 How much contact will your email recipients tolerate before hitting that spam button or ignoring you? Is twice a week too much? But what if once a week is too little? Could sending two emails to the same email recipient in the same 24 hour period be a good strategy?
We at Lyris have been doing some testing on the effect of different email message types on email recipient frequency tolerance. The results are surprising. Initial findings show that the right combination of service messages and marketing messages can allow much more frequent communication, and even increases your response rates and conversions.
Two same-day email marketing experiments executed with Gwan Yip and Amanda Metcalfe of fashion retailer koodos have produced thought-provoking results.
Email Marketing Experiment A - Two different product offers
An email campaign promoting the MENS range was sent to the Female segment on the same day as the normal WOMENS range email campaign.
The Female segment is composed of those who have told us they are female through our welcome programme, or those who have a female title (customers).
 Friday Morning, Clearance sale day - Email #1:
This WOMENS range email was sent to the Female segment. (click on image to view full size)
Email Deliverability: 99.8%
Open rate: 2% above average for gender targeted email
Click-through rate: 4% above average
Conversion rate: average for targeted clearance email
Unsubscribe rate: average
 Friday Afternoon, Clearance sale day - Email #2:
This MENS range email was also sent to the Female segment on the same day. (click on image to view full size)
Email Deliverability: 99.8%
Open rate: 2% above average for gender targeted email
Click-through rate: 3% above average with lower total clicks than WOMENS email
Conversion rate: average for targeted clearance email with lower total revenue than WOMENS email
Unsubscribe rate: average
Key results of email marketing Experiment A
1) It is important to note the fact that the unsubscribe rate on the MENS range email is average. If our Female recipients had considered this email to be inappropriate or irrelevant, we would have seen an increase in the unsubscribe rate and the complaint rates from Hotmail and Yahoo. Instead, we saw average responses on these metrics and normal email deliverability across both mailings. This shows that, for this particular list segment, sending two email marketing campaigns in one day does not provoke a negative reaction.
2) Looking at the two mailings as part of one "clearance campaign", we increased our total unique open rate to 8% above average. We more than doubled the predicted number of transactions and Web activity, and nearly doubled predicted revenue. This is clearly a winning campaign.
It is interesting to compare the profile of the open rate over time for the two mailings:
koodos Open Rate: Womens Range Mailing to Female Segment
This is a normal pattern for WOMENS content to the Female segment
koodos Open Rate: Mens Range Mailing to Female Segment
This mailing had repeated spikes of interest over the weekend and particularly on the days of the following week.
Effects of sending two different product offers on the same day
We made the assumption that the Female segment would be interested in the WOMENS range rather than the MENS range. The response rates for targeting range to gender have been good for the past 12 months, during which time the Female segment had not had much email exposure to the MENS range. However, the results of this experiment showed that our Female segment is interested in the MENS range as well. This is borne out by the increased Web activity and wider range of products purchased from the MENS email.
These results may have been different if the Female segment had been defined by declared interest "I am interested in your WOMENS range", or previous behaviour (those who had clicked through on WOMENS range items in an email or spent significant time on WOMENS pages on the site).
The time of day (morning and afternoon) may also have had an impact on these results. In order to eliminate the effects of this variable we should set up two control groups:
Is it possible that mailing twice in one day actually had a beneficial effect too? 61% of those who had opened the MENS range email had also opened the WOMENS range email. The reaction to receiving two in one day seems to have elicited a response strongly towards “Wow there’s lots going on at koodos!” rather than “That’s too much contact from koodos”.
The most important result of this experiment was that 42% of people who engaged with the MENS range email, but not the WOMENS range email in the morning, had not opened a koodos email in the previous 60 days. This means that we were able to re-engage a significant number of recipients with the fresh content of the MENS range.
Email Marketing Experiment B - Two different message types
The results of Experiment A tie in with the results of a previous experiment wherein two messages of a different type were sent to the same koodos email list on the same day.
 Email #1:
The Festival Fever clearance sale email to the right was sent in the morning. (click on image to view full size)
Deliverability: average
Open rate: average
Click-through rate: average
Conversion rate: above average
Unsubscribe rate: average
 Email #2:
The Lulu Guinness early sale access email to the right was also sent to the same recipients at midday. (click on image to view full size)
Deliverability: average
Open rate: average
Click-through rate: average
Conversion rate: above average; revenue was excellent.
Unsubscribe rate: average
Effects of sending two different email message types on the same day
Here again we see no negative impact on the unsubscribe rate or delivery, and we see very positive open repetition and engagement. In this case the email is not a different product offering, but a different type of email. We have a single designer and early access to a sale of a particular range. This type of email is perceived more as an alert and therefore as a "service message" rather than the "sales message" of the Festival Fever clearance email. We have seen similar results with same-day email marketing campaigns for other fashion retailers such as NET-A-PORTER - service messages such as What’s New in Stock for you today can be sent in close proximity to more editorial-style messages.
Our conclusions are that we need to re-examine and test our understanding of the currently accepted orthodoxy on email frequency. This will, of course vary by sector, and fashion is a sector where there are a lot of developments and news. Perhaps we should start from the principle that recipients who are genuinely engaged will be happy to hear genuine quality news regardless of whether it is twice a day or twice a week.
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