Are Best Practices “Too Hard”?
June 13, 2008 – 8:34 pmI had to laugh when I first read the headline of the eec blog “Are Best Practices Too Hard?” They’re best practices - they are there to create a baseline for the minimum you need to do in order to stay on the positive side of email marketing.
After reading the stats highlights that Stephanie Miller points out, I realize that maybe they’re not just the basics at other companies.
1. A majority (60%) of the companies in our survey did not send a welcome message. Of the 40% that did send a welcome message, only 33% sent it within 24 hours. The remaining 7% took anywhere from two days to three weeks.
2. The shock of the missing welcome messages was compounded by the astonishing number of companies—30%!—who didn’t send any email within a month of sign up. While the majority did start sending email soon after subscribe, engagement—which is key in the first 30-days—was lacking.
3. 70% of companies asked for a lot of data (name, address, birthday, and so on) at subscribe, and the bulk of them (75%) never used it. This “just in case” mentality is not a good experience for subscribers that are forced to complete long forms and preferences when the potential benefit is never realized.
4. Even across four very different industry verticals, the marketing offers (Free Shipping! Discount! Sweepstakes!) were surprisingly the same. Often these types of offer strategies are self-fulfilling and addictive. Why not use valuable content to drive readership and stand out from the crowd?
Read more from the eec’s blog.