The Email Wars

It is funny sometimes that companies just stop their email newsletters cold turkey. Often times it is due to the fact that they are just not sure as to why they are doing them, what the return is, internal resources dry up, the technology platform that they use becomes more of a chore to use than is worth the time, or there is a clear need to step back – take a look – and renew their efforts in a clear manner.

We see all of the above factors play into a newsletter stoppage but what do you do when you bring it back to life? I thought about this not only because a client of ours did just this recently, but I actually had another client make mention of this exact example to me this past week.

For any reason listed above, or one that I might have missed, you need to develop a clear positioning when you bring a newsletter back after some months of down time. I was happy to see our client do just this as they began to re-mail their newsletter opt in list after some time getting the ship back on track.

Take a look at the header article. In the RED box you will see a clear Welcome Back message with a explanation setting the expectations of when you are going to be getting these newsletters. Also as a added bonus they added (YELLOW BOX) a link to their social links on Twitter, facebook and more. But do notice as I think that it is important that they do not try to add every social platform link known to man. Keeping it simple and driving people to the two that they have committed to makes it work. The other box I noted (GREEN BOX) was flagged as after looking at the metrics it drives just as much click through action as the important article areas. This tells me that the readers are big on images when they want their news/articles.

Something that is a little off is the title of the newsletter. It calls itself the “weekly” but it is actually a daily ONLY because that is how I set up my preferences to be emailed when I opted in. Now simply changing that title in the template either in a static change or a dynamic text change based on preference would complete the clear messaging. I doubt many folks actually noticed that, but I did, so maybe some others saw the disconnect.

Interestingly enough this newsletter is getting amazing read and clicks driving people into the site. Not that I would not expect it to, but the interesting factor is that there is not a drop off point from the top to the bottom in click action. I went through a few weeks of emails to look for a change in the pattern, but thus far it is solid. Something I try to do with every client in the first weeks and months of a new email program is to take a simple audit of results and look for ways to improve the results. As of now I don’t have many changes that should be made to the creative in the email to increase performance. What I did find after requesting the site traffic reports to tie these two together was that they need to focus on driving the continuing action through the pages of their site. The visits focus on reading the 2-3 pages of the article and then they jump back to the email again to click on another story link. Maybe if they wanted to keep the reader on the site longer – instead of jumping back and forth – they could add those relevant articles to the side bar of next to the article clicked from. Not sure if it is possible, but worth a conversation.

Overall when you re-introduce an email back into a subscriber base that has been fallow for a short time, you need to make sure to reset the expectations in a clear manner. Getting back on the horse can be tough sometimes when it is unexpected. So think about what would engage you as an email markeitng professional and more importantly your readers/subscribers.