Chart of the Day: Understanding subscriber loyalty - Part 1 of 2
This is the first of a two-part blog, covering subscriber loyalty and unsubscribing.
What will be covered:
Unsubscribe Rate
Unsubscribe-to-open Rate
Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. Well in email marketing, there is only one: unsubscription.
Customers can move jobs, not feel engaged by the messaging or can just change their minds. In fact, I cannot think of one company that I have been subscribed to and stayed subscribed to. Having a unsubscribe/update preferences link is a legal requirement for all marketing emails. It's important to give your customers a simple and easy way to change their preferences/choices.
In today's chart, I look at unsubscribes by sector. The average unsubscribe rate is 0.49%. But the sector with the highest unsubscribe rate is B2B (non-retail) is displaying at 1.08%. While the best performing is Public Relations…
How often should businesses mail their subscribers? Research reveals the average number of monthly contacts.
These are classic 'tough questions' for email marketers which always raise a lot of debate. A question on our LinkedIn group about email reminder frequency for events had 20 comments.
Choosing the best frequency for sending email emails is challenging since we are looking to maximise response, but avoid 'over-mailing' which can lead to unacceptable levels of unsubscribes and an increase in inactives since our audience may feel they are being spammed. Even if they don't unsubscribe they will become "emotionally unsubscribed". Worse still, with overmailing, the business may have email delivery problems and messages aren't getting through to the inbox at all.
On the other hand, with 'under-mailing', opportunities to explain the proposition and promotions or to get the right product in front of the right subscriber and sales may be lost.
The DMA's National Email Client Report now known as the 'Marketer Email…
75% of your email list is inactive and therefore useless. You need to win them back.
Reactivation is aimed at attempting to reintroduce lapsed subscribers to your content and re-engaging their interest in your brand, most commonly by creating a specific strategy and utilising specific content that aims to bring people back into your pool of active customers.
There are many elements and variables involved in the process of creating an email marketing reactivation strategy, but every brand that uses email marketing as part of their digital marketing strategy should look to build in an email reactivation strategy, as its potential to create impact for brands in any sector, should not be underestimated.
Why focus on reactivation and re-engagement?
75% of your email subscriber list may be inactive. This is a worrying statistic, as it means that three quarters of your subscriber base may not currently be engaging with your marketing content. Many of…
Which day(s) and times work best for maximum impact for B2B and B2C?
"Which day of the week is best for sending email?" has been a common question since marketers started email marketing. As with a lot of questions about good practice, the right answer is : "it depends", but it's fun to speculate. Ideally you want your email to arrive in the inbox of as many people as possible when they're sitting at their desk or picking up emails on go via smartphone. Greater impact will also be helped when there is less competition in the inbox from other email marketers. So Saturday and Sunday can be best for this.
[si_guide_block id="5508" title="Download Paid Member Resource – Email Marketing Strategy Guide" description="This comprehensive guide shows you how to take your email marketing strategy to the next level, covering a lot more than tips to improve your creative and copy, although we do…
Batch and blast aren't pretty, and there are better email tactics. But nothing gets you more bang for your buck.
I don’t intend this to be a sales piece but I feel you need to know a little about myself and my company before you read this.
I work in marketing for an email service provider and my company preaches the value in sending sophisticated emails.
Now I’ve told you that, I have something to get off my chest. Something that would appear to contradict the opinions of my industry peers and perhaps, on occasion, that of my own company.
Here we go: although I think sophisticated emails are great, I think a ‘batch and blast’ style of emailing is better.
Yes, batching and blasting emails (the act of mass marketing through email) is great. I highly recommend it. Do it for all it’s worth. Seriously.
You will never, ever find a greater ROI rate…
Chart of the Day: What is the most popular type of email marketing communication?
In email marketing, there are so many different ways to communicate with your client. But which are the most popular? And if they are popular, does that mean they are correct?
In today's chart, it is unsurprising that most use newsletters at 74%. This is a simple way of keeping clients up to date with news or content and has been an email marketing standard for many years. However, some simple additions to your communications strategy could make dramatic differences. For instance, having a multi-step automation for new subscribers/customers, reactivation emails and automated triggers through a client's lifecycle require a bit maintenance, but only 26%, 10% and 18% of the users surveyed actually use these in their strategy.
It's always good to know what others are doing in…
Chart of the Day: New Smart Insights research comparing how businesses manage their email marketing activities
Email marketing remains one of today’s core customer communications channels with analytics showing that, for most types of business, alongside search marketing, it is one of the main drivers of customer acquisition - for generating new online sales and leads. While the beauty of email marketing is that you can quickly start by sending promotional emails and newsletters, businesses will only get the full potential delivered by their email service providers they choose if they deploy marketing automation.
In a major, global research project with our partners GetResponse, Content Marketing Institute and Holistic Email Marketing, we were interested to see how many businesses are taking full advantage of email marketing capabilities. The free research report Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Excellence 2017 was published this week and included the views of over 2,500 marketers - thank…
Chart of the Day: What challenges you when it comes to email marketing? Part 4 of 4.
For email marketers, there will always be aspects of email marketing that are a challenge. This is the fourth of my four part series pertaining to issues faced in email marketing.
Previous problems discussed during the course of the series:
Targeting & Segmenting
Subscriber list growth
Tracking results
Main email marketing goal.
The final point we want to discuss is "what is your main email marketing goal"? We need a end result to strive towards and this is best to decide in the very beginning of the campaigns. In the chart it shows brand-building (47%) and lead generation (42%) are very close. While lead nurturing (11%) is far down the priority list. When you are deciding on what to use as your goal, remember that it is specific to your company.
…
How many of these 5 practical and easy-to-use engagement tools are you already using?
One of the main questions I get asked is about how to more effectively engage in email marketing. The inbox is a very competitive place so you need to stand out, be interesting and be relevant but, although we all know this in theory, the execution often seems to get lost somewhere along the way.
In fact, I still see the majority of campaigns get sent out with very little, or no tailoring of content and I can still sign up to a retail outlet, for example, and give my age, gender and preferences and not see any evidence of this information being used in the campaigns received. This happens in companies big and small and across all industries so, I ask myself, is this because people just don’t know the engagement tools available to them? Do they…
Avoid these mistakes to prevent costly email marketing errors
If you’ve marked 2017 as your year to grow your e-mail list, congratulations! Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help enhance your business, bring in new leads, and keep your company name on the tip of customers’ tongues. However, the reality is that it’s quite easy to make mistakes while you attempt to build a list. Those mistakes can result in lost time, customers, and money.
Blunder #1: You Don’t Give a Good Reason to Sign up
In 2017, an email address is nearly as personal as a phone number. Think about the times that you go to a store at the mall and they ask for your email address for their records. You probably cringe and envision all the spam email that will soon flood your box—and you better believe that your customers do the same thing.
One of the first steps…
