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As marketers develop creative ways to maximize ROI using existing customer lists to help offset increased postage and paper costs, e-mail appending offers a solution. Focusing on the quality, not the quantity, of your e-mail append can help make the most of this approach by leading to better response rates. Dave Fallon, Internet marketing strategist at North Andover, Mass.-based L-com Connectivity Products, recently partnered with Newton, Mass.-based e-mail hygiene provider FreshAddress and achieved a 22 percent lift in response to his company’s e-mail programs. Here, Fallon discusses who should consider e-mail appending, best practices for choosing an e-mail appending provider and how to follow e-mail appending etiquette.
Target Marketing: In light of rising mailing costs, how does e-mail appending fit into the mix of marketing methods to boost effectiveness?
Dave Fallon: I’d say e-mail appending is part of an overall strategy to maximize marketing communication. Let’s face it: e-mail is a lot cheaper than postal marketing communication. It probably always will be. However, e-mail addresses are more difficult to collect. An e-mail append is the ideal way to use the physical addresses you’ve already collected to find e-mail addresses and then engage customers in a low-cost, quick turnaround e-mail program that complements what you’re already doing in print.
TM: How have you effectively used e-mail appending to increase revenue and re-engage your customers?
DF: The customers we appended were “our customers.” In other words, we didn’t rent them or borrow them from someone else. It made sense that we should be able to contact them in the most convenient way for both parties. In many cases, the customers did not give us their e-mail, not because of privacy concerns, but because we either forgot to ask or they forgot to give it to us. So, we did an e-mail append to re-engage those customers who we were not hitting with our regular e-mail program. FreshAddress sent each of the newly recovered e-mail addresses a brief e-mail asking them to opt in before we sent them anything. We have a very regular e-mail program, having sent weekly e-mails last year, so we knew that the recovered e-mails would be getting regular communication from us once they opted in. We also included value-added e-mails with free content that interested our customers.
TM: What challenges have you faced using e-mail appending, and how have you worked around them?
Target Marketing: In light of rising mailing costs, how does e-mail appending fit into the mix of marketing methods to boost effectiveness?
Dave Fallon: I’d say e-mail appending is part of an overall strategy to maximize marketing communication. Let’s face it: e-mail is a lot cheaper than postal marketing communication. It probably always will be. However, e-mail addresses are more difficult to collect. An e-mail append is the ideal way to use the physical addresses you’ve already collected to find e-mail addresses and then engage customers in a low-cost, quick turnaround e-mail program that complements what you’re already doing in print.
TM: How have you effectively used e-mail appending to increase revenue and re-engage your customers?
DF: The customers we appended were “our customers.” In other words, we didn’t rent them or borrow them from someone else. It made sense that we should be able to contact them in the most convenient way for both parties. In many cases, the customers did not give us their e-mail, not because of privacy concerns, but because we either forgot to ask or they forgot to give it to us. So, we did an e-mail append to re-engage those customers who we were not hitting with our regular e-mail program. FreshAddress sent each of the newly recovered e-mail addresses a brief e-mail asking them to opt in before we sent them anything. We have a very regular e-mail program, having sent weekly e-mails last year, so we knew that the recovered e-mails would be getting regular communication from us once they opted in. We also included value-added e-mails with free content that interested our customers.
TM: What challenges have you faced using e-mail appending, and how have you worked around them?
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