The October 2002 Consumer Email Study by DoubleClick revealed some customer preferences that can help you improve your opt-in email marketing results.
First, getting your prospect/customer to open the email can be no small task. No matter what you say in your email, if they never open it, it’s a lost cause.
In the study, 60% of the respondents said that the most important factor in opening their email was who the email was from, while 35% said the subject line was most important. So treat your opt-in base like gold and you have addressed 60%.
Remember, every message that you send to your list will be evaluated by your customers and THEY will make the decision if your email will be worthy of a look in the future. If you have blown their trust in the past they may never open what you send them or may permanently route you to the trash folder.
Still the subject line is most important to a significant portion of email users. Some interesting gender based results came out of the study.
Compelling Information/News
69% Male 46% Female
Discount offer
50% Male 64% Female
New Product Announcement
37% Male 39% Female
Free Shipping
28% Male 43% Female
If you are selling primarily to one gender you can make a significant difference in open rates by using a subject line theme which will get a larger response from that group such as discounts for female and compelling news for males. Perhaps you combine a discount with compelling news in the subject line. When you think about it, getting a 64-69% open rate is pretty significant considering the busy world in which we live.
Once someone has opened your email, the most important motivational factor for an immediate online purchase (cited by 70%) is the discount, followed by merchant recognition (60%). It is also interesting to note that 78% of the permission-based email subscribers have purchased through an e-mail link. As you can see these are some significant numbers!
What can do to improve our results?
Long-term, Continually Build Trust.
- 1) Strive to provide information and offers that are useful
to your subscribers, So that they WANT to open messages
from you.
2) Do not abuse your list, too many messages sent to your e-
mail base no matter how useful will overload those
subscribers.
3) Try to step into the shoes of you audience and think how
they will react to your message.
Short-term, review and analyze your e-mail communications tactics.
- 1) Review and test the subject line of your emails (offers,
newsletters, acknowledgements, etc.) to make sure that it
is appropriate, compelling and targeted for your
audience.
2) Look for appropriate cross-sell, up-sell opportunities
within e-mail communications that would be appropriate.
Suggest a complementary product with a discount in
your order acknowledgement e-mail. When done with tack,
can be very compelling and gives your customer a
special deal.
3) Provide a free “something” as a thank you. It should be
complementary to your customer base so that they find
it of value. Periodic useful freebies can do wonders for
your open rate.
There where a number of other interesting facts in the survey. You can get the whole survey at: http://www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge/documents/research/d c_consumer_email_0210.pdf
Start today mining gold and building the trust of your best and most significant source of sales, your permission based email communications.
Jeffrey Jordan, President of Net Marketing Results. He has 20 years experience enhancing profits for Fortune 500 companies to small businesses providing expertise in marketing, systems integration, manufacturing, software, e-commerce and online business.
jdj@netmarketingresults.com
http://www.netmarketingresults.com/
