A JupiterResearch report released in January, based on a November 2004 survey of 680 companies, showed that just 35 percent of email marketers used click-through data when deciding which customers to send promotions to.

Click-through data, however, can be a very effective segmentation attribute for targeting. Let me try to explain with an example:

Company XYZ sends out an email campaign to a targeted list of recipients promoting a white paper. A week later they send out a couple of follow-up messages to various subsets of the original list:

• the same message is sent to all recipients that didn’t open the first email (using a different subject line)
• a new message is sent to all recipients that opened the first email but didn’t click-through to download/order the white paper (using a different subject line, a different message, but repeating the same offer)
• a new message is sent to all recipients that clicked-through but didn’t download/order the white paper (using a different subject line, a different message, and a different offer – maybe they didn’t find the first offer attractive enough)
• a new message is sent to all recipients that downloaded/ordered the white paper (the subject line refers to the white paper, the message refers to the download and invites recipients to a new offer, eg. attend a seminar)

You can even go one step further and segment your list based on click-through data from multiple past email campaigns: eg. those that downloaded the white paper, but didn’t register for the seminar.

You can either use you imagination to predict whether a recipient will respond to certain email offer or you can base your prediction on the recipient’s past "click behavior".

Give it a try. You may find the results are impressive.