Today it’s not enough to know how an individual email campaign performed on a one-time basis.  To learn whether or not your company is deriving true value from email marketing, you need the both broader and deeper perspectives offered by program- and list-level analyses.

While standard email campaign performance metrics like delivery, open and click-through rates have their place, without looking beyond them the true impact of your email marketing – and opportunities for continuous improvement – will go undetected.

It’s high time email marketers assess email marketing performance in terms of the goals, objectives, and contribution expectations that matter.

So what matters?

Determining what matters most requires a clear understanding of your organization’s strategic objectives and goals for email as a marketing channel.  In other words, why are you using email marketing for and what do you want it to do for you?

• Do you want it to accomplish softer marketing goals like generating brand impressions, communicating with customers and influencing purchase decisions?  – or –
• do you want it to drive harder revenue-producing goals like generating new leads, inquiries and direct sales?

Whether your purpose for email marketing is “soft”, “hard” or a combination thereof, here are three types of email marketing analyses that, in my opinion, should become standard practice because they’re so powerfully effective in measuring the impact of your investment in this channel regardless of how you use it:

1) Responder Segmentation Analysis

Are you analyzing who your email responders are by unique attributes such as gender, age, geography, past buying behavior, time on list, source of name, or social media connections? If not, you should be!

The beauty of this “back-end” analysis is you DON’T have to divide your list into multiple segments before deploying a campaign. Provided your email database is searchable by the subscriber characteristics mentioned above (and more), you could categorize responders post-campaign to begin developing a detailed profile of who they are.

For this type of analysis, you could create responder profiles by different response actions (open, click and conversion), but to keep it simple, define what your desired call to action is (the thing you MOST want people to do) and profile only those who completed that call to action (your “converters”).

Also, don’t stop at conducting responder analysis for individual campaigns. Conduct it in aggregate for all campaigns deployed quarterly, semi-annually, and annually.

For example, a responder-analysis by time-on-list might reveal that established subscribers (who signed up more than six months ago) convert at a higher frequency than new subscribers (say, those who signed up within the last six months). Knowing this might mean you step up the frequency to new subscribers, or test an onboarding campaign to new members as a way to get them familiarized, engaged and converting faster.

Or, you might find that analysis by age indicates that subscribers 45-55 years old are more responsive than those aged 25-35. Knowing that would change how you position your offers and could affect your creative choices for email copy, images, font sizes, etc.

What do you do after this analysis? Use responder profiles to:

• Understand how demographic or geographic differences affect response
• Improve targeting and segmentation on future campaigns
• Vary offers and creative to improve response on less active segments
• Test and/or adopt different frequency for different segments

 2) Email Subscriber Engagement Analysis

It’s great to have a performance report for each email message you deploy, but you’ll also want to know how your entire subscriber base behaves in response to your email over longer periods of time.  This type of analysis relies on measuring cumulative actions by subscriber (opens, clicks, conversions) during defined time periods (usually quarterly or annually) to uncover both the best, most active subscribers as well as identify inactive members for re-activation or suppression.

Unlike a responder segmentation analysis which tries to “paint a picture” of who certain subscribers are, an email subscriber engagement analysis is more concerned with measuring the total reach and effectiveness of your email marketing.

For example, how many of your subscribers have ever clicked on an email? How many have done so more than once? How many click on every message? Analyzing the frequency distribution of response actions like open, click and conversion across your list over time tells you a lot about both the depth and breadth of your email program’s impact.

(Want more on this type of analysis? Get this excellent free discussion paper co-authored by some of my UK email marketing colleagues. I highly recommend it)

What do you do with the results from this analysis? Use the data to:

• Offer incentives to increase response from infrequent openers, clickers or converters
• Increase frequency on less active segments to see if it improves engagement
• Identify weak or non-responsive subscribers for reactivation campaigns, or suppression
• Create a “premium” program for your most engaged subscribers. Reward them with exclusive offers, content or other special treatment
• Cross-match your most engaged email subscribers to your best customers (highest or most frequent spenders); reserve your best offers for them

 3) Channel Contribution Analysis

What’s the bottom-line impact of email as a marketing channel for you?  This analysis seeks the answer in terms of economic impact.  “Economic impact” doesn’t have to mean direct sales revenue.  It could, but it might instead be measured in increased site traffic, leads generated, new subscriptions attained, social media connections made, or gross brand impressions.  Or, it could be measured in the cost savings and efficiency gains of email vs. more expensive marketing channels like direct mail.

So, understanding the economic value of each response action that an email marketing message generates is key! For example, what do you have to pay to get a page visit? What about a qualified lead? How about a new customer? Or a purchase from a repeat customer?

Do you know your allowable maximum cost for any of those actions (known as your cost-per-action or CPA)? If you do, you can attribute it to those your email marketing program generates. For example, if an email campaign produced 1,000 unique site visits that would normally cost you $0.25 each if using paid search marketing to drive traffic, then your email campaign just saved you $250 on search (or contributed $250 in value, depending on how you want to measure it).

How do you benefit from this analysis? Use the data to:

• Determine Return-On-Investment (ROI): Is email generating more economic value than it costs or is it costing more than it contributes?
• Determine Average Response/Order Value (AOV): How much economic value – in soft or hard dollars – does a conversion via email contribute? If it’s a sales what’s the average order amount from email?
• Calculate Revenue-Per-Email: If your email marketing directly generates actual sales, how much is each name on your list producing in revenue per year?
• Calculate Value-Per-Email: if your email marketing does not generate sales but does drive site traffic, social media connections or new leads, what would each of those be worth to you if you had to pay to get them? Assign that value to each name on your list and add it up annually.

Remember, measuring what matters is not necessarily as easy as just glancing at those simple email campaign reports that come your way after every message you send, but it’s not rocket science either. And at budget time, when you’re making your case for more staff or money, having the results of these analyses at hand is absolutely worth it.

If you need help measuring what matters – or setting up a system to do so – one of these programs is for you.

As marketing channels go, email has always excelled at developing customer relationships. The key to thousands of successful email programs lies not in using the channel as a low-cost broadcasting medium, but as a relationship-building conduit. Email shines brightest when message purpose, timing, offers and value are matched to distinct customer relationship stages.

Designing an email program to fit customer relationship stages is often compared to dating. New relationships begin cautiously, with each party sharing limited information until mutual trust is built, then expanding their level of intimacy over time. Just as we don’t jump from first date to marriage, neither should your email marketing program ask too much too soon from your customers.

