Maximise customer response rates

Don't settle for mediocre results on your e-mail marketing campaigns. Through effective customer sampling, you can pinpoint what makes a recipient more likely to respond, and thereby increase your return on investment.

Mia Papanicolaou, Head of eMarketing at electronic messaging specialist, Striata, says the success of an e-mail campaign is measured by the achievement of the required customer response, whether measured in open and click rates or attributed sales.

“Every company's customer base will react differently to an e-mail campaign. In order to achieve the best possible response rate, campaigns should be tested on samples of the base to assess what works best, before embarking on the full campaign,” she says.

Papanicolaou stresses that marketers can improve the effectiveness of their e-mail campaigns by pre-testing them. This can be done by sending two different e-mails with the same core message to a sample of customers. If one element proves stronger than another, the more effective one gets incorporated into the final campaign. “This will ultimately result in a higher customer response rate. The immediacy of the results is one of the many benefits of e-mail marketing.”

E-mail allows marketers to track open and click rates. The insight gained from pre-testing will allow marketers to gauge the effectiveness of:

* Subject lines
* Creative layout
* Best day and time to send

“A 'one size fits all' approach has no place in electronic marketing,” says Papanicolaou. “Each company is unique and each customer base will react differently according to the message being communicated and the relationship they have with the sender.

“Marketers must embrace flexibility and adjust campaigns in response to the behaviour of your customers. Industry standards are important for benchmarking, but rather base improvements on lessons learnt from your own campaigns,” Papanicolaou concludes.