ANDREWKIMBALL.COM

The impetus for this post is a recent Return Path (RP) article on the clients’ e-mail marketing habits.  There, they found that a majority of marketers continued to “sent[d] email at a steady, high frequency for a 19-month period, despite a total lack of response from the subscriber (no opens, no clicks, no purchases).”  This was no surprise to me as it can be quite difficult to manage complicated frequency / timing / creative optimization e-mail programs.  RP continued to go into all the woes and drawbacks of such a practice, but an seasoned e-mail marketer should already know them.  The name a few, mailing inactive consumers is BAD because:

• You pay for e-mail that is not wanted or engaging to the end-user
• Engagement metrics (e.g. open ratio) for the IP look worse than they need to be
• You risk mailing to converted SPAM traps
• You risk tarnishing your band’s reputation because you are not paying attention to the interest of the end-user

etc. etc etc.

Interestingly enough though, Datran Media, a company I used to work for, has the technology to solve these sorts of problems in an often automated fashion.  In any case, I figured I’d mention the article so that I could drop a plug for them since they have been making mailing decisions based on consumer interaction for quite some time.

Note: I am sure that many other companies have similar technology.  This post does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation to work with Datran Media and I accept no liability. Do your own research when choosing a vendor!