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Industry research says that 73 percent of e-mail recipients report an e-mail as junk just based on the from line and another 69 percent delete an e-mail after reading the subject line. Those statistics tell us that it's tough to get consumers to read e-mails, much less accept an upsell offer from one.
According to The Nielsen Norman Group, only 11 percent of e-mail recipients who open an e-mail will scroll through it to read the content they can't automatically see when the message first opens. For marketers trying to not only get consumers to read e-mails, but to buy new products and service from e-mails, this challenge has at least one smart solution worth testing.
If the e-mail recipient is already a customer, transactional messages offer an extremely reliable means of ensuring your communication will be read. In particular, the electronic bill is often overlooked as an upselling vehicle, but studies have shown that the vast majority of consumers open and read transactional e-mails sent from companies they do business with. In other words, the recurring e-bill is a smart vehicle to leverage when trying to offer new products and services to your customers.
Be warned—there is one common pitfall to avoid if you choose this vehicle for your upselling campaigns. To effectively promote upselling opportunities to your customers, you must identify the products and services that each consumer receives, then dynamically promote new product offerings on the real-time confirmation that is sent following a bill payment.
Taking this approach helps you avoid offering products and services the consumer already receives—a mistake made worse by the fact that the offer is made alongside the bill for these services! There are few faster ways to annoy and be dismissed by your customer.
Once you have executed the campaign, keeping in mind who you are sending the e-mail to and what you know about them, how are you going to measure success? Measurement could, of course, stem from the number of upselling offers accepted. But also consider that the open rate and click-through data generated by an e-mail campaign can be equally valuable and can help you course-correct during the campaign to produce better results.
Trying these approaches will help you cut through the e-mail clutter and reach out to your customers in more meaningful, and profitable, ways.
Matt Kearney is product manager of customer care solutions for Englewood, Col.-based multichannel customer interaction solution provider CSG Systems. He can be contacted at matt_kearney@csgsystems.com.
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