Consider these three intentional ways email marketing can be applied to nurture, grow and deepen customer relationships:

1.  Gently Coax Budding Subscribers

New email list members are interested in you – either because they’re considering becoming customers, because you enticed them to trade their email address for something of value, or both. You’re on a “first date” with them, so develop a welcome email series that not only delivers value, but creates comfort and trust by allowing them to get to know you.

A welcome series of emails can be more powerful than a single welcome message because it gives subscribers time to warm up to you, demonstrates consistency and commitment on your part, and affords more space to educate, familiarize, and share resources without overwhelming people.

A series also does something that may seem counter intuitive but has proven wildly effective: it slows down the sale. “Slowing down the sale” doesn’t mean wasting time or stalling, but instead means intentionally creating the time and space needed for trust, curiosity and affection to build into demand

Just as in real life the slow road to passion often results in deeper commitment and one-night stands rarely evolve into lasting relationships, so too should your email program welcome, familiarize and invite before asking for a deeper commitment to buy.

2.  Nurture New Customers

New customers (those who’ve transacted for the first time) have made a bigger commitment than just joining your list but may have done both simultaneously. A new customer relationship can be like a first kiss – you want it to be a positive experience and provided it goes well, do it again!

Take the opportunity to thank new customers via email, and consider following or bundling a thank-you email with a bounce back offer. A “bounce back” offer is a discount or coupon that’s given to a customer who has just made a purchase from you. The goal is to get them to purchase again, usually but not always at a discount.

Bounce back offers are normally discounts because rewarding customers for their desired behavior by saving them money if they repeat that desired behavior is appreciated and almost impossible to resist. Bounce back offers are also usually exclusive – they provide an incentive, discount or access greater than new email list member offers, or not generally available elsewhere.

Your bounce back or thank-you offer is your way of asking for a “second date”. If it isn’t acted upon, don’t lose heart. Keep delivering value and regularly inviting customers to engage again – even if it’s not by buying but instead by reading a blog post, watching a video or connecting on social media. Consistent nurturing will grow new relationships into stable commitments.

3.  Deepen Relationships with Repeat Customers

Your existing, long-term customers should be frequent recipients of your email and are likely very familiar with your offers, seasonality and cadence. The question to consider for customers in this relationship stage is, how can you add more value and variety to what you send them?

Long-term romantic relationships can lapse into routines and grow stale without an injection of spontaneity and passion; the same can happen between your established customers and your email program unless you’re applying some of these approaches to deepening relationships and loyalty:

• Intersperse promotional email with content, information, or entertainment messages. Don’t be “the friend who only calls when you need something”. Offer value through educational or entertaining content, customer support services, reminders/alerts, and advance notices.

• Pay attention to what customers routinely buy or last bought, and craft up-sell and cross-sell offers that match their interests. Up-sell and cross-sell offers follow a planned “progression path” you’ve created and help customers understand which step to take next. As in all relationships, the parties generally want to know where the relationship is headed next.

• Segment your best customers into a “top tier” level and give them exclusive treatment. Make sure they know it!

• Surprise and delight. Deliver the occasional “dozen roses” not for any particular reason, but just as a show of love and appreciation.

• Keep your email newsletter going strong – it provides stability, predictability and continuity just like a “date night” in a marriage. It shouldn’t be the only email loyal customers receive, but it is a foundation of your program they’ll look forward to seeing among your message mix.

Designing specific email campaigns to support customer relationships at every stage isn’t as easy as blasting the same message to everyone on your list, but it is worth the investment. Welcome, bounce back and exclusivity campaigns routinely return five to ten times the response of un-segmented broadcast campaigns. Want to see your email shine brighter than ever? Map campaigns to unique customer relationship stages and watch email become the rising star of your marketing mix.

If you’re like a growing majority of businesses, you’ve discovered email as the “go to” channel for rapidly accelerating leads into sales, increasing customer engagement and generating revenue on demand.  Enterprises of all kinds engage in email marketing not only because it works, but because it works phenomenally well and fast. There is simply no doubt that email marketing is thriving when you consider these compelling facts:

• The DMA (Direct Marketing Assoc.) reports that email has returned nearly $30 for every $1 spent on it in 2012, and is projected to account for $67.8 billion in sales
• An April-May 2012 survey conducted by Constant Contact reported 83% of US small businesses (both B2B and B2C) named email as the most effective marketing tactic they use, topping even their web sites
• Exact Target’s 2012 survey of consumer marketing channel preferences found an overwhelming majority of consumers (77%) prefer to receive permission-based promotions via email – topping all other channels – with direct mail a distant second at 9% and social media channels combined coming in at 6%
• The same Exact Target study reports 66% of consumers have made a purchase as the direct result of an email marketing message
• Email is still the most popular activity online; globally, 85% of people use the Internet to check email, while 61% use it for social media (Ipsos, 2012)
• Consumers are taking email with them across platforms. Checking email is the No. 1 activity on mobile phones (Pew, 2011) and No. 2 on tablets, after Web browsing (IDG, 2011)

So now that you’re convinced email should become or remain a part of your 2013 marketing mix, here are five more suggestions for increasing its impact on your business in 2013 (see my first five top reco’s here):

1. Diversify email message variety
When it comes to your broadly targeted email messages, variety is the spice of life. Nothing’s worse than an email marketing program consisting largely of repetitive promotional offers; it’s the equivalent of talking non-stop without ever taking a breath. So as you create your email plans for 2013, aim for a balanced pipeline of messages that includes the following types (to help you remember, the first letter of each word in the following list spells “PIPE”):

a)  Promotional. Yes, of course you’re going to keep making offers, promoting savings/discounts, and communicating sales opportunities but there needs to be more.

b)  Informative and educational. Think blog posts, articles, newsletters, webinars, demos, tip lists, and “how-to” content. What do you have that helps your subscribers understand and use your products more? That educates them on the space you’re in?

c)  Personal and seasonal greetings. Acknowledge birthdays, holidays, anniversaries of being in business. Yes, the personal touch goes a long way and breaks up monotony.

d)  Entertaining, fun engagement. Every marketing program should have elements of surprise and delight. This is where contests, sweepstakes, games, customer and employee stories liven up your marketing and add personality to your brand. Use email to announce and promote involvement with them.

