Max out on your email marketing – and you may lose your market! PART TWO

Decline in click rate? Customers not opening your emails? Too much mailing out may mean your customers have been bailing out!

A steady decline in your average click rate is a sure sign that your content, and/or mail frequency needs to be urgently analysed. A sudden drop-off suggests something is going very wrong and you need to urgently find out the reason before your business is seriously affected.

In Part ONE, we looked at some of the first actions you can take if one of the reasons is that you may have been overdoing your email marketing campaigns and you need to be more focused on who and how you target your company messages.

But how to really understand what your analytics are saying and be sure that you make the right decisions? Determine what is a normal online marketing campaign for your particular company and product category – based on your average click rates over time. However, a drop-off of 10% or more would suggest there is a problem. You should be specifically concerned about customers who have not opened or clicked after three to six mail attempts.

Be aware of marketing strategies for different audiences! Different types of email communications (newsletter, product offer, industry news), will have different rates. Sending the wrong content to a particular target group or using the wrong mailing list could be the problem.

Look at the performance of specific segments, particularly their most high-value and loyal customers. As click activity slows or stops, those customers should be targeted for specific re-engagement messages and offers.

If you fail to prompt a response after several attempts, you should consider removing inactive customers from your list. Studies have repeatedly shown a direct link between the level of engagement and the inclination to hit the spam button – too many spam complaints could undermine delivery of your email to those who are still actively engaged with your brand!

Actions you should take :

• Segment your list based on name source and level of engagement. Don’t make the mistake of sending the same message at the same frequency to everyone. Differentiate between contacts acquired through purchased email lists and regular customers.

• Customers who no longer show high ‘mail open and click’ activity should not be sent the same messages at the same frequency as others. Find out what’s changed with their requirements.

Remember – always put yourself in your customers’ shoes! Attune to your customer needs and preferences to maintain a positive feedback to your brand identity messages over the long term.