CHANGE YOUR STRATEGY: EMAILING YOUR SUBSCRIBERS

Robert Proctor, CEO and President of Multisoft

A TRUISM OF DIRECT

MARKETING:Sending too many emails to subscribers will run you the risk of becoming a nuisance and ultimately loosing their

business.

…BUT THAT MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY TRUE!

A STUDY BY RETURN PATH FOUND

From a sample of over 600,000 email accounts, Return Path found that the people who complain the most also read the most emails and purchase

products most frequently

These “primary accounts” have expressed that they are okay with receiving five emails a

week from a single marketer

—Tom Sather, senior director of research at Return Path

“At a lot of companies, there would be a fight over sending people five emails a week, but when we factored in the amount of emails people were receiving, you can get up to five until you see a

marked increase in complaints.”

HERE ARE THE FACTS:• Primary accounts only compromised 24% of email recipients

• But they account for 83% of opens/reads

• And registered 50% of complaints

• Secondary accounts made up 65% of users

• But they make up only 16% of opens/reads

• And registered 49% of complaints which is far less on a per capita basis than the smaller field of primary subscribers

YET WHEN IT CAME DOWN TO

THE QUESTION OF SENDING MORE

EMAILS…The two groups—primary and secondary accounts—

behaved similarly.

THE MORE THEY GOTTHE MORE THEY OPENED

Return Path fed the data from the study into its ROI calculator, discovering that:

• Primary subscribers who received three emails a week instead of two would open 43% more emails in aggregate, and return a similar lift in revenue.

• There was a 33% increase for secondary accounts who received an average of 1.4 emails a week instead of 1.05.

ATTENTION: EMAIL

MARKETERSBy all means, send more

emails, but take more care in determining how many emails

will be sent to secondary accounts.

–Tom Sather, senior director of research at Return Path

“With the secondary group, you have to measure the value of the types of emails you're sending them. You may want to look at their activity beyond mere click-through. What are they looking at on your website

when they get there?”

A LITTLE EXTRA ADVICE

• Deviate from the typical limited time deals and throw out cart emails

• Send your subscribers more content-rich messages — remember, if they are already fans of your product, your emails don’t always need to be promotional

• “The wisdom of relevancy is key”

TO LEARN MORE, VISIThttp://proctorrobert.com