2. Increase both message frequency AND regularity
As you craft your email message schedule (or editorial calendar) for the year, think “ongoing conversation” not “random blasts”. Develop a regular monthly cadence and sequence for the above types of messages, but keep it fluid. Keep continuity programs – like newsletters or monthly webinars – on a regular schedule, but vary the timing and quantity of promotional and entertainment messages.

Why? On the one hand, consistency and predictability foster anticipation and trust, so you want that working for you. On the other, become too predictable and you run the risk of your sales promotions being ignored or “gamed” so you need pattern interruptions too.

3. Evolve single-message campaigns into series or tracks
Instead of a single welcome message, try expanding the message into a welcome series which invites, thanks, familiarizes or even educates. Instead of a one-time renewal or reactivation message, try a three-part series that gives subscribers more than one chance to take the valuable action you seek.

4. Re-target those who abandon
One of the most powerful and effective ways to increase conversion is to follow-up when you know someone is considering a purchase based on their recent behavior, but hasn’t closed the sale by buying. Re-target qualified prospects, shoppers or browsers who were on the path to conversion on your web site (or even on the phone or in person) but abandoned before completing a sale with follow-up email messages which a) invite them back on the consideration path b) provide additional incentives to purchase not otherwise offered and c) offer content and information that overcomes known barriers to sale.

5. Introduce or increase use of triggered email
Part of diversifying your email messaging is supplementing broadcast (broadly targeted) messages with one-to-one automated messages known as “triggered” emails.  As you automate portions of your email program like welcome, re-activation and re-targeting campaigns, subscribers themselves will determine much of their own email cadence through their behavior and interests. Identify the actions, dates or situations which constitute triggers for sending automated messages and set those messages to auto-deploy when a subscriber trips a trigger.

Chances are, if you’re not already employing most of the above in your email marketing, even incorporating one of these power-boosters will yield an increase in revenue and profits. For more ideas request a no-cost, no-obligation breakthrough session with me that also provides a free 30-minute assessment of your current email marketing program, and see how many immediate improvements you can make!

There couldn’t be a better time to strategize final changes and improvements to your 2013 email marketing programs as you ready them for launch. In fact, while many of your new year’s email plans may be firmly sketched out, it’s not too late to give them a final polish with these insights and tweaks. Knowing where to amplify, adjust or even contract can take your email marketing programs from “ho-hum” to significantly greater impact on your bottom line in 2013.

Here are my top five recommendations for boosting email marketing results and impact in the coming year. Stay tuned in January for even more ideas to make 2013 your email program’s most successful year yet!

1. Strengthen and Clarify Permission
Review and clarify your permission practices and tie them to specific types of email you send or specific email communication tracks/programs/publications you offer. Make it easy for people to pick and choose what to opt-into, what the different tracks/programs are, and how they can adjust frequency or format (daily vs. weekly digest? graphic vs. text?). If you’re still offering a single global subscribe/unsubscribe to your email marketing, it’s time to expand into detailed preference centers and to begin collecting specific email preference data from your subscribers.

2. Engage New Subscribers Early and Often
Most companies’ email lists are heavily burdened with inactive subscribers (up to 60% by some estimates). One reason is that interest in most brands or merchandise categories naturally wanes over time. But sadly, a huge percentage of inactive subscribers is the result of never properly communicating with them in the first place. One secret to avoiding disengagement is to intentionally cultivate a pattern of response with new subscribers right from the start. Think in terms of repeatedly encouraging them and conditioning them to take action, even if it isn’t to buy but simply to interact with content, enter a sweepstakes, or share to social. Furthermore, consider amplifying your welcome and onboarding email programs by expanding them from a single message into a series of messages.

As for those subscribers whose activity has truly lapsed, consider attempting to wake them up and keep them awake earlier than the typical six months to a year most marketers wait before they do anything about the problem. When it comes to your email list, early and frequent intervention to the disengaged will prevent them from lapsing into a permanent coma.

3. Think Mobile
There’s no avoiding it – email is on the go – being read everywhere, all the time thanks to mobile devices – and showing no signs of stopping. With upwards of 30% of all email now read on a mobile device (and this figure is projected to increase) you’ll probably need to simplify email message design to accommodate the visible limitations of email on smartphones and tablets. In your email templates and messages, think single column, leaner content, and easier-to-see-and-press call-to-action buttons or icons. Use Litmus or similar tools to test how your email is showing up in the inbox. And don’t forget landing and site pages – they may need design tweaks as well to become easier to view and interact with in mobile environments.

4. Deepen Segmentation
Simple segmentation by gender, age, company size or other such attributes may still have its place, but it’s been long understood by database marketers that past behavior is an excellent predictor of future behavior. That’s why it’s essential to collect subscriber data that can be used to segment in ways that drive more business, such as using annual purchase totals to segment by spend level. When a subscriber takes a meaningful action, record it so you’re building a behavioral history for use in future segmentation, targeting, development of triggered email programs and selection of offers for different customer groups. Plus, knowing past behavior gives you a baseline against which to test and learn the email strategies that successfully move the needle – yielding greater opens, clicks, more sales, higher average order value, or more frequent conversions – in the future.

5. Make the shift from Static to Dynamic Content
Does your email message design still follow a “one size fits all” approach? It doesn’t have to. The use of dynamic content allows date-, place- and time-specific images and copy to be served in an email message so that it is unique to when, where or on which device it is opened. Dynamic content also enables the serving of different copy or images to different subscribers based on individual attributes or segmentation criteria (i.e. East coasters see one version, West coasters another; or men and women see different versions of a message). Imagine incorporating actual user reviews, custom recommendations based on previous purchases (like Amazon does) or even different suggestions based on the weather! All is possible with dynamic content; check out this prior post for more.

Chances are, if you’re not already employing most of the above, even incorporating one of these power-boosters will yield an increase in revenue and profits from your email marketing. For more ideas request a no-cost, no-obligation breakthrough session and tune again in January.

Until then, feel free to share your top suggestions for boosting email marketing results – what have you tried or tested that made a huge impact for you? What hidden gems and kernels of wisdom do you have to impart? Share them in comments below, and happy holidays!

When it comes to measuring email marketing results, there’s plenty of undue obsession with tracking basic process metrics like deliverability, opens and clicks. While each of those measures is obviously important, it’s the bottom line contribution of email marketing to your business that ultimately matters most.

