By now, you have certainly experienced the occasional “We Miss You”, “We Want You Back,” or “It’s been awhile” emails, either in your inbox or as a campaign specialist who has sent these to your un-engaged subscriber base.
Everyone likes to ask: Do these sorts of emails work? Well, for some brands they do. Other brands have mixed results, and for quite a few, they are a complete waste of time. I say this because most often these campaigns tend to be one-off batch emails where some arbitrary line in the sand of 5 or 8 months of some combination of no opens/clicks or purchases are segmented, usually using a template with a discount or incentive that's typical of what is normally sent out to the engaged subscriber base. The batch send is scheduled, and if you’re lucky, you get decent open rate and a super low conversion rate. In the following few months, when things are slow or upper management...
I use to laugh when Jack Handey conveyed his deep thoughts on SNL. I keep a notebook full of my own deep thoughts that I’ve collected over the last 11 years. I would like to share a few of them with you.
Perhaps some of them will spawn a discussion at the office or in an email community.
1. The time you spend thinking of excuses for why you are not testing could be spent thinking about tests to execute and implement.
2. People have been predicting the imminent death of email marketing for years. I wonder how many of these folks have bought something or been influenced in some way by an email in the last 12 months.
3. Has there ever been a legitimate email about Viagra? If so, was it flagged as spam?
4. If someone signed up for your email program and never engaged in a single email, does creating a re-engagement program make sense?
5. Do spammers have business cards and,...
Many email strategists and thought leaders will say that in order for an email program to be successful, organizations need to have relevant emails that drive conversion. In fact, someone has probably come up with a list of all the email types that should be in production without really understanding the impact each one has, or the amount of time they take to create.
As we all know, it's easier and more cost effective to keep a subscriber/customer than it is to find a new one. Most retailers should have a re-engagement strategy in place when it comes to their email list. And by that I mean it should go beyond the standard "6 months no open/clicks and we send them an email" strategy. I have been part of many sessions, both on the client and agency sides, talking about re-engagement, and it always leads back to data around the optimal time to send email to get the subscriber/customer to do the...
