Email Re-Engagement Strategy #2: The Definition of Insanity

A recent EMI blog post discussed the growing importance of email engagement and the role of preferences in re-engaging customers. In this post, we reference the famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. If you have a segment of email recipients who are not responding to your emails, why would you continue to send them the same emails at the same day and time and expect them to respond? While content and frequency preferences likely may re-engage some of the non-responders, it is important to try new emailing approaches to see if the standard delivery method may be responsible for non-response.

For example, if the “typical” mass-deployed email prominently features images and/or other graphics, it would be worth trying an email without images. Image-rich emails could get identified either by corporate mail servers or by email applications (e.g., Outlook) as spam and put into Junk Mail folders, never to be seen again. Additionally, some recipients may be discouraged from interacting because they rely on smartphones for checking their email and graphic-heavy emails often don’t render as well on a mobile device as they do on a desktop machine.

Similarly, if you maintain a best practice-driven schedule of deploying emails during working hours on Tuesday through Thursday, you may succeed in reaching some non-responders by testing different deployment days and times. In some industries, reaching people before the business day starts gives them the few extra seconds for email viewing that you need to capture their attention. For some target markets—especially SOHOs (small office/home offices) in which the potential buyer is wearing many hats all week—sending on Fridays or even on the weekend increases the chances of response.

As with any marketing initiative, success depends on intersecting with your target audience at a moment when it is receptive to your message. By testing new creative and deployment times, you create more vectors for intersection with previously unresponsive segments.

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