True, if you can’t successfully deliver email to in-boxes no one will even know you’ve sent it; yet the reality is few legitimate marketers have serious problems with deliverability (on average industry-wide, 90% of email marketing messages make it through). Next, if subscribers don’t routinely open your email it makes no difference that you sent it, so while the open is important, it’s just the tip of the response iceberg. Finally for most companies, if subscribers open but then don’t click or call, there is little or no measurable value from the campaign other than a brand impression.

So, unless the sole objective of your email marketing program is to make brand impressions or drive traffic to web pages and stop there, you simply must track and measure the bottom line impact of your program on revenue-producing, revenue-sustaining actions. Because at the end of the day, even if you have the highest open and click-through rates known to man, if opens and clicks don’t translate into conversions (completed calls to action) and revenue, you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars and time

Three Essential Email Success Metrics

In addition to measuring opens and clicks, it’s vital to also focus on key email contribution measures to gauge the success of your program. Here’s a closer look at each of what I consider three necessary and valuable bottom-line email success metrics you’ll want to make sure to track – and benchmark for your organization – going forward.

1) Conversions

Keeping your eye on the email prize means measuring every completed call to action, or what we call in marketing a “conversion” that has value to your business. A conversion driven by email marketing can take a variety of forms, some of which do not produce an immediate sale but all of which do influence or eventually lead to new business opportunity, new customers and ultimately, sales.

Common conversion actions driven by email marketing are inquiry submissions, downloaded content in exchange for contact information, offer/content shares (to social or via email) quote requests, referrals to new prospective clients/list members, up-sell or cross-sell purchases, and of course, repeat purchases. All – whether resulting in a commerce transaction immediately or down the road – have measurable bottom-line value.

To successfully track email conversions, you need to define the primary call to action for every single email marketing campaign you send. How?

For every campaign ask yourself “what is the single most valuable action that an email subscriber can take as a result of reading this message?” Remember, most conversions take place on a web page or what is designed as a specific “landing page” for your email campaign. It’s critical that the web pages to which you direct email subscribers literally function as logical, safe “places to land” and either begin the conversion process or enable it entirely (like Amazon does with their “one click buy” function).

2) Average Conversion Value (aka “Average Order Value”)

Once you’ve got measuring conversion down, you’ll begin to realize there are multiple valuable actions email subscribers take. And if you’re an e-commerce enabled business, there are, naturally, also different products at different price points which you promote and sell. The outcome? Not all conversions deliver equal value, but when the total value of all conversions is summed and divided by the number of unique conversions, you can arrive at an “average conversion (or order) value”, commonly known as AOV.

For example – say an email marketing campaign promoting an annual conference results in 100 conference registrations. Subscribers are given the choice of three different registration levels – a single-day registration for $200, full conference for $500, and a premium option at $700. In total, the email campaign generates $55,000 of revenue. The total revenue – in this case $55,000 – divided by 100 registrations results in an average order value of $550 for that campaign; meaning each “sale” generated by the email campaign was worth, on average, $550 to this marketer.

3) Revenue Per Email (RPE) Address

But, wouldn’t it be great to know not only the average conversion (or order) value generated by your email, but also how much revenue per subscriber your programs produce? In other words, what is each member of your email list worth to your company in terms of money coming in the door?

If you’re answering “yes” then you need to track Revenue Per Email address, commonly known as RPE. Similar to tracking AOV, you’ll want to know the sum total of revenue (or other attributable economic value) generated by a campaign, then divide it by the number of subscribers who received the campaign to arrive at RPE.

So, say an email campaign produces $10,000 in sales. It was successfully delivered to 14,560 subscribers. Divide $10,000 by 14,560 and you get an RPE of about $0.69 per subscriber. But that’s just for a single campaign. Remember you can and should also calculate RPE over time (keep reading).

Don’t Stop Short

In my expert opinion, I suggest you calculate each of the above metrics in each of the following ways:

• For every unique email campaign/message you send
• Monthly, for the sum total of all email campaigns/messages deployed in the given month (if you’re judiciously measuring monthly you can extrapolate quarterly results too)
• Annually, for the sum total of all email campaigns/messages deployed in the given year

And yes, tracking bottom-line results can be more challenging when your email marketing does not drive direct online purchases or immediately generate revenue but instead is part of a lead-generation and/or lead nurturing program. In those cases, remember that there is still value in non-revenue producing actions generated by your email, such as warm and hot leads, qualified inquiries, social shares, pass-alongs and referrals. Your job is to know what each of these actions is worth to you (Ask: if you had to pay to generate it, what’s the maximum you’d spend? There’s what each is worth) and track their value as well.

Moving beyond tracking basic email process metrics into solidly and faithfully measuring the three contribution metrics defined here will also allow you to calculate ROI and other meaningful marketing and business measures. Most of all through, it will give you a quick read on just how much email marketing is moving the needle toward your important growth goals and if it isn’t where to re-group, test and tweak so it can.

What exactly makes people respond to your email marketing offers? What is it precisely that makes them engage and buy from you? And how does knowing these things help you drive better email response?

It’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question asked of all advertising and marketing. While the fundamentals of what makes us want to transact with a company or say yes to one offer over another remain relatively the same across channels, how marketers employ specific tactics can vary drastically from channel to channel.

(If this is a topic you’re keenly interested in, skip ahead to watch my webinar “The Psychology of Email Response” for free here. Don’t worry – if you still want to read the post you’ll find that link again at the end of the article.)

When it comes to email marketing it’s important to know exactly which approaches lead to trust, engagement, purchase and loyalty and how to translate them into successful email messages and  programs.

Let’s start with that first part – the approach – then move into a specific, tactical process for applying it.

The Basic Psychology of Human Decision-Making

We can pride ourselves all we want on our intellectual superiority over the rest of the species on our planet, but a commonly overlooked fact is that we are as much emotional as intellectual beings – maybe even more emotional than intellectual. Our brains are equipped with reasoning and emotional centers, and both factor into decision making.

In online marketing, making emotional connections is especially important because the digital world can be fast, furious, and impersonal.  There is a built-in immediacy in digital communication channels that often undermines the opportunity to slow down the sale and deepen the consideration process that older, offline channels afforded.

Plus, there is both a considerable amount of skepticism and unfortunately, fraud in the digital world. Allowing people to get to know you online with a relationship-building approach goes a long way toward creating the familiarity, comfort confidence consumers and business people alike need before they’re willing to buy.

