Aug
17

New Study: Many Marketers Miss the Opportunity to Re-activate Subscribers


bonniemalone
By Bonnie Malone
Director, Response Consulting

Pundits in the email industry have been declaring the end of batch-and-blast email for years. Return Path wrote the obituary four years ago.

Oh, if only it were true.

Instead, our new study finds that way too many top-brand marketers ignore signs of inactivity and instead send the same type of message, at a high frequency, over and over and over and over.

In a follow up to our 2008 study of email practices amongst ecommerce companies, my colleague Stephanie Colleton and I analyzed email from 40 retailers who sent messages to a former buyer who did not open, click or purchase for more than a year and a half. What we found was not completely surprising, though it was a bit depressing.

Here were our key findings:

  • The retailers studied continued to send high frequency of email – averaging as much as 9 to 11 messages per month – to inactive subscribers.
  • Only 5 of 40 companies studied attempted to “win back” these subscribers with an email aimed at re-activating them (12.5%).
  • Of those five companies, only one sent an email asking for permission to continue sending email.
  • None of the companies studied explicitly offered the option to change preferences for content or frequency.
  • None of the win-back messages was customized based on the subscriber’s previous purchase.

    • Sending email without regard to whether or not its relevant for subscribers is not a winning strategy and there are costs associated with sending email to people who are unlikely to ever respond.

    Here are four things you can do now:

  • Monitor your deliverability metrics, particularly complaint rates, by activity levels.
  • Moderate frequency based on subscriber interest and activity levels
  • Make your email program a dialogue with subscribers. Solicit feedback through polls, surveys, preference centers and more. Learn to “listen” to feedback that comes through in diminished activity, opt outs and other mechanisms.
  • More is not always more. Regularly prune chronically inactive subscribers from your list to reduce your sending costs, protect your reputation and to focus on active recipients.

    • Download our study now. It has much more detail on our findings and includes several screen shots of the few bright spots.

    • It is very hard to persuade an executive level that is fighting for a certain"size" of a database that we are better off removing users who have not responded in X amount of time.

      I think most maketers have the right mentality and understanding, but these arguments are falling on deaf ears.

      Until we reach that level in our careers, this trend will not change.
    • Bonnie Malone
      You're right - it can seem counterintuitive to stop mailing a large percentage of your file in order to improve response! However, there is direct cost associated with this continued behavior - even simply the cost per send x number of inactive subscribers x number of annual campaigns (as outlined in the study) can add up quickly. The result of that simple math may be enough to pique executive interest to consider at least testing a change in strategy.
    • I think its sad that this is still happening today. I truly believe that a lot of companies are more concerned with the size of their list as opposed to the performance in many cases. I know its hard to let go...because its like admitting failure, but I really wonder what would happen at certain companies today if the ISP's automatically decided that all email would go to the spam folder if they did not do proper hygiene on their database. For some reason, I think the bigger is better attitude will continue to be around until someone steps in and punishes companies for continuing to send with the hopes and prayers that the subscribers will eventually buy something.
    • Bonnie Malone
      Yes, this unfortunate attitude does still persist. However, as ISPs have begun to use engagement metrics more and more in their determination of how to deliver email, these "bigger is better" strategists will soon have to shift their approach.
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