It’s February, and my request to opt out of my subscription to 2025 remains to be pending, so I even have to proceed like the good marketing soldier I’m. You, too?
After sharing a key budget strategy move in my last column, I’ll switch gears and rant about a listing hygiene practice that doesn’t work and must be stopped.
Rant mode ON.
I recently got this email from a major seasonal retailer:
My first response was not, “Gee, I sure do! I’m gonna click that link!” If you realize me, you won’t be surprised to learn it was, “Why the #$%^* am I getting this email?”
Two years ago, I purchased a high-ticket item from this company, not something I repurchase usually. I won’t name and shame the brand because I see this happening with other brands. Instead, let’s consider the problems with these emails and why they aren’t the solution to keeping your email list fresh and ISP-friendly.
Re-engagement requests have been popping into my inbox currently, making my marketer’s mind melt. The senders assume I haven’t opened their emails for some time, which is probably going mistaken.
When you consider clutter in the inbox — and you must since it’s real and it annoys your subscribers – the very last thing you would like to do is judge the validity of your email based on engagement aspects.
Here are three reasons why this email isn’t the solution you think that it’s.
1. Opens are dead, allow them to rest in peace
Yes, engagement matters in the wider picture. However, for retailers, especially seasonal retailers, engagement is the same as for all-season brands. It’s not consistent from one quarter to one other, or from one campaign to one other, so you might have to measure it in another way.
The open rate just isn’t an intent metric. Haven’t we talked about this enough already? (Answer: Yes, we now have.)
At best, the open rate is a directional metric showing you a trend. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature has made opens much more unsustainable as a metric to gauge intent or interest.
A high open rate doesn’t mean anything anymore. Maybe quite a lot of Apple subscribers opened your email. Maybe quite a lot of them block images, so the open wouldn’t get recorded. More likely the automatic open jacked up your open rate. Basing customer or re-engagement decisions on this flimsy metric is absurd. If you’re doing this, you wish to address it quickly — on this quarter, if possible.
Dig deeper: Email deliverability: What you wish to know
That’s true for any ecommerce brand but especially for a seasonal retailer. You have to rely on many other things to determine engagement, like clicks, website visits, and purchases.
If this brand had checked out my purchase history before putting me right into a re-engagement program, the data would have shown I paid an unlimited amount for a product two years ago. If it had checked out my website visits, it will have detected intent on other products, but not conversion. The consideration and usage cycles for that product are long. So, no, I’m not in the market now, but I is likely to be in a 12 months. For a seasonal retailer, that seems reasonable.
Your re-engagement program needs a great profile of your buyers. That’s not only one flat profile that features everybody, but a profile that appears at personas and several types of consumers. Consumers are complex. Does your segmentation or definition of engagement match that complexity?
2. Your email isn’t that essential
Not every email, that’s, and never to every subscriber.
Many email marketers think their emails are artworks. They expect every customer to open and skim every email (a misconception that MPP aids and abets). But let’s admit that customers don’t need your products after every send. They won’t open every email unless they love your email or your brand. And in the event that they love your email, they leave a trail of follow-on actions you’ll be able to track, like clicks, browsing, and buying.
Assuming that I must take a look at nearly every email you send is conceited and unreasonable, especially for seasonal business. I don’t take into consideration this brand in July or August, and I won’t give it some thought until December 1st. I’m a dude!
Think of your customers and your personas. Not everybody adheres to your impossibly high definition of lively customers or subscribers. That’s why your reporting must go deeper than opens and even clicks. You need to redefine engagement. The open rate as a measure of intent is gone. Expand your horizon about activity, and get serious about finding measures which are more reliable intent signals.
3. I’m not in the mood.
You’re sending customers emails at 5:30 or 6 in the morning. We aren’t in the headspace to click through to an internet site and browse products we haven’t been desirous about. We haven’t had our first coffee of the day yet. We’re heading to the gym. We don’t have our contacts in. Don’t use our lack of motion to put us in a re-engagement program and send us nonsensical emails like these.
When I see these emails, those brands are lucky I don’t go on an unsubscribe spree. Especially now that inboxes like Google and Yahoo! Mail make it really easy to opt out in the inbox or at the top of the email, irrespective of where you’ve hidden the unsub link.
Dig deeper: Are these email subject lines deceptive, clever copywriting or bad data at work?
Instead, take time to construct a relationship along with your customers that leads you to create more priceless emails. Like the folks at Woot!, the deal-of-the-day website (now a part of Amazon) that put Bags o’ Crap on the map years ago. I open Woot!’s emails daily because, well, FOMO. But I don’t open every email from every other sender daily. Not even from American Airlines, and I’ll buy almost anything to get miles.
Inbox clutter will put me in a mood where swiping left on an email to delete is just as easy—or easier—than opening it. Does that mean I don’t like your brand, or that it isn’t the first one I believe of after I’m in the market on your products? No.
In fact, for the brand in query here, I often go to its website searching for things—in season.
Your systems should collect that information and add it to my profile so you realize I visit even when unprompted by email. That’s more essential than whether I opened an email, especially in the event you can’t be certain I did or didn’t.
(*3*)Do you wish to update your re-engagement automation?
Maybe this brand’s problems are brought on by something mistaken with the CRM. Maybe jt’s not passing that customer data along to the right places. It happens, right? Maybe it got ignored if you upgraded a platform.
That’s why you wish to audit your automations usually. They aren’t “set ’em and forget ’em.” Something might need been missed when MPP finally achieved scale. Look for anything that is determined by opens to drive decisions.
Wrapping up
We all need to take into consideration what “engagement” really means. But we also need to take into consideration inbox competition and the data you utilize to construct your emails. One message to everybody doesn’t make your email any more special than the one before or after it in the inbox.
We need to be realistic in our approach. But we also need to be humble enough to accept that we are able to only influence the measurements of how much our customers like us. We can’t control it.
Customers must be in the right mood to open, click, and buy out of your emails. Asking me to re-opt in your emails tells me you don’t know who I’m. That’s not going to persuade me to change my non-intent to intent.
Rant mode OFF. On to March and more madness!
Ryan is hosting a Toast my email session and live Q&A at The MarTech Conference. Free registration here.
The post 3 reasons the “Do You Want to Hear From Us” email must die appeared first on MarTech.
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