It Starts with Creating Emotional Resonance

Despite our immense reasoning power, our instinctive “gut” reactions are older and better honed. From the standpoint of human evolution, we had to develop the ability to make split-second unconscious decisions to survive. This ability survives in us today and kicks-in when we’re faced with any decision – even if it’s not life or death – and often happens before our brains have time to intellectually process facts

That’s why research has proven time and again that people buy from emotion and justify with reason. So it’s essential to know how to emotionally connect with people in your marketing, and in email to do so not just authentically but quickly.

Remember, there’s that built-in immediacy factor with email – people don’t spend as much time with it as print or television. That’s right – with email you have less than three seconds to create emotional resonance.

When you resonate with your subscribers you strike an emotional chord with them. You make a visceral feeling connection.  You both tune into the same “vibe”, and it results in comfort and trust, allowing you to sell in a non-salesy environment.

As in music, your aim is to sing to the same tune as your audience, then harmonize with them by recognizing their needs, pain, challenges and desires and meeting them in that space.

So now that you know we must appeal to both the intellectual and emotional sides of people, how do we do it?

The Five P’s of Profitable Email Response

I recoomend what I call the “Five P’s” process because it not only centers on authenticity, personality and transparency over features and facts, but also honors the intellectual reasoning component of how people make decisions.

The Five P’s of creating emotional resonance and response in email are:

1. Positioning
2. Pain
3. Promise
4. Proof
5. Plan (course of action/call to action)

This process can be followed to craft your copy, offers, message design, message sequence, and even overall messaging strategy throughout a quarter or year.  Let’s explore each of these in more detail:

1.   Positioning

Proper positioning acknowledges both who you are and what’s in it for your audience to be in communication with you. Successful positioning boasts excellent clarity – it makes both your identity as the sender of email and your purpose in sending the message immediately apparent. It then goes beyond clarity to create comfort, familiarity and purpose for your audience.

In email there is little time and space for lengthy build-ups and stories – which is why creative/design elements (like graphics, color, and layout) can be more effective than long copy in creating mood, identity and personality.

Consider these tactics for creating solid positioning:

• Present the “big picture” of what’s possible for your subscribers if they respond to your offer. Show and tell – use both images and words or even video so they can experience that future potential as real.
• Include a link called “About us” or “Our Story” in your main navigation bar/ template that connects to more background about your company or organization. Don’t make it boring – tell a human story that creates both credibility and vulnerability.
• Use outcome-driven, enticing language to set the stage for your offer to come.

2.   Pain

Yes, evoking negative as well as positive emotions can entice response (the worst reaction is no reaction at all), but your purpose here isn’t to bring your audience into a place of fear or dread. It is instead to identify and acknowledge their problems, challenges or pain – problems, challenges or pain that you intend to alleviate. Spend just enough effort identifying the pain so your audience knows you understand them, then move on.

It’s tempting to avoid this step in the process. However, in glossing over or skipping it you risk leaving out an important part of the emotional journey for your audience; you also miss a chance to create emotional resonance by helping them feel understood.

3.   Promise

Here’s where you spare no expense getting to the juicy goodness of your message and tying back to your positioning. Effectively creating promise means conveying – again through both words and pictures – the transformational outcome your audience will experience if they say yes to your offer.

Will they be happier? Richer? More beautiful? Healthier? Less-stressed? More successful at work? Better organized?

What are the desired emotions they will feel if they say yes to your offer? Love? Joy? Happiness? Satisfaction? Relief? Peace?

Understanding how your core products/services translate into both emotional and transformational benefits is essential to creating marketing messages that emotionally resonate. If you don’t know how your offerings transform and better people’s lives, you need to learn. If you can’t express the transformational outcomes of your offerings in your marketing, it will fail to connect.

4.   Proof

So far in this process we’ve been heavily in emotional territory. In the proof stage, we accelerate the appeal to reason.

Proof can take several forms both within email messages and on web sites/landing pages. These days the most compelling proof is social proof – as humans we crave a sense of belonging and will often follow the crowd. Who else has experienced the transformational outcome of your offerings and what do they have to say about it? Ideally, you can pull this information directly from your social media pages (assuming you have it there) into your email and website.

If not, include proof in the form of testimonials, quotes, links to case studies, and short success stories. Keep it human! Clinical trials and research studies are factually powerful (and often indisputable) but social proof generates greater credibility. We tend to believe our peers more than scientists or research studies because we can identify more with a peer group.

5.     Plan

Finally, don’t leave people hanging – tell them what you want them to do next and how to do it! Show them where and how to get what you promised.

Otherwise known as your call to action, this step MUST be abundantly clear, concise, literal and logical. While positioning, pain, promise and proof all influence engagement, this final step influences action and actual purchases.  It can be as simple as a text link or a sentence next to a button; or it can involve a short list of steps.

Remember that in email true response is a two-step process beginning with a click from within a message and continuing as a completed call to action (sign-up, content view, purchase, etc.) on a web page. Continue the clarity of your call to action all the way through your landing page and conversion process to avoid abandonment.  After coming this far, you don’t want to lose the valuable connection you’ve created with your responders.

If you’re still curious about how to tactically translate the 5 P’s into email components like subject lines, images, message copy, design, landing pages and cadence and want real-life examples, catch my free webinar, “The Psychology of Email Response” here.

There’s an ongoing debate over the role of permission in sending marketing email to customers you have a pre-existing business relationship with. Although in recent years opt-in list building practices have clearly been on the rise, there is still no clear legal mandate for opt-in as a standard email marketing practice in the US and many countries.

Should everyone on your email marketing list have voluntarily opted-in to join? (In my personal opinion and in an ideal world, YES). Or, is it okay to acquire the email addresses of customers (through email append or a similar process) who are valuable clients but simply haven’t signed up for your email program, and then email them anyway?

In other words: Do you want to be predominantly in the position of asking for permission to email people – or forgiveness for having done so without their permission? What’s more important: Permission or Relevance?

Say, for example, you can identify a customer segment of people who are perfect candidates for your new XYZ widget. You know based on what they’ve purchased before that they have a need for XYZ widget. You also know they can afford it. If only you can message them about it, you’re sure they’d buy it. So, it’s 100% – maybe even 110% relevant to them. But, not all members of this segment have opted-in to your email list. Sure you could mail or call them – but it’s not as efficient. What do you do?

Some companies in this situation explore what is known as Email Address Append by which they match their customer lists against known opt-in email files (often large list rental files owned by big consumer marketing data companies) append an email address to any matches based on name and postal address, and send a campaign. The practice, however, is controversial because it bypasses long-held values of email marketing: inbox-owner choice and control.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. Present-day reality reflects situations like the “XYZ widget” scenario above. So for those who are intent on exploring or testing email append, I offer the thoughts and approaches that follow.

