Recency Marketing Helps Companies Stay on Customers' Radars

You have a responsive e-mail list, send out welcome messages to new customers and get solid results on your targeted campaigns. Your e-marketing strategy is working-as far as it goes. But it could go farther.

What are you missing?

Successful e-mail strategies combine two initiatives: recency and frequency. You probably already think about frequency quite a lot; you want to send e-mails as frequently as makes sense for your business, but not so frequently as to annoy your customers (which you determine by monitoring response rates-opens, clicks, sign-ups, purchases, unsubscribes and complaint rates).

Recency is another way of looking at communicating with your customers. It refers to communicating with customers as quickly as possible in response to an action taken by that customer. The impetus doesn't come from you; it comes from the customer, and responding to that customer's action can make all the difference in driving revenue and loyalty.

Recency is most powerful (and most profitable) when connected to a free-will action by the customer:

• When a new customer comes on board: Your welcome e-mail and offer need to immediately follow the sign-up to drive optimum revenue.
• When customers visit your Web site: Reengagement technology enables you to send e-mails to customers who leave the site without making a purchase (even before starting a shopping cart). These e-mails drive up to 10 times the revenue of your standard e-mail campaigns. In addition, they generate open rates in excess of 50 percent.  
• When customers contact your sales or service departments: This is a great opportunity to send thank-you e-mails and reaffirm immediately how much you appreciate their business-always remembering to include an offer. Again, time is of the essence.

 Additional recency opportunities exist that, while less powerful, also provide a significant revenue boost over standard e-mail:

• When customers open e-mails but then take no further action: A quick follow-up offer expanding upon the offer in the original e-mail drives strong sales.
• When customers receive offline media (for example, catalogs or other direct-mail pieces): Coordinate your e-mail to arrive just after these offline initiatives to keep your brand in the customer's mind.

 A well-defined and executed recency strategy is a must-have part of any e-mail strategy-as important as your testing strategy, segmentation strategy, landing-page strategy and creative strategy.

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