The Dirty Little Secret of Aggressive Email Marketing: Sacrificing the Future for Today’s Deposits

Email marketing appears to be the most effective tool in your workshop. It is so efficient and easy that many marketers put it on autopilot. They create a fill in the blank sale template. Then they complete it with slightly different discount information every send. They offer 15% off in one email; free shipping in the next.

Little do they know, behind the glitz of low cost revenue generation, it is insidiously eroding customer lifespan and lifetime value. There are warning signs, but they are buried in the data. Surface analytics like opens, clicks, response rates, and revenue won’t reveal underlying problems. You have to dig deeper.

The dirty little secret of aggressive email marketing is that it sacrifices long term growth for short term gains. Customers grow tired of continuous sales promotions so they mass delete, opt out, report as spam or simply ignore your emails. While the opt outs and spam reports show up in most surface analytics, they may not carry enough weight to get your attention. If they average only a few per thousand customers, it doesn’t seem like much.

But what if the new customers’ annual contribution is significantly less than the old ones?

By the time it shows up on the financials, irreparable damage has occurred. Instead of waiting to see the long term effect, wouldn’t it be better to resolve the issues now? Here are some steps to get you started:

• Create emails that really matter to your customers. It’s about them, not you. Your benefits come after you serve their needs.
• Know your customers’ expected lifespan and lifetime value overall and segmented. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
• Monitor your attrition by individual customers. If they are opting out of your email program, they are probably leaving your company.
• Implement a retention program to keep customers from leaving. They are more likely to stay if you give them a reason. (Yes, this is a DUH statement. But, some people still don’t get it.)

Don’t let your customers go quietly into the night. Reach out to them. Your best case scenario is that you get them back. Worst case, you learn why they are leaving so you can fix it. That’s a classic win-win.

For more information on how to improve your email marketing, read:
Email Optimization: How Simple Changes Increase Open Rates, Click Through, Response, & Average Order Size

And, check out our email marketing playbooks:

Email Treasure Map

How to Move from the Outbox to the Shopping Cart
(Improving customer relations and profitability along the way)

Spam Triggers
How to Avoid the Spaminators and Land Safely in Your Customers’ Inbox

Email Strategy Checklist

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing: Building Relationships One Send at a Time
2. The Top 7 Reasons Why Customers & Prospects Aren’t Responding to Your Email Marketing
3. Why Email Marketing Doesn’t Work as Well as It Could
4. 5 Ways to Avoid Dirty Data (& Keep Egg Off Your Face)
5. How to Stand Out in an Email Crowd