The Power of Resending Email Campaigns to Non-opens Published February 19, 2018 Low engagement rates are every email marketer’s nightmare. The hours spent perfecting a campaign just don’t seem worth it for a handful of opens. But could resending a few days later increase engagement? In this blog post, we explore the power of resending email campaigns to subscribers who didn’t open the first time. Read on to understand how this simple tactic could improve your results. Does resending a campaign increase engagement? According to the Huffington Post, resending your unopened email a few days after the initial send can increase open rates by 30 percent. Resending a campaign is simple: just change the email subject line and only send to those who didn’t open the first time. It is a good idea to tweak the content layout or preview text slightly before you resend, in case your recipient eventually opens both emails. This will ensure they don’t think you’ve sent the same email twice which may prompt them to unsubscribe. Optimise your sending time To increase open rates even further, try using personalised sending times. This feature is powered by machine learning. Over time the technology learns the optimal time to send the email. Optimising send times in this way increases engagement rates. Your emails land in the inbox at the time your recipient is most likely to open and click through. How to resend to non-opens in PureCampaign It’s quick and easy to set up the “resend to non-opens” option in PureCampaign. When you’re scheduling your email, go to campaigns and select “schedule campaign”. First you need to select your list, then the message you would like to send. On the final page, you’ll see a section called “resend to non-opens”. Once you’ve selected “resend to non-opens” you then have the option to select how long you would like to wait until the resend starts. It is a good idea to leave it a few days before the resend starts. This gives recipients the chance to see the original email before sending them another one. You can also create a new subject line. It is a good idea to use a different one to the first to avoid repetition in your recipient’s inbox. Once it’s all set up, schedule your campaign as normal. When the set time comes, PureCampaign checks which subscribers have not opened the original email and resends the campaign to these people. Tips to increase open rate Resending email campaigns is an effective way to boost engagement for campaigns that haven’t performed as well as you’d like. But how can you improve initial performance? Personalisation is the best place to start. Sending highly personalised messages, tailored to specific audience segments makes them more relevant. Highly relevant messages, framed to resonate with the recipient’s needs and mind-set perform better. Personalisation entices subscribers to open and click through. Ultimately, this increases conversions and boosts revenue. According to Digital Capital Advisors, 86 percent of shoppers believe personalisation influences what they purchase to some extent. Here are six ways you can segment your data to personalise campaigns and increase engagement: 1) Demographic data Customers are more likely to engage with useful messages that improve their shopping experience. Demographic data helps you help your customers. Sending gender, location, or occupation-specific messages, makes your messages more useful. 2) Behavioural data Personalising your messages according to behaviour ensures they are timely and framed to resonate. Behavioural triggered emails can be sent in response to: email sign-up types of products browsed cart abandonment a customer lapsing 3) Engagement Another way to segment is by engagement. This is when you group people by when or how often they: open your emails click through to your website buy products Measuring these engagements helps you build segments according to engagement level. From here, you can create campaigns that are relevant to how engaged the segment is. 4) Buying cycle Customers need different information depending on what stage they’re at in the buying cycle. You can create segments and personalise content for them accordingly. For example, customers who have just discovered you might be interested in your ethos. Whereas those who are ready to purchase may want to compare the features of two products. Understanding your customers’ buying cycle stage and correlating needs helps you convey the most appropriate information. This is an effective way to ease them towards purchase. 5) Recency frequency monetary (RFM) Recency frequency monetary (RFM) segmentation is based on scoring the customer according to: when they last bought (recency) how often they purchase (frequency) their spend level (monetary) To build segments each factor is given a different weighting and an overall score is calculated. This tells you how valuable that customer is to you and allows you to create the most appropriate campaign for them. 6) Spend You can also build segments to personalise content to according to when and what your customers spend with you. Some people may spend frequently in low amounts, whereas others might make one high-value spend just once a year. One is not necessarily more valuable overall to your brand than the other. Understanding spend patterns helps you create the most relevant messages. Takeaway Resending your email campaigns to “non-opens” (with a few slight tweaks) can massively increase reach and engagement rates. Resend email automations are quick and easy to implement, so there’s no excuse not to give them a go. Try setting up a resend automation for your next email campaign and see how much your engagement increases. Resend campaigns are an effective great way to boost performance after your initial send, but personalisation is a smart way to improve your efforts first-time round. To start personalising your emails, you need to find the most effective ways to segment your data. Each of the methods explored may suit some brands more than others. Testing different approaches will help you refine your strategy and improve your results. Implementing resend automations and other personalisation is easy with the right email marketing technology in place. That’s where we come in. To see our technology in action, click the button below.