Marketo Data Tells Us: What’s the Truth Behind the Two Biggest Email Volume Myths?

I hear this question from email marketers all the time: Does the size of my email send affect the performance?

To answer this question, we’re going to play MythBusters!

Email Myth #1

“The larger your email sends, the higher your unsubscribe rate”.

Hypothesis:
This one seems reasonable. I feel like if you’re doing huge email size sends, your messaging is probably going to seem “spammy”, and so a larger percentage of recipients will unsubscribe due to irrelevance.

Data and Analysis:

Here, you’ll see email send size against unsubscribe rate. Each dot represents an email send from a customer. I’ve cut off the data at 1M emails because everything above that becomes a special case.

There is no significant correlation here. In fact, you can see there’s actually a slightly negative correlation. Larger email sends actually have lower unsubscribe rates. This could be a result of companies with larger databases having more well-known brand names so they are more careful with their email campaigns. But, I think the opposite is true in that there are many “experimental” small email sends that are sent to “unknown” contacts.

Results:

Myth busted! Email send size does not affect unsubscribe rate.

Wow, this one wasn’t that intuitive. I assumed large email sends mimicked spam email which would warrant higher unsubscribes. But the data shows that email volume size doesn’t affect unsubscribe rate. However, it’s important to note that several other factors such as frequency, content, and relevance do. Take a moment and think about your every-day email behavior: if could be seen as annoying or irrelevant, you’re probably going to take the extra effort to unsubscribe.

Email Myth #2

“The larger your email sends, the lower your click-to-open rate”.

Hypothesis:

Just like the first myth, this one looks plausible. Huge email sends dilute the messaging so I would imagine email performance would suffer. It’s hard to imagine one email would be relevant to millions of people, at least not relevant enough for them to click through.

Data and Analysis:

Here, you’ll see email send size against click-to-open rate. Each dot represents an email send from a customer. I’ve cut off the data at 1M emails because everything above that becomes a special case.

There’s a very strong correlation here. If I were to sketch out the natural curves, it would look like a sideways funnel with a huge drop-off at around 20,000 to 50,000. Email sizes above that rarely reach higher than 20% click-t0-open. This makes a lot of sense if you think of content relevance. More segmented email sends, with more targeted messaging, get more clicks.

And for all you inquisitive minds out there, if you’re wondering about just click rate, yes, the exact same phenomenon as click-to-open rate occurs.

Results:

Myth confirmed! Email send size is directly tied to performance.

I love science! We proved an industry-old myth with data! But if you really think about this one, it makes a lot of sense. Open rate is tied to your subject line and sender info. Click rate is tied to your content and offering, which equals relevance. The larger your email sizes, the harder it is to stay relevant and have a compelling call-to-action that appeals to that audience. Especially after the email send size exceeds 20,000—where the average click-to-open band narrows to 3-18%. It’s very rare to escape that band.

What We’ve Learned

The main takeaway here is to find a good balance between the granularity of your segments and the relevance of your content or offering. If you have the resources, segment your email campaigns based on the audience persona (industry, demographic, geography, etc.) and behavior (e.g. looked at your product webpages). As a general “guideline,” the email size sweet spot is around 5,000.

However, as long as your message is relevant and resonates with the recipients, you’ll get good email performance. It’s just very difficult to stay relevant beyond a certain audience size.

Notice something in the data that stood out to you? Leave your comments below.

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8 Essentials For An Effective Win-Back Email Campaign

For any marketer, we feel a sense of excitement when we are able to convert a visitor to a customer.
However, only the first half of the battle has been won. The other half is trying to retain those customers by probing them with email newsletters and offers over the span of a few months to a year.
This part is more difficult and usually results in them going inactive and not engaging with your brand as a whole.

The are many reasons why people would go inactive:

• They only bought your product as a gift (it was a one-time purchase)
• They had a bad experience
• You changed your product and they’re just not into the new thing
• Your emails may be getting sent to their junk mail inbox
• Circumstances have changed
• They took a great promotional deal you had on offer, but was never really into your brand

Retaining customers is an important yet challenging task. Don’t worry, many email marketers face this problem too.

Customers will naturally decrease by about 22.5% every year.

So why do we bother trying to retain customers when we can just find new customers?

1. First, it’s a lot easier to sell to existing customers than new ones – 50% easier to be exact. This is because your brand has already done the hard work of establishing a level of trust, so convincing them requires little work.
2. Second, it’s a lot cheaper. It costs between 4-10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.

This is why win-back email campaigns are so important. But how effective are they?

Effectiveness of win-back emails

ReturnPath conducted a study where they analyzed 33 different win-back email campaigns by different ecommerce stores to see how effective they were at turning a non-active customer into an active customer.
Results showed:

• 92% of the emails made it to the customer’s inbox – this means inactive users were receiving win-back emails
• Open rate was only 12% – A respectable number as customers have not interacted with the brand in a long time

However, results showed that slow and steady wins the race:

• 45% of recipients who received a win-back campaign read a subsequent message after the first email
• 75% of re-engaged subscribers had read a subsequent message within 89 days (after the first email), with the other 25% still opening emails 300 days after receiving the first win-back email

image: http://marketingland.com/email-win-back-programs-work-81574

Overall, three quarters of inactive customers could still re-engage with your brand within 90 days

8 Tips to creating an effective win-back email campaign

1. Personalize your emails

Personalization is a must in email marketing and here’s why

• Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10% (Campaign Monitor)
• 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement (eConsultancy).

