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August 2004
Five strategies for maximizing
e-mail benchmark rates
Despite new anti-spam legislation, permission-based business-to-business e-mail messages are
enjoying open and click-through rates (CTRs) that have never been higher.
Strong performance on message delivery is helping drive these results. According to a report
earlier this summer from the ClickZ Network, an online resource for interactive marketing news and information, business publishers are among the leaders with a delivery-rate average of 91.6%. That means more
than nine out of 10 of their messages reach targeted readers’ e-mail queues without being “bounced.”
The ClickZ report was particularly encouraging for financial services companies, which saw their
average click-through rate rise to 11.8% for the first quarter of 2004 compared to 7.8% for first quarter 2003.
Careful adherence to professional standards in e-mail delivery practices is likely the key
factor in these impressive statistics. The following are some suggestions for ensuring that your target audience receives, opens and reads a high percentage of your B2B marketing e-mail messages:
Adhere to permission-based rules
Start by sending e-mail messages only to businesses
that have given their permission.
There are clear rules for what constitutes a permission-based e-mail message. At a minimum,
recipients must proactively “opt in” to receive your messages. That means they must voluntarily provide their e-mail address to you for the explicit purpose of receiving messages from you and you alone.
One way to ensure that readers have opted in is to seek a “double opt-in.” You can send new
subscribers a confirmation of their new subscriber status and give them the opportunity to unsubscribe should they change their mind or realize they have subscribed in error.
Another feature of a permission-based message is a one-click option to unsubscribe at any time.
This feature promotes a consensual atmosphere in your communications while helping to protect your message from spam-blocking software.
Maintain a ‘clean’ e-mail list
According to Return Path, an e-mail performance
management company, the average e-mail address lifespan is about three years. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often recycle old addresses to new users or add them to “spam trap” filters. If you send a message
that falls into a “trap,” all future messages that you send to anyone using that ISP may be intercepted as spam before the intended recipient sees them.
One way to counteract losing subscribers who may change their e-mail address is to designate an
area within your e-mail message for subscribers to easily update their profile.
Your tracking software also should advise you of any “hard bounces” or permanently undeliverable
addresses. You need to remove or update hard bounces on a regular basis, as some ISPs block messages from senders with high hard-bounce rates. Your IT department can perform these updates, or you can outsource
them to an e-mail address update service.
Ask to be ‘white-listed’
If your organization does frequent or high-volume e-mail
campaigns, you may wish to get a seal of approval from some of the more popular ISPs indicating that you are compliant with anti-spam legislation. The granting of such approval status is called “white-listing.”
Unfortunately, while it sounds good in theory,
most ISPs are too understaffed to complete the approval process for the numerous requests they receive for this status. Thus, Web experts are predicting that soon white-listing will no longer be available.
Engage your readers
Engage readers with “news they can use” rather than promotional
content. Doing so will not only keep subscribers coming back but may also motivate them to forward your message to others. (See MarketScope, July 2004,
for a detailed report on viral marketing.) Customer-centric subject lines and content are much more likely to survive junk mail and spam filters, which often block messages that include promotional or
sales-oriented terms.
Add hyperlinks to promote click-throughs
As readers work their way through your
documents, give them more opportunities to click on hyperlinks. If you give readers a quick blurb about additional content, and if the content is relevant to them, there is a good chance they will click through.
An at-a-glance format offering a smorgasbord of information works particularly well for
financial services providers with multiple business lines of interest to a single reader base. Offering a selection of topics increases the chances of peaking reader interest while showcasing the breadth of your
institution’s expertise.
Our own experience in providing customer-centric content to financial services clients has shown
us time and again that these practices yield solid, trackable results. In fact, many of our clients experience open rates of more than 90%, about double the industry average for financial institution
e-communications.
FPS regularly works with financial services companies to maximize the impact of e-mail and online communications. If you would like to discuss with FPS President Vince DiPaolo strategies for
increasing delivery, open or click-through rates on your client communications, please contact him at 847-501-4120 or vince.dipaolo@fpsc.com. You can also write
him at the following address:
Financial Publishing Services Co.
464 Central Avenue
Suite 8
Northfield, IL 60093
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