Mar 4, 2016
What is the expected customer response rate to email marketing?
We send out a monthly newsletter with highlights, promotions, and trending styles for the salon. We have about 300 subscribers. It seems like most of our new customers come from word of mouth or customer referral. The monthly newsletter is expensive to maintain and send out if no business is coming from it. What are some average stats to expect from an email like this to help me determine if it is worth keeping?
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Mar 5, 2016
Hi Lexi!
Email marketing metrics can differ based on industry. Often times email marketing can be another way to stay in touch with customer and remind them of your great service. I would evaluate your current emails and see if there is too much content in a monthly newsletter. Are people clicking? Are they even opening? Sometimes increasing emails to two a month with one featuring an employee or client testimonial which the other gives customers an offer such as a discount can increase engagement.
If after you evaluate current efforts and see no improvement, I would consider your ROI on your time and if there are better ways to market with increase customers, then focus your time on those tasks.
Hope that helps!
Charlotte Chipperfield. CEO of Chipperfield Media LLC.
Mar 4, 2016
Lexi: A few questions...what is your objective with your newsletter (drive sales, engender customer loyalty, or something else)? What do you consider expensive to maintain? Most marketers value having a list to facilitate a direct dialog with their prospects and clients. Are you considering the lifetime value of a customer? One thing I might suggest is to investigate card linked marketing with a company like Cardlytics. You can target competitor's clients in you local geography (ones actually spending money on similar services) and put offers in front of them to use your services instead. This type of marketing averages over a 15% take rate on offers.
Mar 9, 2016
Hi Scott, my objective for the newsletter is to promote new products we bring into the salon and increase sales there. Our email newsletter is for existing clients. We collect their email when they book an appointment with us. So any deals we can give our clients that gets them back to the salon more often or reminds them to book with us for their next appointment. Thanks for the advice, I will look into it.
Mar 4, 2016
It depends. On some things I run, I get a 10-20% open rate. On others a 30% to 40% and on others, barley 10%. It depends on your market, your message and whether that message contains something the prospect needs or wants right now.
Do you send out anything else during the month? Studies and my experience shows that you need to be something at least weekly. Are you sure your list is made up of those who need or want your services?
A marketing assessment would clearly help you define and clarify your marketing.
Mar 4, 2016
I am not sure if “open rate” counts other than showing the person opened the email. People can open and then delete your email, but it still counts as “open”. Also “open rate” is highly inaccurate as not all web servers will send you the signal due to security and many mail applications block remote content.
So whilst I suspect your “open rate” is far higher than you see in your reports, in my experience it does not really mean success. The only real measure is “Click Through” to links or “Action” that leads to revenue opportunity (Download, Register, Enquire, etc.). You can also track your web analytics to see if you see a spike in visitors numbers when emails go out which gives you a good indication of success in pulling in visitors. I think relying on “open rate” may be giving the senders false hope & wrong signals.
Mar 4, 2016
Hi Lexi,
The expected response rate is less than 10% although I personally average above that. I think it is simply a matter of targeting the right people with the right service/message. SO it takes time to get your list to work more efficiently.
I am curious what you are doing that is making your monthly newsletter so expensive? In my experience the monthly newsletter shouldn't cost you hardly anything. Maybe you could send me a private message and we could discuss it further?
Mar 4, 2016
Hi Lexi, the best you can hope for is 1%-2% if your newsletter is well-targeted. However, you need to take a step back and think from the customers perspective.
Timing: What day of the week do you send your newsletter out?
- Forget Monday (catching up on the last week and weekend spill over)
- Forget Friday (TGIF – people are psychologically unplugged and going home for the weekend)
- Weekend depends on your business but if your business lends itself to Facebook & social media your efforts are best focused over there than in a newsletter.
- That leaves you with you with Tue-Wed-Thu, so not much window of opportunity and then you are fighting for attention for 100's of other companies trying to sell their product or service!
Content:
Most people write about them or their company so is all about “ME ME ME”. The client doesn't care as they are thinking about “Me Me Me”. So unless you address subjects of interest to them and then give them a reason to act (Special Offer, Money off Coupon, Freebie product, etc.) then they will ignore it. Sorry but OUR business is not important to THEM!
You have to make it about THEM.
Call to Action
Refinement of the above. Why should they respond? What is it that should make them want to Click on that link or pick up the phone and call you? If you can't see that, they won't see it either.
Expectations
Newsletters are not always about generating leads. Sometimes they serve to keep your name in front of their mind. Seeing your name and communications means you become part of their subconscious so recognition and awareness pays off in the long run.
Numbers
300 is not big enough for you to get much response. Even if you double the average response and get 4% it is only 12 responses. Will that be enough to justify the costs? I don't know as it depends on your product price and margins. As a Web Design company we would love 12 leads because the margins and value is high enough to justify it, but if you are selling low value or margin product or service, then it is not near enough.
I hope this helps.
Mar 6, 2016
I have Learned that Email Marketing has a remarkable ROI. But your words doesn't seems to mean better ROI??
Mar 9, 2016
Thank you so much for the detailed response. A few things that stood out right away is that I send the newsletter out on Friday, and our content is focused on highlighting a new stylist each week. We do offer promotions and discounts on selected products, so I could always put more emphasis on that and switch the focus to our clients. Thanks again, I am looking forwarding to reviewing this more later.
Mar 4, 2016
Hi - it somewhat depends on how close your social group on email is. When I ran a used equipment business we had over 100,000 emails, and we got a consistent 12-15% open rate. However, click through rate was lower, maybe 3-5%, But in email groups that are closer knit, and I would expect customers in a salon are that way, you might get higher rates. The easiest way to find out is to use some snippets to track your emails. If you are not doing that already, you should. Most of the big email providers like ConstantContact and MailChimp have those type of stats built in and are very useful.
Mar 6, 2016
It all comes down to the value and importance of what you have to say. As we are all overloaded with emails, it better be extremely high value and written / designed real sharply to even be opened. Otherwise you're just another inbox bombardier :)
Regular communication via social media may be a less invasive and effective alternative.
Mar 11, 2016
Newsletter are important for a few reasons. They make a statement that you are still in business. It is also a good way to share upcoming events. You can also announce new people, products or services. If you are making sales announcements make sure that the headline is visible when you open the email. That is your response article, so it should be featured. Also send it to media contacts with a connection to your industry.
Mar 11, 2016
I don't know what is expected. I get between 22 and 30% open rates and from 1-2% clicks on links in the emails.
Mar 11, 2016
Hi Lexi,
Your expected customer response rate will vary from industry to industry. I have some stats that I can share with you if you are more specific about the type of industry that you are in.
Also, I would take a look at the type of content that you are sharing with your email list. You should be sending out sales information, new products/services, etc.
You could either be sending out too many emails, or possibly not enough to be consistent or to stay front of mind.
Also, if you have not already, I would set up a transactional based email campaign that interacts with your email list based on when they last came into the salon, purchased something, etc.
All of these can help increase your conversion rate with your email program.
I hope this helps.
Kat
Thank you Charlotte, great advice!