Customers will appreciate you using their name instead of “hey you”. It creates more of a personal connection than a retailer-customer interaction.
Here are some ways on how we can personalize our win-back emails:

• Say their name
• Show previous purchase history
• Personalized product recommendations (upsell and cross-sell) based on past purchases

Netflix does it right with their personalization: using the first name, effective copy (note how they use pronouns, e.g. “you” and “your”) and a list of devices they can view shows on. The email also includes a strong call-to-action personalized to the customer, “I’d like to come back”.

Source: allthatiknow

2. Provide a solution

There are many reasons why your customer hasn’t purchased from you in a long time.

Understanding your customer is super important in the world of ecommerce. If we do not understand why they are going lapse, we will just repeat the same mistake over and over again, hoping to get a different result every time.

So Instead of trying to guess the answer, a better way would be to ask them directly.

Inbound adopts for a personalized message request. Maybe Inbound is sending too many emails or irrelevant ones. They provide an opportunity to let the customers decide what kind of emails they want to receive so it’s more personal and targeted. They also send a feedback request at the end to learn what they could do better.

Source: Audienceops

Dollar Shave Club anticipates that customers may not want their razors every month. That’s why they ask their customer if receiving a razor every second month would be better and shows them how this could be done.

Source: Flexmail

3. Segmentation

It’s a fact that your customers will appreciate your emails if it’s related to them.
We can segment our email list to subcategories. This could include:

• How long since their last purchase
• Low, medium and high-value customers – average order value
• Number of orders per year
• Customers that had negative experiences

By segmenting your email list, you can deliver more relevant win-back email messages to each group.

4. Highlight the benefits

Win your customer’s back by reminding them of the value and benefits of your product
Here’s a win-back email by Dropbox to users that have not added or uploaded any files to their account. They remind users to start reusing their service by highlighting the features of their product.

Source: Betaout

Warby Parker sends out an email whenever someone places an item in their shopping cart but abandons it. They know the customer has enough interest to add the product to their shopping cart, so a simple email may be enough to make them purchase the product. They use the copy, “want a better look?” to let customers know the benefits of their glasses – looking great!

Source: essenceofemail

5. Send more than one email

There’s no magic email that will engage every inactive customer. That’s why you should develop a win-back email campaign comprising of several emails. Send different win-back emails over a period of time to try engage your inactive customer. Hitting them from different angles is better than relying on sole email – also great for split testing and gathering data!

Here’s Adidas’ third email in their 3-part win-back email series. They opt for the urgency tactic, reminding them that they have a limited time before the discount offer expires.

Source: Omertia

6. Give them an offer

Why not try to engage your customers by giving them something – maybe a discount or a gift.
Study shows that win-back emails that contained a “$ off” discount performed better than emails with “% off” discount.

A great way use this tactic is to include the discount in the subject line.

Tip: Don’t send your discounted emails in the first email of your win-back email campaign series (e.g. send on the second or third email). Sometimes customers are willing to purchase from emails with no discount so maximize your revenue by saving these for a later series.

If a customer doesn’t respond to your offers, you can maybe send them an even better offer than before. However, this may be risky as customers may catch on and wait intentionally for the better offer – so use it wisely!

Here’s Crocs’ win-back email containing a $10 off discount.

Source: wisepops

Here’s another discount offer – 100% free discount that is. Pinkberry, adds a free yogurt to customer’s account when they have not bought for a while. By offering a bonus or a free gift, you can encourage a person to come back to your store and start buying from you again.

Source: Business2Community

7. Know when to give up

It’s better to have a small but reliable mailing list than a large inactive list that delivers inconsistent results. That’s why part of the aim of our win-back emails are to opt out people that won’t buy from you.

If you tried everything, but your customer won’t budge, sometimes you just have to let them go. You don’t want to keep sending them emails over and over again as it may appear spam-like and may give your brand a bad reputation.

Here’s Fab’s unsubscribe email where they opt the customer out of their mailing list, but leaves them an option in case they still want to stay on. They know the receiver will never buy so there’s no point having them on their mailing list.

Source: Hubspot

Here’s the clothing company, Free People, acknowledging that their customer has not engaged with their emails in a long time and ask if they still want to receive them or not. This may encourage them to engage again, but also make the customer unsubscribe. Either way is fine as there’s no point having a customer that’s never going to buy. 

 

Source: Hubspot

8. A/B Test

Don’t assume one headline copy is going to be better than another. Let data guide your campaign instead of using your own opinion.

