There are some e-mail marketing activities that, although largely ineffective, are often mistaken for good practices. The purchase of email lists is one. To send at an aggressive pace is another.
But an e-mail marketing practice in particular is still used because, on occasion, it returns immediate results at the expense of long-term subscriber relationships. This practice returns email to subscribers who have not opened previous messages.
The main problem with the recovery and reuse of old e-mails is that it's just not a sustainable approach. On the one hand, you risk doubling unsubscriptions from what is essentially a single email.
Returning and reusing email content could also put emails in the line of ISPs, spam filters, and blacklists – an expensive mistake because nonprofits lose about $ 24,500 in donations per year.
Finally, e-mail referral can contribute to the tiredness of e-mails, where flooded subscribers lose interest in your message and brand, and then disengage from your content.
These problems remain even if the sender adjusts the body copy, the subject line, the placement and the general format of the e-mail in question. Sending e-mails is therefore a symptom of a bigger problem: you and your recipient are not synchronized. To synchronize with your subscribers, consider these three alternatives to sending an e-mail:
1. Optimize your preference center
If you broadcast a campaign via email, send a newsletter or do another form of email marketing, you need a preference center. Essentially, it's a system that sets the expectations and commitment of subscribers at the very beginning of the relationship.
Preference Centers promote a healthy relationship between the sender and the recipient by allowing the subscriber to set the pace and content of the emails that he receives from you.
Even better, these centers are useful for introducing potential subscribers to a variety of e-mail offers while giving you a better picture of your audience, what they're looking for and how you can segment them correctly in your campaigns.
2. Send your emails at a better time
Another effective method to increase engagement without returning is to send e-mails when your subscribers are most likely to be hired. The problem here, however, is that there is no "golden hour" to send universal. Determining the best time, then, means that you will have to exploit your commitment data.
This should allow you to discover when your recipients are, well, receptive to your messages. This should also give you a better idea of where and when they read the emails.
If they open emails early in the morning, for example, it may be because they check emails at work, which could illuminate your content and your schedule. A word of warning, though – if you decide to exploit your data (and you should do it), be aware of the time zones and adjust your schedule accordingly.
3. Watch Your Commitment
The best way to stimulate e-mail engagement is to understand and segment your audience. It means having a careful eye on your metrics. Simply know who is engaging with what message, when and how often is the most reliable step to ensure commitment.
For example, highly committed subscribers will always miss emails. And you know what? It's good. Not everyone will embark on marketing emails if they have other concerns to tend to do so.
If you are concerned that subscribers might not receive important campaign information, consider including a small section "in case you missed it" in a separate email designed for highly engaged segments.
Does not a subscriber engage at all? No problem. Remain this address for a period and followed with the relevant content later. If they still do not engage, ask if they want different content offers or they should be removed from the mailing list.
In conclusion, the most effective email marketing strategies rely on good communication with your subscribers. That means setting expectations with them when they first subscribe, asking for their pace and content preferences, and periodically checking with them to see if your messages are meeting expectations.
Sending e-mails to stimulate engagement, however, means that you are out of balance with your reader. Reach, communicate and let re-send email die forever.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. The authors of the staff are listed here.