While I’m not a staunch advocate of email append in general, I’m also not totally opposed to it. Sadly though, I’ve seen myriad cases of it done poorly. Bottom line: if you’re not prepared to apply it strategically and conscientiously, putting the needs of your customers before your own, don’t do it.

As a quick aside to the totally uninitiated, let me state for the record that in no way do I or any industry trade association (DMA, ANA, AMA, etc.) advocate email-appending rented direct mail lists of prospects you have no existing business relationship with. Email address append, if it is considered acceptable at all, is for locating the email addresses of your customers you don’t yet have email addresses for.

Approaching email append with the objective of being able to delight and satisfy customers will result in a more conscientious approach than coming at it from the standpoint of “I just need a bigger email list”.  It’s the difference between putting your customers or your marketing agenda first.

Segment Customers First

The members of any customer base can be winnowed down into three or four distinct segments that will have like behaviors in terms of loyalty and engagement.  For example, if we define customers as those who have actually made a purchase there are Raving Fans, Emerging Fans, Followers (the bulk) and Inactives.

Consider that each of these groups could be either delighted or infuriated by email append, behavioral targeting, and increased messaging frequency. The stakes are probably the highest with Raving Fans. On the one hand a Raving Fan might be thrilled you saved them the time of figuring out where to join the email list and are now delivering them relevant (and hopefully exclusive) offers that surprise, help and delight them.

On the other hand, if they’re hyper-loyal and paying more attention to what you do than the average customer, you may have seriously violated their privacy and alienated them for good (if only you had just asked them to provide their email address they’d likely have done it, but if you used append you assumed vs. asked).

But how can you possibly tell ahead of time WHO will react which way?  Answer: you can’t.  You can guess how a segment might react, but even within a segment you can see divergent attitudes.

Take on the other hand your Followers – the majority of existing customers with a utilitarian connection to you who, quite frankly, probably just don’t care how you get their email address as long as our email is making their lives easier.  Of all segments, they may be the most likely to forgive an email address append.

If you’re intent on append, segment the least risky group by loyalty category on which to conduct a test.  And for the love of email marketing, go into an append with the intention to give rather than get (yes, you can help your customers plus help yourself as a result if your intentions are “customer first”).

Questions to Consider Before Proceeding

Then before proceeding, ask yourself these questions and carefully consider the answers:

• What percentage of my customer base do I not have email addresses for? How large is that percentage and what might it represent in revenue if I could email them?
• How loyal/engaged are those customers? How often do they by? What’s their average annual spend?
• Is there a fast, cost-effective way I can entice these customers to provide their email addresses on an opt-in permission basis as an alternative to email append?
• If there isn’t, is it worth risking relationships with them (and future revenue from them) by foregoing permission with an append?
• How many complaints might be generated from an email append campaign and what is my maximum complaint threshold?

If your email marketing isn’t evolved enough yet to truly help, anticipate, surprise and delight your customers, email append isn’t for you. Stick with 100% opt-in email and work on increasingly segmenting your list to improve the relevancy of email campaigns to unique segments.

This entire debate reminds me of the maxim “Bring your seed, not your need”.  I think the problem with so many email appends is they reek of need, and as we all know customers can smell desperation a mile away. When they do, they usually bail. Worse yet, they can throw you under the bus on their way out by complaining or reporting your email as spam, which negatively affects your reputation and can impede future deliverability.

So when it comes down to Permission or Relevancy which do you value more? If you’re tried email append, what was your experience? If you haven’t, why not? Your sharing in comments below helps us all.

There’s a clear correlation between the stage of your organization’s digital marketing “maturity” and the effectiveness of your online marketing programs.

By “maturity,” I mean the level of your organization’s sophistication in digital marketing. Most organizations fall into one of three distinct stages at any point in time:

1. The Trial Stage
This entry stage is characterized by a scatter-shot approach to beginner use of channels like email, search and social, usually without good consistency or measurement/tracking in place. Companies in this stage typically do not have a strategy, process or orchestrated plan for digital marketing. They are learning and experimenting; trying things out to see which, if any, generate a boost in sales or enough traction to repeat the effort.

While this stage can sometimes be intimidating, it’s usually more exciting than stressful. Because previous commitment or investment has been minimal or nil, it’s exhilarating when efforts go well and easy to bounce back when they don’t.

2. The Tactical/Transition Stage
In this phase companies usually have a fledgling plan and process for deploying digital campaigns within or across channels, but haven’t integrated efforts and often sporadically execute. As a result, both the ability to measure results (what is truly effective), and the results themselves can be sporadic. This “chicken and egg” cycle is an all-too-familiar pain point – “if I can’t measure what’s working, how can I demonstrate enough success to market more consistently and gain more resources?”

Organizations in this stage are transitioning between the Entry/Trial Stage and the Strategic/Optimization Stage. Because a successful transition requires the creation of processes, procedures, and guidelines while simultaneously amplifying the volume of marketing efforts and campaigns, it places intense demand on resources. Resource constraints are what makes this stage particularly frustrating and often painful. Companies in this phase benefit from the wisdom and man-power of external resources like agencies, consultants and coaches who can quickly assess which efforts yield the biggest payoff, what to do next, and provide outsourced help to advance the organization into the final stage.

3. The Strategic/Optimization Stage
The most mature stage is characterized by a well-thought out, intentional digital strategy that includes specific plans, goals and objectives for each channel to be used. Organizations in this stage have developed marketing campaign calendars, customer-lifestage-specific programs for both acquisition and retention marketing (such as lead nurturing, welcome, up-sell and loyalty programs), and have working analytics, performance tracking and accountability systems in place.

They’ve also advanced beyond mastering individual digital channels (such as email) into linking, leveraging and integrating multiple channels together (such as orchestrating email and social connections, or search and content strategies). Furthermore, they’ve established formal processes and guidelines that dictate how digital channels and digital marketing as a whole are used.

Even within the final stage of digital marketing maturity, true mastery is a work in progress. Stage three embodies within it continuous growth and improvement. To use a karate analogy, a novice passes through many belt color levels (white, yellow, green, red, brown, etc.) before finally becoming a black belt, but achievement of black-belt status is far from the end of the road. True mastery then involves progression through ten degrees of black belt. In marketing as in martial arts, achievement of “perfection” is a journey, not a destination.

