Find your best subscribers: why and how
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One insight that popped out of last week's article on email frequency was the idea that you can send more emails to your biggest enthusiasts. They're the ones who probably want more messages from you.Identifying those subscribers brings a lot of other benefits, too.
You can, for example...
- reward them for their support
- get feedback on what drives their special interest and loyalty
- give them tools, incentives and encouragement to spread the word: your best subscribers are the ones most likely to talk about you to friends and colleagues (and on social networks)
A potential stumbling block, though, is this: how exactly do you identify a "top" or "active" or "engaged" or "premium" or "best" subscriber?
That's not a rhetorical question - if you wanted to pull out an "engaged" segment, how would you go about it?
The enthusiast-only link
Andrew mentions one tactic that deserves wider exposure. He cites Bowers and Wilkins, who:
"...identified brand advocates as those who had shown good recent open and click through frequency and specifically those who had been reading a new B&W Lab article."
"The Lab articles go into some technical detail on the key Bowers and Wilkins subject of sound quality. Anyone reading those articles is very closely aligned to the Bowers and Wilkins brand." (My emphasis.)
Think about that.
How about deliberately adding a link or two to your next email that you know can only appeal to your real enthusiasts? Then use click tracking to pull out the associated email addresses.
In a sense, this reverses traditional email marketing practice.
B2B email newsletters, for example, are (rightly) advised not to put in banal information about the company. People want offers and content that help them do their job better, not pictures of your new office roof garden.
Except maybe your enthusiasts do want to see pictures of your new office roof garden.
Perhaps you can add an "our story" link to your template for an email or three? People clicking on that are likely your biggest fans.
Of course, you already have some "enthusiast-only" links in your existing emails: who clicks on "send-to-a-friend" or "share this" links?
Who takes the feedback surveys?
Who updates their subscription preferences? (Particularly, who sent an email asking you to change their email address?)
Who wanted to win a t-shirt emblazoned with your logo?
All these actions are hints that the person in question is more engaged than the average subscriber.
Metric patterns
Andrew also discusses applying RFM (recency, frequency, monetary value) analysis concepts to email metrics.
It makes intrinsic sense that a particular pattern of opens, clicks and post-click behavior can reflect a level of engagement or interest.
The devil is in the details, of course: how you define "engaged" or "best" in terms of clicks etc. depends on your email model, business model and audience.
Just a couple of comments though...
First, be wary of using opens as a proxy for interest/engagement.
I don't want to get into the open/render rate debate, but suffice to say a lot of my email registers an open simply because the tracking pixel renders faster (just) than I can hit the delete button.
Second, you will need to adjust your expectations of an engaged subscriber according to the nature and frequency of the email you send out.
If you email once a month, an engaged reader might be one that clicks on at least half your emails. If you email someone daily, it might be one that clicks at least once a week. You need different definitions to fit your unique situation.
Third, don't forget the impact of subscriber longevity.
The temptation is to define "engaged" as someone who clicked on a significant proportion of the last X emails. But this misses some engaged folk and tags some as engaged that aren't. Why?
Assuming you set the right expectations at sign-up, new subscribers generally have higher response rates than older subscribers. So you'll scoop a lot of new subscribers into your "engaged" segment.
Yes, they are engaged, but not in a proven long-term sense.
So send new subscribers a dedicated series of welcome emails to exploit their initial high interest, but don't treat them as your top enthusiasts until you have more proof.
If responses drop off the longer someone is on a list, then a new "engaged" subscriber will click more often than an old "engaged" subscriber, even though both are equally enthusiastic about your business or products.
If you agree, then you might want to modify the criteria for tagging someone as engaged according to the length of time they've been on your list.
The longer they've been with you, the less often they need to click (or take some other action) to qualify.
So, how do you (or would you) define your best subscribers?
More on targeting and segmentation | Tags: email marketing, segmentation
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
Permalink | March 11, 2009 | 0 comment(s) - add yours!
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