Reengagement emails

laura
Best practices
August 15, 2017

By default I don’t load images in email. For one thing it lets me see who is using open / click data to measure engagement. This morning I got a reengagement email from my Senator.

There are things I really like about this email and there are somethings I think they get a little wrong.

The good

This is a great subject line. I like the use of “ghosting” to describe what the email is about, and the inclusion of an emoji ghost. It all makes the subject line coherent and worthy of a click.
The other thing I really like about this is the large links, suitable for clicking on a mobile device. Really, people, some of us are old, have fat fingers or have phones with tiny text. Links, particularly for something like this, should be clickable on a phone.

The not so good

The not so good bit, though, is that I am reasonably engaged with my Senator’s emails. I mean, yeah, I don’t load images, but have clicked on some links in the past. Looking through my mailbox, the last time I clicked through on an email was June 9 or 10, just about 60 days before I got this message. That is more aggressive than I tend to recommend for most clients.

The weird

The weird bit is I’ve only received 2 messages since June 22, one of them being the re-engagement message. The other was an update related to my engagement activity on June 9. I know it’s August recess but the drastic downturn in volume coupled with a reengagement email makes me wonder if there isn’t something else going on.
Overall, this is a decent example of a reengagement email. It’s also a good example of a mobile email. I see designers fret about borders and alignment and never really see anyone discussing making links big enough to get your finger on. Really, I’ll take an ugly, unaligned email if it comes with a link big enough for me to click.

Well designed email program

I so often talk about the failures of various email marketing programs that it’s only fair I mention when someone gets it right.
We spent the past week with family on the east coast. Our flight back to the west coast was very, very early Sunday morning so I booked a night at the airport hotel. That way we could just stumble to the shuttle at some horrible hour and not worry about trying to coordinate drivers and cars and all that other stuff.
As we were headed to the airport, I pulled out my phone to confirm directions. I found a new message in my mailbox offering me the opportunity to check-in online. I decided to see how it worked.

Subscription transparency

I regularly tell clients to be transparent with their sends. With email, permission is better than forgiveness. A surprise change in mail frequency or type leads to complaints. Complaints lead to bulk foldering. Once mail is in the bulk folder, it’s hard to get out of there, particularly at some webmail providers.
The permission is better than forgiveness is hard for a lot of senders to understand. Much of marketing is about assuming the yes in the absence of a no. Sure, they’ll back off when there’s a no, in DMA terms it’s the “one bite at the apple rule.” Unfortunately for senders the one bite rule doesn’t work in the email space.
There are a couple reasons that permission is better than forgiveness in the email space. The biggest is that the ISPs own the mailbox and as the owners they make decisions about who gets access. They prioritize the wants and needs of their customers / users over the wants and needs of advertisers. It’s easy for users to give feedback; in many cases they just have to hit a button. But that’s another whole blog post.
Today I get an email from The Guardian. They’re modifying and expanding their newsletter program, so they sent subscribers an update about it.

iMessage Spam

iMessage is the Apple messaging system that lets folks send short messages to one another over WiFi. In December I received my first iMessage spam.
I’m not even really sure how to report it or how to report it to.
Mobile spam is a hot button issue right now, but the tools just aren’t around to control SMS, iMessage and TXT spam like there is with email. And even though sending unsolicited messages to a mobile device is against several laws here in the US, there does seem to be a core of spammers that continue to send.