Think your B2B’s email list is “leaky”? It’s not just you…
October 16th, 2009 Posted by: Bill Gadless
As B2Bs, we rely greatly on email marketing to nurture and stay engaged with prospects and customers. So when an article like Jeanniey Mullen’s for ClickZ comes along, it can be very unsettling. But don’t blame Jeanniey; she was only summarizing stats compiled by the Email Experience Council …and here are some of those:
- Every year an average of 30 percent of the people who signed up for your email marketing list will not get your emails because their ISP (or IT department) will block them.
- 85 percent of the people on your email list will stop reading your emails (without bothering to unsubscribe) after… the third message your company sends them.
- An average of 39 percent of your current-year subscribers will either unsubscribe or stop reading/engaging with your emails by the end of that year.
- Over 10 percent of people who initially read your email on a handheld device will file it away, intending to take action …but never actually do so.
- About 15 percent of your list will read your emails and then look to a social network like Facebook or Twitter to see if others are buzzing about the message or offer before taking action.
Now, the Council’s survey obviously included numerous B2Cs; but even applying some reasonable deflation for that, the data are still pretty scary. Jeanniey says this all shows “…why you need to absolutely stay on top of your messaging strategy… With equity in the value of your company’s email coming within the first three sends, you cannot afford to mis-send a message.” We agree totally: relevance of content is the biggest single factor in keeping your subscribers on board; 2 or 3 “fluff” articles, and you’re likely to lose them forever.
Here are two other things you can do:
- Try a periodic light-touch telemarketing sweep …not about your product, but about your email series. “Did you see our recent article on how you can improve your PPC results? Would you like me to send it to you now? Perhaps you could add news@ourcompany.com to your “white list”; then you’d be certain to receive more good info like this from us.”
- Do a blog. A blog coupled with an RSS feed is functionally the same as your email series, and bypasses the whole spam-control issue. Yes, you need to be a notch softer-sell / more purely informational in the blog; but by way of compensation, it can also attract notice by industry influencers who would never opt in to your email newsletter.
Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy,email
