E-commerce Link: Profitable E-mail
Fine-tune your targeting to move your program to the next level
April 2007 By Regina Brady
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Do you want to move the needle up a tick on your e-mail response rates? It takes time and effort, but it’s more than possible. Good e-mail marketing focuses on sending the right message to the right group of customers at the right time. This is standard direct marketing, so it stands to reason that the more you can customize and personalize your e-mail program to your recipients, the more effective your program will be. In fact, JupiterResearch reports that marketers may see response rates increase by as much as nine times when personalization and segmentation are appropriately used.
With this statistic in mind, here are some practical ideas and real-world examples that illustrate how to move your e-mail programs to the next level.
Consider Geographic Targeting
Weather, climate and regional location may be important to your constituent base or to your product and service mix. For example, if you market apparel during the winter, you’d want your recipients in warm weather states to learn about your offerings of lightweight clothes, while in northern states you would want to promote products that keep people warm.
The Scotts Company, a provider of plant, lawn, gardening and pest prevention products, has a great e-mail program that is designed around the season of the year and the region of the recipient. When individuals sign up with Scotts’ e-mail program, they are asked a series of questions to determine where they live and their particular plant and garden interests. This information, in turn, is used to create content and offers that resonate with each recipient. For example, a city dweller, who may not have a lawn, gets advice and tips on the care and feeding of houseplants and terrace shrubs, whereas a homeowner in the northeast receives information pertinent to maintaining a lawn or garden in his or her particular region. To deliver this level of customization, Scotts has developed an e-mail template that allows appropriate, personal content to be easily incorporated into a mass mailing.
Another example of a marketer using geography to customize its subscribers’ e-mail is Design Within Reach. This purveyor of modern furniture occasionally embeds information about in-store events at local locations in its e-mails. It also sends solo e-mails promoting its stores based upon the recipient’s geographic proximity to its local stores.
Take a Look at Recency
New subscribers to your e-mail program are much more likely to open and interact with your e-mails than long-term subscribers. A recent survey conducted by e-mail marketing company Informz finds there is a marked drop-off in open and clickthrough rates during the first 90 days of a recipient’s tenure. Open rates plummeted from 58 percent to 37 percent, and clickthroughs dropped from 30 percent to 19 percent. After this crucial introductory period, these rates stabilized.
With this statistic in mind, here are some practical ideas and real-world examples that illustrate how to move your e-mail programs to the next level.
Consider Geographic Targeting
Weather, climate and regional location may be important to your constituent base or to your product and service mix. For example, if you market apparel during the winter, you’d want your recipients in warm weather states to learn about your offerings of lightweight clothes, while in northern states you would want to promote products that keep people warm.
The Scotts Company, a provider of plant, lawn, gardening and pest prevention products, has a great e-mail program that is designed around the season of the year and the region of the recipient. When individuals sign up with Scotts’ e-mail program, they are asked a series of questions to determine where they live and their particular plant and garden interests. This information, in turn, is used to create content and offers that resonate with each recipient. For example, a city dweller, who may not have a lawn, gets advice and tips on the care and feeding of houseplants and terrace shrubs, whereas a homeowner in the northeast receives information pertinent to maintaining a lawn or garden in his or her particular region. To deliver this level of customization, Scotts has developed an e-mail template that allows appropriate, personal content to be easily incorporated into a mass mailing.
Another example of a marketer using geography to customize its subscribers’ e-mail is Design Within Reach. This purveyor of modern furniture occasionally embeds information about in-store events at local locations in its e-mails. It also sends solo e-mails promoting its stores based upon the recipient’s geographic proximity to its local stores.
Take a Look at Recency
New subscribers to your e-mail program are much more likely to open and interact with your e-mails than long-term subscribers. A recent survey conducted by e-mail marketing company Informz finds there is a marked drop-off in open and clickthrough rates during the first 90 days of a recipient’s tenure. Open rates plummeted from 58 percent to 37 percent, and clickthroughs dropped from 30 percent to 19 percent. After this crucial introductory period, these rates stabilized.
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