I encounter and serve organizations at all three stages. More and more, however, companies experiencing prolonged stress in Stage 2 are approaching me. These are almost always organizations with traction and experience in digital marketing that are plateauing or for the first time seeing diminishing returns. They have another thing in common: with fairly minimal mentoring and time investment, they can all make the leap to Stage 3.

An honest assessment of your organization’s digital marketing maturity level is a worthy exercise. The distinction between digital marketing maturity stages is important because organizations in the third phase are twice as likely, when compared to their first-phase counterparts, to find success in using digital marketing to:

• Drive website traffic
• Increase lead generation
• Qualify and nurture leads into customers
• Increase conversion
• Improve customer retention
• Grow sales revenue

At which stage is your organization? (seriously – tell me in comments below) Regardless of your answer, don’t shy away from investing to the best of your ability (remember, so many fabulous digital marketing tools like MailChimp, Hootsuite and Google Analytics are free) in the knowledge, education and resources you’ll need to reach the next stage. At the pace digital marketing moves today, you simply can’t afford not to.

Unless you overhear a conversation about porn spam, the words “email” and “sexy” don’t get used in the same sentence very often. Email, the loyal silent workhorse of social media, steadfast driver of e-commerce, overshadowed stepsister of search, is more often likened to Martha Stewart – reliable, conservative and past her prime – than Angelina Jolie – slinky, seductive, and unpredictable – although both have built sizable empires of wealth and influence.

That is, until now. Oh yeah, we’re finally bringing sexy back to email marketing.

I’m not sure if email ever truly enjoyed a flirtatious and provocative adolescence – it sort of leapt from childhood to married-with-two-kids – but we got a brief glimpse of its sex appeal a little over a decade ago when video in email first arrived on the scene.  Unfortunately, deliverability constraints and increased receiving environment security quickly thwarted passage of live-motion-video and audio in the inbox, and video moved almost exclusively to websites and later, YouTube.

Today, three exciting innovations are bringing video, audio, animation and dynamically-updated content to email and the inbox has never looked hotter!

So without further ado, let me roll out the red carpet for the sizzling trends that’ll make your email marketing messages not merely stand out in the inbox, but leap into stardom:

1.   Video in Email

Thanks to the arrival of HTML5, video is back in email. Unlike earlier efforts to integrate video in email using proprietary technologies, HTML5 is an open standard, which means it’s built into today’s Web browsers and most new mobile devices. This broad adoption has created the momentum video in email has sorely needed now that security risks inherent in third-party applications and plug-ins (like that of video-in-email pioneer RadicalMail) are eliminated.

Today, the following email receiving environments can display video directly in the body of the email message:

• All iOS devices when opened in the native mail client (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
• Hotmail, when viewed in an HTML5 compliant web browser
• IE 9+
• Chrome 3+
• Firefox 3.5+
• Safari 3.1+ on desktop, and 3.0+ (iOS)
• Thunderbird
• Apple Mail 3, 4
• Outlook for Mac 2011

According to this excellent post on video in email, close to 50% of all email messages read today support full video in email – which means on average about half your email subscribers should be able to have a rich media video experience in the inbox.

Better yet, deploying video in email has never been easier now that providers like Liveclicker have developed solutions such as Video Email Express. The tool allows marketers to upload a video (hosted and served by Liveclicker), configure a few settings, and embed the video in an email design in a matter of minutes. Leveraging HTML5 design, Liveclicker works with any email marketing software or ESP – no integration or switching necessary.

(Check out this Discovery Channel email using Liveclicker Video Email Express).

Best of all, video-in-email solutions like those offered by Liveclicker or agency Style Campaign aren’t subject to deliverability pitfalls because they doesn’t rely on Javascript of Flash which are disabled by over 90% of email clients. Style Campaign, although also supporting video in email, does so without sound as in this example from Kraft.

Despite the widespread technical support of video in email, most marketers still opt to redirect responders to video hosted on either their website or – in an attempt to drive beneficial traffic – their YouTube channel. And almost none configure video to auto-play on open (a wise choice in my opinion).

Consequently, video-in-email placeholders like the one in this Vail Resorts email appear as though they will stream video directly into the inbox, but instead redirect the responder to the company’s YouTube channel.  To my dismay, this Disney email takes a similar approach, redirecting clickers to the Disney Nature site instead of streaming video into the message itself.

The good news? HTML5 has brought video-in-email out of the IT closet and will, I believe, usher it into the mainstream. With close to 50% of your recipients able to see full video in email and the appeal and visual engagement that video still commands online, now is the time – especially for marketers with ready-at-hand video content – to begin using video in email marketing if they’re not testing it already.

2.   Animation

Animation is a close relative of video in email, and like video has been around in email for over a decade. It’s currently experiencing a resurgence in popularity for similar reasons to video (the HTML5 open standard). Perhaps its biggest advantage – for now at least – is how easy it is to create.

While video in email requires the existence of video footage, animation can be accomplished with static images in .gif or .ping format, something most email marketers already have in their content arsenal.

Recent examples of note include this message from Bed, Bath and Beyond which routinely uses animation in other ways like this (check out the roving eyeballs). What I love about the first example, however, is how it leverages limited screen real estate by showcasing three times as many images in the space needed by just one.

Here’s a similar approach from BuyBuyBaby. And let’s not forget British retailer Johnnie Boden which also creatively uses animation to bring motion and action into its emails, as you’ll see here and here.

Even without sound, animation can show vs. simply tell. Email is primarily a visual medium, so a picture is truly worth a thousand words and a moving picture even more.

3.   Dynamic Content

Perhaps the ultimate in email creative is live, up-to-the-minute, date- place- and time-specific message content. What if, depending upon when your recipient opens a message, the content could change to reflect:

- how much time remains before your offer expires?

- real-time inventory quantities remaining?

- updated event or travel itineraries?

- maps showing what’s nearby?

- names and faces of others attending a conference or event?

- social media (Facebook or Twitter for example) comments?

With dynamic content it can. There are two players leading the way in real-time dynamically-customized email marketing: LiveIntent and Movable Ink.

LiveIntent is focused on advertiser-oriented dynamic content solutions for publishers. Their aim? To help publishers monetize email subscribers as easily as they can monetize web visitors by dynamically-placing publisher-sold ads into email newsletters or allowing LiveIntent to dynamically-serve ads (from across their agency network) seeking an audience.

