Ask any digital marketer what’s their worst nightmare – and we’re sure that the answer would be “Low Engagement Rates.” You have spent hours perfecting your email, to find that it’s only opened by a handful of people? Nothing could be as frustrating as this.
Here, at Webfries, we’ve got a super simple but highly effective way to boost engagement rates – resend the email to non-opens.
In this week’s post, we explore the power of resending email campaigns to those who didn’t click on it the first time. Stay tuned to pick some tricks to improve your email engagement rates.
Why did your Mail go Unopened in the First Place?
There are plenty of reasons for this:
- Your subject line wasn’t attractive enough, so the recipient just trashed your mail without opening it.
- Your email got lost in the sea of marketing emails received by the recipient.
- You sent the mail at the wrong time, causing the receiver to ignore it.
- It could have got buried in the Gmail Promotions Tab.
- It got buried under other mails that arrived later (again sending at the wrong time).
DOES RESENDING A CAMPAIGN EMAIL WORK?
Yes. According to a report by Huffington Post, by resending an email to recipients who didn’t open the first mail, you could improve the engagement rates by a whopping 54.7%. Additionally, by resending the mail after waiting for a few days, you further improve open rates by a massive 30%.
Resending is simple – just tweak a few variables like subject line, sending time, and send it only to those who didn’t open your mail in the first place.
Additionally, it’s a good practice to make a few cosmetic changes so that your recent mail doesn’t look exactly like the first one, in case the recipient eventually opens both.
HOW TO NAIL THE PERFECT SENDING TIME?
To improve open rates, try to personalize sending times. This is possible with machine learning. There are several smart email technology services, which learn the optimal time for sending the mail to each user, based on their usage patterns.
Optimizing email send times is one of the best ways to boost engagement rates. With an optimal time, you send the mail at the right time, when your recipient is likely to click on it and open it, thereby increasing the chances of follow-through.
BEST STRATEGIES TO INCREASE EMAIL OPEN RATES
While it’s true that resending emails is a great way to boost engagement rates and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns, are there any ways to make it better than the initial failed attempt?
Here are a few tips and tactics to help you increase email-open rates:
PERSONALISATION IS KEY
Don’t shoot in the dark. Instead, of just sending generic emails to all the subscribers on your mailing list, try to create highly tailored and personalized email campaigns. When you send tailored messages that resonate with a specific segment of your audience, you’re likely to get them to follow through.
According to a recent survey, 86% of shoppers who participated in the survey responded that they believed personalization influenced their shopping decisions to a major extent.
Wondering how to personalize and segment your data to increase engagement rates, here are a few factors to consider:
Demographic Data
Demographic data is a valuable tool in helping you segregate your audience into relevant groups. By sending mails catering to gender, location, age, employment status, and other factors, you’re likely to create messages that are relevant to your audience.
For instance, if you’re selling baby products, then by targeting your emails to women who have recently had a baby, you’re likely to boost the open rates.
Behavioural Data
By coining your messages using behavioral data, you ensure that it’s timely and resonates with the recipient. You can send such emails based using the following data:
- Cart abandonment
- Types of products browsed
- Customer lapsing
- Email signup and more
Engagement
Another way to group people is by using engagement characteristics. You can group people by observing the following – when and how often they:
- Click through to your site
- Open your emails
- Buy products from you
By measuring these engagement factors, you can easily group customers into – people who regularly buy from you, those who buy occasionally, those who buy when you offer them discounts, and those who haven’t yet purchased from you.
Using this, you can easily create different email campaigns to target various audiences.
A point in the Sales Funnel
People at different stages of the sales funnel will require varied input. By understanding, where a particular customer is in the sales funnel, you can personalize your content to suit them.
For instance, customers who have just discovered your brand would like to know your brand philosophy, ethos, and more. On the other hand, customers who are ready to purchase from you would find it relevant if you could send them a feature comparison of different products.
By understanding your customer’s buying cycle, you can very well predict their needs, and provide them with the right information. This is an effective way to nudge your customers in making a purchase subtly.
RFM (Recency Frequency Monetary)
This segmentation divides customers based on the following factors:
- Recency – the time of last purchase
- Frequency – how often they make a purchase
- Monetary – spend levels
Each of these factors is given different weighting and each customer is given an overall score that reflects these all. This tells you how valuable the customer is for your brand, thereby helping you create personalized content relevant to the customer.
Spend Levels
Another way to segment customers is to use the following: when and what the customer buys from you. For instance, few customers may purchase in low-values from you, but they purchase quite frequently. On the other hand, other customers make high-value purchases but do only once or twice a year.
Both these types of customers are essential for your business. By analyzing and understanding their spending patterns, you can create relevant messages.
WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND WHILE RESENDING EMAIL CAMPAIGNS?
Here are the two most important tweaks you should consider while resending email campaigns:
Modify the Subject Line
If your first subject line was too casual or whimsical try to take a straightforward or formal approach in the resend mail or vice versa. Remember that you must alter the subject line so that the resend mail doesn’t end up going to the initial thread. If you think that the first subject line was good, and you don’t want to alter it, try tweaking it by adding emojis, or even changing a single word or two.
Change the Time and Day of the Week of the Mail
One factor to consider is that you should give some time before you send the resent mail. This varies depending on your audience. It can be anywhere from 24 hours, to 3-4 days or even a week. For instance, where you send time-sensitive emails (usually limited-time promotional emails), you’ll have to work within a shorter time frame. You run the risk that the recipient may open both emails at the same time and end up feeling annoyed. This is one risk factor that you have to tackle while resending emails.
If you notice unsubscribe rates going high suddenly, then the reason may be that you’re resending emails too soon.
THE TAKEAWAY
Resending email campaigns to people who haven’t opened it the first time (with just a few minor tweaks) can help in boosting your engagement rates massively. Resending emails don’t take much time and aren’t resource intensive. So, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t give it a try.
While resend campaigns work well, what matters more is that your email campaign should be highly personalized to make it resonate with the audience. The first step in personalization is to start segmenting your data.
Out of the six methods, we have listed here, some may work better for your brand compared to others. Make sure to try an experiment to figure out the right approach to take.
If you need help with increasing the engagement rates of your email campaigns or setting up an email marketing campaign for you in the first place, all you have to do is give us a ring at +91-124-4382-633. Our expert team of digital marketing experts in Gurgaon will get in touch with you to create a customized ROI-focussed email marketing campaign just for you.