One of the simplest tactics to drive increased customer engagement, and revenue, from your email marketing is also the most underutilised. That is, to simply resend your email to the people who didn’t open the email the first time.
While not ground breaking, it can be one of the most successful ways of improving the open and click rates of your emails.
Before you start resending, there are a few things to consider.
Balancing increased engagement with unsubscribes
Given the ‘unopened segment’ has not opened your email the first time, the adverse customer experience is minimal but is something to consider.
Like most good things in life, there is a cost involved. In this case, resending the email could mean an increase in overall bounce rate or people unsubscribing, so you will need to do some ROI calculations to determine if potential unsubscribes is worth it.
Take the opportunity to test
Whilst resending a campaign to an unopened segment does get results, it’s a great opportunity to learn more about your subscriber base and run some tests.
Three experiments worth testing with the non-openers are:
- Change the subject line: Non-openers may have missed your original email for a reason, for instance, it didn’t stand out in their inbox. Change the subject line to give them an extra reason to open.
- Send it at a different time of day to your original send: For example, if the first email was sent at 11am, try resending at 4pm a few days later. You can take this to the next level by tracking each subscriber’s individual open times and build a preferred communication timing window for future activity.
- Test different pauses before resending: Pause for different periods of time before resending to non-openers, either by split testing the resend, or across different campaigns. Review the uplift to determine the ideal pause length before resending to non-openers.
Brands with high send frequency should consider a Preference Centre
People stop opening emails for different reasons, and in your move to more powerful 1:1 marketing you should look to identify why individuals change their behaviour.
A Preference Centre is one way to help establish a healthy communication cadence with your subscribers. If you send multiple emails every week (more than 2-3 week), you should offer subscribers a chance to reduce email frequency based on the content or nature of the emails.
There’s so much potential to increase overall engagement by giving subscribers the power to choose what content you share with them, and how often.
The most underutilised way of increasing the open rates in your email marketing campaigns is to resend to the people who didn’t open the first time. It’s a tactic that is low risk, can increase your engagement, and gives you an opportunity to learn more about your subscriber base.
James Bennett is the Chief Experience Officer of Kalido, a new breed of customer experience consulting and delivery firm which uses data to drive growth and customer value through marketing automation, web and mobile experiences, and content creation. Kalido continues to grow and attract high profile clients and is the leading Salesforce Marketing Cloud Partner in the Asia Pacific region. Kalido is part of the ASX listed IVE Group, Australia’s most diversified marketing communications business with annual revenues in excess of $600 million and over 1,500 employees.
