Return On Email Subscriber

During the EEC event in February in one of the sessions the topic was frequency of email. The panelists had discussed email frequency and how much is too much as well as capping the frequency of your email, i.e., only allow a subscriber to be emailed X times per month. I asked, “If you cap the frequency of email to a subscribe to, say only get 5 emails per month, but you send out 10 a month, how do you determine what email is most relevant to them?”

I watched the panelists skirt around a non-answer as no one could tell me how you determine which emails are most relevant to the subscriber. If the 7th email might be the one that makes me purchase, you missed the boat.

Limiting the frequency by subscriber, in my opinion, is a bad idea. I welcome the conversation about why it is good, any lift in ROI you have seen etc., but I see the practice more harmful that good.

I always found that setting subscriber expectations is much more appropriate than a predetermined number. Tell subscribers that you send your newsletter once a month, promotions weekly, and event announcement every other week. Let them determine what is too much. It would be interesting to see if anyone has seen a lift in overall subscriber activity, as well as revenue and ROI that has implemented a predetermined frequency limit.

One thing I have learned in email marketing over the last 5 years - Labor Day is an email wasteland.

Unless you are sending to a highly targeted segment or sending a time sensitive offer, my advice would be to hold off until late Tuesday at the earliest.

Why?

This is one of the biggest travel weekends of the year. People will be with their family and friends or on the road. If they are on the road, many of them will checking email from a smart phone - not an ideal situation yet.

Also, when they do check their email, their inbox will be jammed, and many emails will be deleted before being read. I know I have done this when I miss a few days of inbox maintenance.

So, go out, have a good time this weekend and leave your email marketing cares behind. Think about a great fall kick off campaign, and stay out of the inbox traffic jam.

Please don’t follow Kmart’s lead. Here is what I received shortly after opting in:

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Wow. Of course, when I went to manage my preferences, I was given 2 options: unsub from “Kmart” email or unsub from “Promotional” email. I am not even sure what this means? Is Kmart selling my address? Are these different types of lists?

In 1 month I was sent 12 emails asking me to buy everything in the entire store. Tv’s, diamond rings, baby strollers, toasters, etc….Am I really just going to buy $34 grand worth of product in the first 30 days on the list?

Some times I wonder who is driving this channel at some of these companies, and If they even subscribe to email lists. Is this not common sense? Do you like getting an email every other day from a department store?

Please put yourself in the shoes of the subscriber, and try to be smart about your frequency and messaging.

It’s companies like Kmart that give email a bad name.

From Chad White at RetailEmail.Blogspot.com. If you have not bookmarked Chad’s Blog yet, you should. This site is operated by its founder, Chad White, who has covered the retail, e-commerce and technology industries for more than six years as an editor at Dow Jones and Fairchild Publications.

The 81 top retailers currently actively tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot sent out 120 emails during the week ending July 28 as part of their core email marketing campaigns. That was an increase of 7% over the week before. Ninety-two percent of these retailers sent out emails last week, up from 85% the week prior.Week-End Trends: Back-to-school drives volume higher

The 81 top retailers currently actively tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot sent out 120 emails during the week ending July 28 as part of their core email marketing campaigns. That was an increase of 7% over the week before. Ninety-two percent of these retailers sent out emails last week, up from 85% the week prior.

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I was fortunate to have my first stay at the Boulders Resort in June for the Email Insiders summit and would go back in a heart beat. I think that they know this as the stay there is truly unique. What has impressed me is that they are carefully reaching out to me once a month after my stay (and sent me an exit/check out survey days after leaving) and keeping it simple and top of mind.

The clear actionable button (I am of late a big fan of the Button) makes me know exactly what to do to learn more and plan my next stay. When I was checking out I actually asked them what Property Management system they used and if they had the ability to connect the two in order to send me emails in the future. I asked, as you might be surprised, many Boutique hotels do not have this ability and in my opinion miss the opportunity to bring me back and stay in touch.

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I am always impressed with Alaska Airlines in the Monday AM email I get each week. It is always at the same time and loaded with information that is really (or appears) focused on my needs as a frequent traveler. The only draw back is that there is a lot of text to read. But they have me waiting for it every Monday AM to see what new offers and great additions they have in store.

Hats off to Alaska Airlines for creating campaigns that are always on time and on the same day. I have not noticed much change up in these emails in a while, so it must be working well.

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I have a number of family members that use Safeway.com to buy their groceries so I thought I would give it a shot. I went through and picked all my groceries and put them in my cart. I got pulled away from my purchase to take care of something else and forgot about the cart.

OPPORTUNITY #1 - Remind me of my cart, they did this without fail, a nice email reminding me how much I had in my cart. There was no offer, but they did not need to, it is food - a necessity of life. My one rant about this is the timing - 5 days after I had abandoned my cart. I think 1-2 days is an acceptable timeframe for a follow up for food. Most likely a week later my needs have changed and the cart is fairly irrelevant.

OPPORTUNITY #2 - This is a huge failure. First of all it was 2 weeks after my abandoned cart, what grocery list is exactly the same two weeks later. The thing that really got to me is how the email started out. “We hate to be a squeaky wheel…” Hint: as soon as you say “We hate to be” don

One of the things I have been noticing on our newsletter is the value of the RSS button we insert in our email. Yes everyone that gets our newsletter is a double opt-in subscriber, but it allows those users that are forwarded the email from their friends to be able to keep up to date on our newsletter without subscribing.

I ran into a client example this last week when we were in Chicago at the Internet Retailer show. This client has 250 email subscribers, highly qualified, small list. The interesting thing is that they have over 6,500 RSS subscribers.

Yes, you cannot track nearly to the same level as with email, but if someone wants offers in RSS, give it to them. If you have a BlackBerry you filter your email on your phone and RSS is another touch point for those that filter email, but not RSS. Give it a shot. If you need assistance in turning on your RSS functionality in emailROI, please contact us.

Do you know how often you are emailing your customers and prospects? Frequency is key. We always try to work with clients to help them to establish a frequency calendar. Unitl you look at all of the emails, no matter how helpful you feel that they are, you don’t know if you are over saturating an inbox and slowly killing a relationship.

It used to be that when you wanted to talk to your customers you had to stop them in the aisles, call them on the phone or go visit them. That was fine if you had fifty customers, but if you had lots of customers there wasn

At eROI we have been compiling a quarterly study on the best times of day and day of the week. This data is only based on the results of our customers. Everyone has a sweet spot to target where their audience in most receptive. Is it at work, at home, in the AM, on a weekday? We do not profess that this study is the end all, rather a guide of stastics to plan a review of your own campaigns.

Do you have a plan for frequency? Time? Day of the week, or do you continue the “Shampoo Effect” of Lather, Rinse, Repeat, not knowing that trying other times and days might lead to higher campaign conversions. And does list size and segmentation matter? You bet it does.

Read the study highlights.