Movable Ink, on the other hand, seeks to turn marketing emails into containers for live content. When an email created with Movable Ink is opened, they serve content based on current time, recipients’ locations, social context, or business rules marketers define.

I love the countdown clock in this 1-800 Flowers Mother’s Day email.  Here’s another example – from Movable Ink – highlighting a count-down clock plus dynamically-changing location, inventory and social media content.

Both providers can sense the device email is being opened on before sending dynamically-customized images, so a recipient opening an email on a smartphone will see one version of a message whereas another recipient opening the same email on a desktop will see a different version.

Email: Finally sexy and we know it

I’ve long-predicted the email inbox to eventually resemble a portal more like television that a Web page, and we’re now closer to that reality than ever before with the triple threat of video, animation and dynamic content in email.

I don’t know about you, but when I see moving pictures in my inbox, I experience a “pattern interrupt” that gets my attention. I appreciate and value relevant, specific up-to-date information tailored to me as an individual and crafted with my (vs. 10,000 other people’s) selfish interests in mind. I want a little “show” with my “tell”.  If that’s not feelin’ the email love, if that’s not bringing sexy back – or finally to – email, I don’t know what is, but I do know I’m excited to see what’s coming next.

Struggling with your email message development? Need a messaging strategy or help planning your email marketing calendar? Then a coaching program is for you; learn more here.

Related Post: 3 Tried and True Creative Tactics for Instant Visibility in a Crowded Inbox

There’s a heated debate in email marketing over what to do with inactive subscribers and whether or not they can seriously  harm a sender’s reputation, deliverability and response enough to justify no longer emailing them.  The passion on both sides of this issue – the potential harmful downside of continuing to mail “inactives” juxtaposed with the potential helpful upside of keeping them on your list – makes this argument one worth taking a closer look at.

The Downside

In the one corner, it’s a reality that major email account hosting ISPs (like Yahoo, Hotmail and Google) convert abandoned email accounts into what is known as “spamtraps”. While there are many kinds of spamtraps, perhaps the most damaging are the ones that were once valid email accounts, now abandoned. Email is often still deliverable to these abandoned accounts (although some ISPs will reject mail to them for a period of time, not all will), yet like an empty house “the lights are on but nobody’s home”. So to a marketer, it appears as if an email list subscriber is simply ignoring their messages when in fact a live human is no longer using the account – rather, an ISP is managing it to “trap” unwanted email.

The problem arises because along with email account holder complaints, hitting spam traps is the number one way to damage or lower your reputation as a sender of email. (And in case you didn’t know it, yes you do have a measurable reputation according to the major ISPs – so does every IP address that sends email). Stories of entire programs being throttled or shut-down due to spamtrap hits are legendary. While it’s impossible for most email marketers to avoid having at least a few spamtraps on their lists, especially lists with tens of thousands or more names, your inactive subscriber segment is highly suspect especially if you’ve seen no signs of email activity from them in the last six and certainly, twelve consecutive months.

Yet even if you miss hitting a spam trap, sending to unresponsive list members can cause another problem – poor placement of your well-crafted email messages in the inbox. Now that major ISPs are using engagement (open/click) metrics to decide whether to place your email more prominently in the inbox (as Gmail does) or direct it to a bulk or junk folder (like Hotmail), getting your subscribers to interact and measurably engage with your email messages affects not only your response and ROI, but your ability to successfully deliver future email as well. Although most major ISPs are still in the early phases of testing and deploying engagement to drive inbox placement, it’s expected to stick around and increase. Ouch.

The final argument against mailing inactives is cost. Although the cost-per-name of sending email to one’s own list is now so low as to be effectively free, the question remains: why spend on inactive subscribers now that the downside of mail not being seen combined with the potential for hitting potential spam traps is at an all-time high? Better to save the money and play it safe?

The Upside

In the other corner, we have the case for mailing inactives anyway because even a few sales from them can more than justify the continuing cost of doing so. This side of the argument centers around two main points:

1)    Subscribers (usually customers) may be inactive in email but active in other channels, therefore eventually likely to purchase. Email may be influencing purchases in other channels – an action we simply can’t track.

2)    Subscribers may be monitoring and technically opening your email but not clicking, which means they are still engaged, but for some reason you can’t track their opens, either because they are not registering property, or because subscribers are scanning and deleting email from within the inbox before an open can register.

In either of the above two cases, it makes perfect sense to continue mailing inactive email subscribers, because – at least in the first instance – they’re not truly inactive customers, they’re simply inactive email responders. They have not abandoned their accounts and are buying in your other channels, so it’s pretty safe (but not 100%  foolproof) to assume their email addresses have not been converted to spamtraps.

Naturally, you’ll need to clearly define all potential channels for customer purchase/conversion and – assuming there are more buying channels than your site – assess whether an email list member is truly an inactive customer across the board, or simply an unresponsive subscriber. You should not only create a definition of “inactive” but also establish inactivity thresholds for different customer groups.

If an email list subscriber has in fact been totally unresponsive – a verifiably inactive customer – for a considerable period of time relevant to the purchase cycles in your business, it pays to look further at their past purchase history and customer LTV (life time value) before ultimately deciding whether to suppress/remove them from your email list.

For example, in apparel retailing if someone hasn’t purchased in the past twenty-four months (two years) they’re often considered inactive, but that same definition of inactivity won’t necessarily make sense when it comes to electronics, cars or jewelry which have higher price points, lower purchase frequency, and longer consideration paths.

What If They’re Really, Truly Tuned Out?

Still, lack of purchase according to your activity definition combined with lack of measurable marketing response (in ANY channel) is usually a reliable indicator of disinterest.  So the bottom line is – YES – continuing to email to your inactive subscribers without

a) proper, regular email list hygiene to identify and remove spamtraps

b) trying to reactive them via other marketing channels and

c) cross-channel assessment of their buying history

can harm your email program by hurting inbox placement and damaging your reputation and deliverability. If you’re not doing A, B, and C above, I recommend suppressing inactives from further email campaigns until you do.

If on the other hand you’re practicing regular reliable email address hygiene, deploying re-activation campaigns in complementary marketing channels (like direct mail) and investigating WHO your email inactives are in order to understand whether they’re just lurking or truly gone, there are specific strategies for emaling your less responsive list members than can make continuing to do so worth your while. I’ll explore those in a future post, but in the meantime, tread cautiously and get busy emailing smarter before you simply email more.