Remailing and Segmentation Strategies for the Holidays
Prepare for the holidays now with engagement-based segmentation, reengagement and list cleaning, and a remailing strategy.
Prepare for the holidays now with engagement-based segmentation, reengagement and list cleaning, and a remailing strategy.
The holidays are for last-minute shopping not last-minute marketing. The season can be a minefield for make-or-break decisions that can significantly impact revenue…and the happiness of your boss. One vital component of any successful holiday marketing program is a streamlined and adaptable data environment. Let’s look at three ways to prepare now so the holidays are more successful and less stressful.
Engagement-Based Segmentation
The capability to send mail to strategically-defined segments can help make calculated last-minute decisions. Whether you currently segment subscribers or send every mailing to your master list, having these plug-and-play segments at your fingertips can help bring focus to remailing opportunities, throttling messages should you encounter a block, and adding incentives to promotions that fall flat.
Analyzing your subscriber population based on acquisition source, purchase behavior, and inactivity will help you build segments that maximize messaging opportunities, decrease delivery issues, and help turn prospects into first-time customers. Here’s how:
Reengagement and List Cleaning
A disengaged subscriber has interacted in an email in the past but has become unresponsive in the 60 to 90 days since the last interaction. Inactive subscribers include disengaged subscribers who pass, in this example, the 90-day mark, or have never opened, clicked, or converted in an email. This population can become dead weight and muddy the view of actual email performance metrics.
During the holidays, deliverability issues and blocking from Internet service providers (ISPs) can be a major setback. If your subscribers do not receive your messages in their inbox or if your messages are not received at all, sales will be lost and you will have to adjust your communication plan to account for the time needed to remedy the issue. To decrease delivery issues during the annual email volume spike, launch a reengagement and list hygiene initiative before the season begins. These efforts will help you better understand your active subscribers and ensure you have a cleaner list going into the holidays.
Remailing Strategy
Holiday email volume continues to increase each year. Many brands consistently send more than one message per day. Last year 23 percent of brands sent more than one email on Black Friday and 29 percent on Cyber Monday. It’s important to consider the subscriber experience of receiving multiple messages in one day from one brand when they are also receiving more marketing messages in general compared to the rest of the year. Plan for certain messages to be remailed. For example, if you are launching a flash sale, plan to remail subscribers when there are “hours left.” You may need to introduce additional remailings during the season when a message underperforms and a remail could result in additional sales. In this case, leverage the segments outlined in this column to specifically target populations, such as non-clicking openers or non-purchasing clickers, to avoid sending an additional email to a subscriber who isn’t interested.
Preparing a streamlined data environment, having pre-defined segments at your disposal, and possessing the ability to strategically remail subscribers will help decrease the pressure of the last-minute decisions the holidays can bring.
Holiday Email image on home page via Shutterstock.
This column was originally published on July 3, 2012.