You’ve put together a killer strategy for a one-time promotional email. You’ve spent hours making sure the subject line, copy and design are amazing. You’ve sent it out with sky-high confidence in the reaction you’ll get from subscribers. And then you get less-than-impressive metrics.
If you’ve sent this type of email before and didn’t get a 100-percent open rate, you’re not alone. It’s not necessarily your fault that your special email campaign imploded. A number of factors could be attributed to the slump.
1. What stage of the lifecycle are they in?
Where people are in the customer lifecycle dictates how interested they are in your email. Perhaps many of your subscribers have just fallen off into the inactive stage and need to be re-engaged. A purely promotional email, no matter how amazing it is, won’t catch their attention.
2. What time of day did you send it?
Another reason may be the time of day your email was sent. It could be that you made sure the moving parts of your campaign were running smoothly, but you didn’t test to see when your audience is most receptive to promotional campaigns.
3. Are they getting too many other emails?
You must also consider the sheer number of other emails your subscribers are receiving. According to ReturnPath, the average email subscriber receives 416 commercial emails a month. This number is only going to grow with the fast-approaching holiday season.
Remail to the Rescue!
One strategy to help overcome the noise of the inbox is a remail. A remail is when you re-send your promotional email to users who didn’t open or click.
Note, though, it’s best to use this tactic sparingly.
Let’s say you have a unique or time-sensitive promotion that didn’t receive a lot of engagement from subscribers. This is a good situation to use the remail strategy. But if one of your weekly newsletters doesn’t do as well as the week before, it’s not a good idea to re-send that.
When you do remail, send it on a different day and at a different time to avoid overmailing your subscribers. Additionally, update your subject line and preheader to increase the likelihood subscribers will engage – maybe they didn’t connect with your previous copy.
Testing is key and monitoring unsubscribes and complaints is crucial.
Joy Ugi
Digital Marketing Coordinator, WhatCounts
Twitter: @ugigirl
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