The release of the Q1 2006 National Email Marketing Benchmark from the Direct Marketing Association (UK) shows continued investment, vibrancy and returns for email marketing as a channel. The report shows, yet again that the volume of email sent continues to rise, whilst click through rates are holding their own.

With so much of email marketing being around the process of getting campaign after campaign out the door, off the desk of the marketer or out into the recipients inbox, it is those email marketers who take a step back and look at their results against their strategic goals who will continue to maximise their success going forward. Here’s why: Research in Q1-Q3 2005 National Email Marketing Benchmark report showed that every ESP surveyed client base uses email to do two things - regular newsletters and limited time offers. Arguably these are two of the easiest types of communications to administer to a B2B audience and of course no one could deny that they can be very effective. However, as volumes continue to rise marketers could be faced with increasing opt-out rates, database fatigue and potentially declining response rates.

To counter this, B2B marketers should be analysing their data carefully from reports of their campaigns to understand if there are improvements to be made. Given the high cost to acquire new leads and the costs involved in getting a customer or prospect to provide you with their email address, it’s the relevance factor that’s the key here. Whilst it is possible using web capture forms to capture email addresses of prospects at relatively low cost, they are going to very quickly unsubscribe from you if the messages they receive are not relevant. Certainly you can still communicate with them via other channels, at probably higher costs but the far higher risk is damage to brand. This is something that a good email marketing strategy and properly executed campaigns should be re-enforcing and certainly not undermining.

The same reports will also highlight who is on your list, who is non-active, those who haven’t clicked or opened, for example in the past 6 months. It is these non-actives or dormant recipients that should be most interesting when taking a strategic look at your email marketing campaigns. Why are they dormant? Why haven’t they bought, engaged with you, enquired or even unsubscribed? It’s too easy to assume they are comfortable with your brand and your communications, provided of course you use an ESP with good deliverability tools who is actually delivering your message to the recipient’s inbox.

So what strategies are available to email marketers when looking at their dormant file? We could, as email marketers send an email to ask them if they are happy to remain on the file. Should this be done pro-actively i.e. if there is no click activity within say 6 months, should this trigger a message that asks are they happy to stay on the list, would they prefer less frequent messages, different content more relevant to their responsibilities or be removed altogether?
For some recipients, it may already be too late as they have long since become disengaged with your brand. I’d argue that it is better to do this on a pro-active than a re-active basis.

Other channels could be used to address the dormant file and should also be considered. Perhaps the lack of click activity will prompt a sales or customer care call to ascertain if the customer or prospect has any further needs or has issues with the product. Can the content delivered via email also be sent via direct mail? Is there a portion of the database for whatever reason that would rather have a direct mail communication?

Consider changing frequency. For those who are dormant you may wish to only send them the best offers, the best research, the best white papers. Test to see how a change from, for example a monthly to a quarterly message impacts on clicks and their purchasing behaviour. This may sound like a high-risk strategy, and it could be if your customer or prospect has more than one supplier for some industry segments or job functions but they may feel that you are over-communicating with them. Only testing will highlight the impact on sales.

Can we ask the recipient for feedback via a web survey or something contained within the email? We might be able to do this but we can also give the recipient the option to change the frequency. This requires a level of sophistication not in terms of software as long as your database can link with your email delivery tool. The sophistication is with the marketer to create relevant content for the different database segments.

Can information be sent differently?

For example, if it’s detailed information that the email is conveying i.e. product specifications, product testing data, perhaps this is better served not as content within the email but as either as a download from the website or on request through the mail. By all means offer the white paper but don’t give the content in the email. The click data from recipients who download will give you more learning and more information about their likely interest than sending it to everyone.

In B2B marketing the metric for how we define a dormant address is going to be different from one industry segment to another, only testing will give you give you your own internal benchmark. Perhaps your email marketing strategy will be adapted, perhaps you will decide to rest the dormant file altogether and seek out new subscribers and leads. To keep your email marketing strategy as responsive as it should be, regular testing, segmentation and analysis of the click data needs to occur. Only then can a slide in campaign effectiveness be stemmed.

By Richard Gibson,
Commercial Director,
RSA Direct & Chair, DMA Email Marketing Council, Benchmarking Hub.
richard.gibson@rsadirect.com
+44 (0) 20 8434 3596
http://www.rsadirect.com