How to Please ‘Repeat Blasters’ Without Fatiguing Your Email Lists

Watt Publishing’s Wessel shares how removing names from promotional email blasts after each round can improve response and open rates.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Monday, July 6, 2009

At the 2009 AD Show last month, Jim Wessel, audience development director, Watt Publishing, shared some tactics for dealing with co-workers who insist on pummeling e-mail lists with endless promotions.

“We call him the ‘Repeat Blaster’ at work,” Wessel joked. “No one in the office knows what his real name is. He likes sending the same message every two days and you can’t change his mind. But he doesn’t know what I’m doing on the backside. All he knows is that his clients are happy.”

In order to keep the lists clean and organized, the audience development team at Watt Publishing categorize their e-mail addresses into four markets, each with their own IP address: Email newsletters, which only house company-driven emails; digital announcements, which come directly from the editor; subscriptions, which no one is allowed to touch but Wessel; and promotions.

For the “Repeat Blaster,” Wessel wanted to find a way to deliver the target audience without running the risk of fatiguing the list. So, he sent out a client-driven email promoting their products as a test to 10,000 addresses from the promotions channel.

Out of the emails sent, 2,000 were opened and 1,000 bounced. Instead of blasting the entire list again, he removed the opens and the bounces for a second round—and continued that pattern for three more rounds.

Even though the response rate went down after each round, so did the amount of complaints. “You could also see another pattern,” he said, “out of those that did respond, the number of people who responded positively was about the same. After we got down to the fourth round, the advertiser was ready to buy four more rounds because the results were good all the way through. He was also happy that he didn’t get any complaints.”

Wessel added that he’s found success with using the same type of test for the “guy that sells open rate percentages.” For this test, he sent out a company e-newsletter to 20,000 subscribers and 35 percent opened the email. Wessel removed the email addresses for those who did not open the message over a three-month period. For the second round, he sent out the email to 12,000 addresses and got a 58 percent open rate.

“Our philosophy is that if you didn’t open it, you’re not interested,” he said. “So we’re going to take you out of the mix. And not only did we save money with our e-mail vendor, but we also saved on traffic. Plus, our IP ratings went up because our open rates went up, so this is great for newsletters and monthly promotions.”