Marketers Improving Their E-Mail Efficiency

More is not always better when marketers engage in e-mail campaigns. For a certain group of consumers, receiving more promotional e-mails means pressing the delete key more often. One study shows that over 70% of marketers keep these consumer names on e-mail lists for up to 2 years even though the messages are never opened.

The study, conducted by Return Path, highlighted the missed opportunities to win back a customer on the part of some of the country’s largest retailers. Many of the retailers in the study continued to bombard non-responsive consumers with e-mail, sometimes up to 8 times a week.

A wiser strategy would be to first identify inactive subscribers. Marketers should then decrease e-mails directed to these subscribers. An additional strategy is to send a ‘win-back’ or promotional message. When all else fails, a marketer can notify the subscriber that e-mails will stop unless it hears otherwise.

Taking these steps can help marketers improve their results. Writing for Internet Retailer, Katie Deatsch points out that non-responsive subscribers “dilute e-mail response patterns, skew metrics and make optimization more difficult.” Marketers may soon be adjusting their e-mail campaigns in order to reduce costs and avoid contributing to the deluge of communications that results in some transmissions ending up in the spam folders.

[Source: Deatsch, Katie. Many retailers keep sending e-mails. InternetRetailer.com. 24 Aug. 2010. Web. 1 Sept. 2010]