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Don’t Forget to Phone Your Aunt
Everyone likes a helpful reminder. We’re grateful when someone reminds us that it’s our sister’s birthday, or our favorite store is having a sale. But we’re not as keen on our mother’s imprecations to dress more warmly or phone Aunt Agatha. It’s the same with email: some reminders are useful and welcome, while others fall on deaf (aka unsubscribe-prone) ears.
We’ve found that good reminders yield high render and click rates and very few unsubscribes, while poorly honed reminder emails don’t connect and sometimes result in a slew of unsubscribes.
Your Email Pal: When Do Reminder Emails Succeed?
Reminder emails work when they are meaningful, timely, relevant and, above all, wanted. For example, when we like a brand or promotion, we’re happy to receive a reminder that a sale is ending. For B2B communications, that’s similar to a conference registration, or call for speakers.
The first step is writing a meaningful subject line so that your audience knows they are being reminded—and being informed of something relevant. The content and messaging is also important. For the most part, reminder emails work best when they are short, sweet and to the point.
The Email That Cried Wolf: When Do Reminder Emails Fail?
Reminder emails are less effective when they are blunter instruments, ill-timed, too frequent, or not relevant to or wanted by the receiver. No one wants multiple reminders about the same thing. Similarly, we get bored by re-cycled content or emails that are badly targeted.
For B2C marketers, it’s important to remember that sale and promotion extensions and frequent reminders may serve only to deafen your audience, or sound like you’re nagging them, or undermine your real, targeted messaging. The same is true in the B2B space, where multiple reminders simply sound like nagging or a desperate effort to get you to do something.
Reminder Rules
Keep subject lines and copy meaningful, make sure the content is relevant to the audience, and keep the email short and to the point. Let your recipients know that they are receiving a one-time reminder, or if they are in a series, be up front about that. You have to let the customer know that you’re not mindlessly re-sending the same copy to the same list.
Segmentation works. It’s important to make your email segmentation transparent. Email Transmit recently sent a reminder email for NBC Universal that went only to recipients who had not clicked on a special promotion. eHarmony incorporates segmentation in subject lines, which state simply, “You haven’t read our emails lately.”
Permission Reminders
Some of the most welcome reminder emails are ones we ask for. Witness Amazon’s birthday list (receive an email a week before it’s your mum’s birthday), or Zappos “Notify Me” brand notices, which let you know when a particular product and size combination becomes available.
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Savvy marketers know that relevance is more important than frequency, and quality trumps quantity. Reminder emails are no exception. Done right, they can work for you, but a poor reminder email sends the wrong message and sends subscribers running for the digital hills.
Tags: bestpractices, promotion, Reminder email, segmentation, series, strategy, subject line
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