Email Best Practice: Be Sticky
"Spidey" senses a good email tip here
By now most marketers and business decision-makers are well aware of email’s unmatched powers as a marketing channel: it’s uniquely flexible, trackable, scalable, affordable – all that good stuff. But, as the young Peter Parker (aka, Spiderman) was told in the original movie, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
How do you exercise your email powers responsibly – and avoid getting tangled up in too many miscues? Well, lucky for us there’s no need to reinvent the web. Over the years a dependable foundation of universal email best practices has emerged. I’d like to share a good one with you:
When it comes to new sign-ups on your email list, be sticky.
New email subscribers will be much more likely to stick around and engage with your emails down the road if you make the effort to welcome them and nurture interaction in the early period of time immediately after they sign-up.
Yes, this seems like a no-brainer – total common sense. Don’t need a special “spidey-sense” to detect that one.
Well, not so fast. Apparently this email best practice has not reached as wide a level of integration as one might think. I was shocked – shocked! – at the findings of a recent survey of Internet Retailer 500 e-retailers which showed that:
* Half of Internet 500 e-retailers did not deploy even a single welcome email to their new subscribers
* Only 1% had implemented a series of automated welcome emails
It’s been my experience, and it’s backed up by industry-wide findings, that welcome emails get the highest open and click-through rates of any messages. This is a powerful opportunity to make a lasting first impression with your new subscriber. Think of all the relationship-building (sticky) things you can do with that first message or series of messages: deliver a “thank you” coupon or discount; provide a tour of key tools and benefits of your website; offer the latest whitepaper or case study; introduce premium services; ask for input on a poll or survey, etc., etc.
So, add value early on for your new email subscribers and they will stick around. That’s powerful stuff.
I’ve got some more thoughts on email best practices percolating and I’ll share those in future posts.
