Last week, I focused the first part of the email series on thinking about who your emails come from, and how you should approach the classic “signer’ issue in emails.

 This week, we are going to focus on the missed opportunities by not properly following up on email communications.

I’ve worked with many clients that spend countless hours creating and writing the email appeals or newsletters but stop thinking about it once the ’send’ button has been pressed. Many systems have automated responses that will trigger when the email recipient takes some sort of action – but most of these systems don’t even track those responses or even the open rates.

It is crucial that you have a follow-up strategy for every email that you send.

After your initial send you should track the email stats (open rates, click throughs, response or conversions, and unsubscribes) to determine how long your email has life – usually about three days if sent early in the week, or four days if sent later in the week. At this point you should be sending a follow up communication to those that didn’t open the email on the first send. You will definitely see some additional lift in responses to the campaign – and you really haven’t annoyed the recipient because they didn’t open the email in the first place. When you DO send this follow up, make sure that you address the reason for resending the email, don’t just resend the original.

Also think about testing a subject line at this point as well – you will have a better audience to test an open rate with a group of people that didn’t open the first time.

Several weeks after the initial email communication (and subsequent emails) PLEASE send a thank you follow up. Do NOT consider your autoresponse emails as a thank you – even if you thank them in that email. The autoresponse email is really just an action receipt. (do YOU open autorespsonder emails after an action?) You will be suprised that many recipients may take a second action at this time, and if not, they will remember the thank you at a later date. Make sure this thank you email summarizes your campaign or the actions taken and how the recipient really contributed.

With this email follow up plan, it’s also good to keep a keen eye on your unsubscribe rates to see if you are causing recipients to drop off your list – chances are the numbers may rise a bit, but you are also cleaning up your list of non-responders at the same time.

So, in short summary – think before you send, and then think again.

Filed under: Agency, Email Marketing, Non-Profits on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 by Serengeti Communications | No Comments
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