on site: 4:05 (+22.14%)
• Bounce rate: 44.58% (-44.37%)
• Organic search visits: 19,371 (+10.65%)

Even with fewer new posts, organic traffic is still on the rise. It improved almost nine percent to 23,100 total organic visits (to the main site and the blog).

New content:

• The Replenishment Email: An E-Commerce Hack Guaranteed to Drive Sales
• How to Build a Profitable Business with Email
• The March 2015 Blog Report
• #CRODay
• How to Use Cialdini’s Six Weapons of Persuasion in Email Marketing
• 50 Must-Read Marketing Blogs
• Triggered Retention Emails That Keep Customers Engaged
• Learning vs. Selling

Top performing content:

1. The Ultimate Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide (7,992 pageviews)
2. 20 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails (6,642 pageviews)
3. 10 Counterintuitive Lessons We’ve Learned About Email Marketing (5,260 pageviews)
4. 50 Must-Read Marketing Blogs (4,174 pageviews)
5. 21 Welcome Emails to Inspire Your Lifecycle Marketing (2,912 pageviews)

A few highlights:

I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Death to the Stock Photo’s David Sherry about building a profitable business with email. If you haven’t read this post yet, I’d encourage you to check it out. Here are a few gems from the article:

• “We segment based on hunger,” says David. “We know that when people engage a lot, they have a pain point. We relieve that by sending them more content.”
• “A lot of companies will say ‘Join our list and get a free e-book.’ We don’t say that. But when people sign up, we give them something free. It’s a nice surprise.”
• “We just try to tune into our audience. We’ve never paid attention to time or day,” David says. “Most email marketers will say you should email at least once a week. But we just do what feels right.”

Check out the full article here.

We also hosted a webinar showing you how to use Vero to send behavioral email campaigns. You can watch a recording here (or below). We’ll be doing more of these on a variety of topics in the coming months.

Have questions or thoughts? Feel free to drop them in the comments.