The best marketers are the ones that continuously test and optimize their campaigns based on data. Tests could include but not limited to:

• Design
• Copy
• Frequency
• Timing
• Offers

The 33 ecommerce stores that participated in ReturnPath’s study split tested different subject lines like, “we miss you” and “a note from the CEO”. These had read rates of 13%.

What to do next?

Trying to get your customers to re-engage with your brand is never easy as they stopped engaging for some reason. However, with these tactics, you will increase the odds of them re-engaging and buying from you again.

What success have you had with your win-back email campaigns? We’d love to hear in the comments below or if you have any other extra tips, pop it down below too!


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The Surprisingly Best Times to Send Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Long-standing advice amongst email marketers when asked, “When is the best time to send email?” has always been, “Tuesday through Thursday morning, between 8 and 10am.” Sure, it’s common knowledge throughout the industry that people tend to open their email in the mornings, but “the times, they are a-changin’,” as Bob Dylan would say. Let’s visit some current email marketing trends that are creating shifts in open rates, and how they’ll impact your next email send.

AdWeek Infographic based on Experian study

A 2012 Experian email marketing benchmark study across all industries found that recipients are surprisingly active late at night. Unique open rates averaged 21.7% from 8pm to 11:59pm and 17.6% for 12am to 4am. Moreover, this late night group was more likely to click-through, with open rates of 4.2% and 3.2%, respectively. These night owls also had the highest click through rates for all times of day. Revenue per email was also the highest in the 8pm to 11:59pm group.

Additionally, in 2015, Experian’s quarterly email marketing benchmark release showed that 54% of emails are now opened on a mobile device, and a 2014 ExactTarget mobile behavior report found mobile activity peaks between 9pm to 12am. With consumers becoming more and more active on their mobile devices, especially outside of standard nine to five working hours spent at an office desktop, testing sends outside the traditional morning hours is essential.

As for which day of the week performed best, emails sent on Mondays had the highest ROI, but emails sent on Friday had a higher click through rate. Ironically, Saturday and Sunday had the lowest volume rates, but the highest open and click through rates in the study. So even though the weekend was not the most popular time to send emails, those who opened were much more likely to engage with it and click through or purchase.

Based on these findings, you might want to experiment with sending your emails at unconventional times – such as 11pm or 6pm and on the weekend– to see if it yields better results.

Weekend Warriors

Fewer promotional emails are sent on the weekends. This has created an opportunity for some businesses to scoop up some email love when there is less competition.

Experian’s email marketing study found that recipients responded more to promotional emails they received on the weekends – when the send volume was the lowest. The unique open rate for Saturday and Sunday was 17.8% for both days, the highest percentages of the week.

Email data from Harland Clarke also supported this finding in their recent study. Although 26.9% of emails were sent on Wednesdays, recipients viewed only 15.6% of those emails, whereas Saturday (a day when only 5.5% of emails were sent), they viewed 32.5%.

Before you change all your email launches to Saturday and Sunday, we recommend you test it first. (Remember that open rates on these days are still lower.) Try splitting your list in half and send the same email to group A on Sunday then group B on Monday or Tuesday. Repeat this a few times to see where you get better results.

Mobile Matters

The same study by Experian we touched upon earlier found that not only are 54% of all emails viewed on a mobile device, but this percentage is on the rise, growing two percent between June and September 2015. Because mobile click through rates are lower, you want to be sure your call to action is clear and direct, and that your links are easy to spot and click (no matter what time of day you’re sending).

Harland Clarke’s study also found that the email open rates depended on the device the recipient is using. They found that tablet users, for example, were more like to open emails outside of business hours (from 5pm to 8am), while desktop users were more likely to open during business hours. Tablet users were the most active from 8 to 9pm, while desktop users and smartphone users were most active between 3 and 4pm.

Finally, when considering the importance of mobile in your email sends, remember that if your customers can’t read your emails, they’re not likely to continue to interact with them, affecting your future campaigns. Litmus found that by testing a non-responsive versus responsive email design, they were able to increase click-throughs by 130%.

So consider your audience in your email marketing. Try sending a split test to half of your list in the morning during work hours and the other half at 7 or 8pm and note any differences. Be sure your emails (and landing pages) are mobile-friendly.

Timing Isn’t Everything

If you’re noticing a dip in your open rates, maybe other factors are contributing to the decline. Here are some additional email marketing tips to help with your open and click through rates:

1.    Test your email to make sure it’s rendering properly in multiple browsers and email service providers (Email on Acid offers an easy way to do this if you want to save some time.)

2.    Review your email list. How old is it? Are there emails that should be removed? How can you grow your email list effectively? Here are some tips for good organic email list growth: 10 Steps to Build Your Email List the Right Way

3.    Are you effectively rocking your subject line? The subject line is your one brief opportunity to get someone to open your email. Be sure you know the best practices when creating this magic line. Check out these helpful tips on creating your subject line.

4.    Frequency. Are you sending too often? Be sure to play it cool and segment your lists so you aren’t bombarding your recipients with unwanted email (or, dare we say spam!)

So when is the best time to send email? As you can see, there is no one right answer. If you’re ready to see some improvements, start by doing some simple email split tests and see which times your recipients respond to best.


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