Roy Wollen, the managing consultant at Database Insight, constantly has to battle his clients when it comes to who receives their e-mail their marketing messages.
“I struggle with my clients when they say they have an e-mail address, so why shouldn’t they mail it,” Wollen said last week during a session at the NCDM show.
Batch and blast may help you saturate a customer base, he said. But it can lead to all sorts of problems—including the loss of your privilege to further e-mail your customers.
Here’s why Wollen said you need to segment your e-mail lists and not do the old batch and blast, throwing e-mail addresses to the wall and hoping they will stick.
First off, many customers opt in for e-mail programs, and then forget what they opted into. Even then, Wollen said the majority of opt ins never result in any subsequent opens or clicks.
Plus, the blasting of irrelevant e-mails will wear out your list, Wollen said.
Over mailing to your names will encourage customer opt-outs and spam-outs through Internet service providers. And if the spam outs attract the attention of the ISPs, they very well can get you blacklisted, which means you may lose your right to mail to customers who really do want to hear from you.
Wollen says there is some good news though—there is a portion of your e-mail list that is very responsive to e-mail marketing, and that sliver could mean a jump in sales.
But if your message isn’t going to be relevant to that e-mail buyer, don’t test the waters.