We have had great success in improving list open and click rates through the use of a simple segmentation technique ANYONE should be able to do: create a list of emails most-likely to be opened on weekends, and then send your message to them on, well, the weekend! This technique has increased the open/click rates of these addresses by up to 50%, and when those results are merged into their overall list open and click rates – the improvement is often 15% or more.
Here’s the logic and how-to for this:
- Most people have more than one email address, often signing up for Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and other free web-based email addresses in addition to their ‘work’ address.
- In an effort to keep their work-inbox clutter free, people often subscribe to “I’ll get to it when I’m not swamped” content via these web-based email accounts.
- We’ve all been guilty of using these secondary addresses to sign up for newsletters and “more information” from businesses we’re interested in – but not quite ready to buy. Plus, we all have very little time to deal with emails during the business day, so reading detailed emails and clicking through to offers, educational information, and articles of interest is better suited to go into an account we can check on in the evenings and weekends.
So, the concept is simple:
- create a list of your subscribers where the domains are from web-based ISPs, and send your messages to them on the weekends
- broadcast your normal communications to the remainder of your list during the workday.
The results are astonishing. The ‘weekend’ list can have up to double the open/click rate versus being sent during the work week. It’s incredbily simple, logical, and silly not to do. Try it and report back to us your success story – and we’ll pass it along.
