Rise in Email Targeting Doesn’t Mean Decline in Volume

The need to replace generic email “blasts” with targeted messaging was an industry rallying cry during the past year. Sending fewer but more-relevant emails, the pundits declared, would lift open and clickthrough rates and reduce spam complaints, which in turn would improve senders’ reputations among the ISPs and therefore improve deliverability.

Why, then, did the number of promotional emails sent by top online retailers increase 16% last year?

According to Responsys’s “Retail Email Year-End Trends for 2010” white paper, the retailers tracked by its Retail Email Blog sent each subscriber an average of 152 emails last year, up 16% from 2009.

So much for the “less is more” approach, eh?

Yes and no, says Responsys research director Chad White, who wrote the report. A number of marketers are sending more but smarter emails. “Some of your list is going to be receptive to having more, because they love you. And others are less engaged and don’t want as much.” The savviest companies are determining which subscribers fall into which category, by monitoring engagement with emails and enabling subscribers to determine how often they receive messages, and contacting them accordingly.

Then, too, “there’s a very clear macrotrend toward email marketing and away from direct marketing,” White says. “The recession has put more emphasis on email as an effective, tried-and-true channel.”

All of which means that, despite what the increase in volume might suggest, it’s more important than ever to stop blanketing your entire subscriber file with generic promotional emails. In fact, because of the ever-increasing volume, it’s more important to segment your file and modify the cadence of your messaging for particular audience sectors.

“Higher volume and ISPs bifurcating the inbox point to the need for greater relevancy,” White says.

The “bifurcating” in question is the continuing trend among ISPs of not only determining whether inbound messages should be placed in the recipient’s junk folder vs. inbox, but also whether the messages destined to the inbox should go in a priority folder or a second-tier “everything else” holding pen. Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo! are among the ISPs that are using each customer’s unique engagement metrics—open rates, clickthrough rates—with messages from particular senders to determine how to prioritize future emails from those senders.

“A few years ago the discussion was how to stay out of the junk folder,” White notes. “Now the important discussion is how to get into that must-read portion of the inbox. Staying out of the junk folder clearly isn’t enough anymore.”

One step toward increasing engagement metrics—and with them, revenue—is to look back at what worked during the past Christmas season and to apply those efforts not only during the next Christmas season but during other key seasonal periods as well. For instance, if you found that footers consolidating all your Christmas season shipping deadlines helped lift sales, consider adding similar footers in the run-up to Easter, Mother’s Day, and the like.

Another is to focus more on designing emails for mobile-friendly viewing. “There’s a long way to go for that,” White says. He points to small font sizes, two-column and overly wide messages, and insufficient spacing around links as particular areas that need attention when adapting emails for mobile devices.

White expects email volume to once again increase by the low double-digits this year. But at the same time, he predicts that this could well be the year in which marketers that rely solely on broadcast marketing messages will see a significant drop in effectiveness while those that segment and target wisely will see a corresponding increase in metrics and sales.

“If we’re not already there with the marketing division between the haves and have-nots [in terms of using engagement-driven metrics to better target email], with a clear schism in terms of performance,” he says, “we soon will be.”