By Kevin Cuddihy
One July day, I woke up to an inviting offer in my email. Famous Dave’s, the barbecue chain restaurant, sent me a special offer: “Today only” I could get 20 percent off the entire check for lunch or dinner!
Awesome!
I came into work and persuaded a coworker to join me at the nearest Famous Dave’s, and we saved 20 percent on our lunches. What a deal! Then came the next day. I received another email from Famous Dave’s with another special offer. The day after that came one more. And again. And again. Every day, a new “one-day” deal for saving at Famous Dave’s. That “special” offer didn’t seem so special anymore. In one short week, I got emails with the following subject lines:
- 20% off adds up to big savings
- Get through hump day with a deal on BBQ
- Kevin, act fast! This offer is valid today only
- $10 off $30 today. Or, you could pay full price somewhere else. You choose.
- Save some bones on your BBQ today
- Sunday Special: 20% off
And they haven’t stopped. I don’t know why Famous Dave’s all of a sudden started sending emails every day (they’d had my email address for months), but send them they have. However, it’s had an unintended effect.
The first time I received the email caused a positive reaction: I went to the restaurant when I wasn’t already planning on doing so. They offered me what I interpreted as something special and I took them up on that offer. But the repeated emails—a different email every day, and often the same offer over and over again—has prompted a completely different reaction. Now I no longer look forward to these emails as a reason to have lunch at Famous Dave’s. Instead, I know that the next time I want to have lunch at Famous Dave’s, there will be a coupon waiting for me in my inbox.
The difference is subtle but important. In the first instance, they’re getting me into the restaurant when I wasn’t otherwise planning on eating there. They’re creating an “event” for me. In the second, however—what this over-exposure has done—is simply cost them money. I’m not visiting the restaurant more, but rather the times I do visit (and I was a somewhat regular customer already), they’re actually costing themselves money. I’m not visiting the restaurant any more often but I am spending less when I do go thanks to these coupons.
Contrast Famous Dave’s with another of my favorite chain restaurants, The Buffalo Wing Factory. I get perhaps four or five emails from them every year. When I see an email from BWF in my inbox, I know something special is going on. A Super Bowl special. New Monday night football hours. A holiday sale. But only four or five emails a year seems low. There’s a wide gap between “daily” and “quarterly” in terms of emails received that they will get more of my business.
Contrast these marketing emails also with “flash sales” that a number of companies (including STC) have done recently. A flash sale is usually online-only and over a specific time period: 4 hours, 12 hours, or one day. Hold these “flash sales” too often, however, and you’re not gaining customers so much as losing money that they likely already would have spent. As with me and Famous Dave’s, instead of seeing a flash sale and acting when they might not have otherwise, they’re waiting for the inevitable sale email and buying items they already wanted but at a steep discount. Space them out right, and they’re a lure to bring the fish in fast and furious.
The communications department at STC is the “gatekeeper” of outgoing emails, and we’re constantly trying to walk a fine line between informing STC members about benefits and offerings, and annoying them with too much email. We look for ways to combine messages, to provide information on multiple events or opportunities in one email. We’ve introduced sidebars to most of our emails to remind members about other events rather than sending another full “reminder” email. And we’ve used our e-newsletter, TechComm Today, and social media outlets to share multiple messages together as well.
Still, we’re aware that there are some weeks that—like Famous Dave’s—we might send an email a day. However, we try very hard to make sure that we have something important to say and that the topics, methods, and layouts of our communications are different. Recall the list of subject lines from Famous Dave’s emails; they all were essentially saying “save on BBQ.” Contrast that with a recent week of STC subject lines:
- STC Members Receive Special Discount to AMWA’s 73rd Annual Conference
- Visualize an Engaging Customer Experience with this STC Webinar
- Great savings start with great tools. #douwriteright?
- The Latest Issue of Intercom is Online
- Introducing the STC Tryout recruitment campaign
In this collection of emails, we sent out several different messages—an offer from one of our partner organizations, information on a webinar, product details from one of our corporate partners, the publication of Intercom, and the announcement of a short-term “member-get-a-member” campaign. The messages are completely different and offer something new each time. While our emails are not always that varied, we make an effort to space out education emails, to not send membership renewal emails too often, and to keep information about the Summit to once a week or less. We also try to include a different header image for each type of email to differentiate them. So while the amount of overall email is high, the topics aren’t repetitive and the view isn’t always the same. (And we like to think it’s just evidence of everything you get by being an STC member!)
We also keep an eye on what’s probably the biggest debate in email marketing: what days and times are best for sending emails? Doing a Google search for “best day for email marketing” finds articles with the following conclusions as to the best day: Thursday. Midweek. Weekends. Tuesday and Thursday. Friday. Sunday. The only thing the studies agree upon is that Garfield had it right: I hate Mondays.
Time has the same variety. One article claimed “early morning email delivery has the lowest open rates.” Another said “post-work peak” is the best time. Still another, “email opens increased after noon.” Want another suggestion? Try 8:00–10:00 AM. Or how about “middle of the day, usually 11:00 AM–2:00 PM.”
Suffice to say, if you want to justify a specific day and/or a specific time to send an email, you can find a study to back whatever you want to do. But for all the studies conducted, the only thing that matters to you is when your emails are best received. If you’re using a service such as Constant Contact or MailChimp, take full advantage of their reports. Compare and contrast various emails on various days. MailChimp has an option to download all reports into one Excel spreadsheet, with day of week and time of day included along with the important information on opens, clicks, and opt-outs.
It’s very easy to become familiar with the reporting structures of the two sites, and once you’re familiar it’s also very easy to see at a quick glance when a particular email or subject isn’t well received. In the past, we’ve changed course in a planned month-long membership campaign thanks to reviewing the numbers, and we’ve adjusted subject lines based on what’s succeeded and what hasn’t (with both A/B testing and simply reviewing open rates of similar emails with different subjects).
One thing we’ve tried recently is to send similar emails on the same day of the week; during membership season we sent most of our membership emails on Thursdays. When we were publicizing the Summit, most of those emails went on Tuesdays. Especially with sending multiple emails per week, it’s a way to help recipients know when to look for the specific material—either out of interest or in order to ignore it. While members ignoring STC emails is obviously not ideal, it’s greatly preferable to the alternative of opting out of all emails from us. But if Joe Member gets an STC email on Tuesday, he knows without even seeing the subject line or the topic-specific header that it’s about the Summit. If he’s interested in that information, he can read. And if not, it’s a simple click of the delete button. Not everyone is going to be interested in every email we send, but we want them to be able to easily and quickly determine if they are interested.
Overall, email marketing communication is still a very fluid and subjective science. The best day is debatable. The best time is debatable. The key phrase “for you” (or “for your company”) should be your biggest concern. See what works for you, what works for your customers (or members, in our case), and adapt.
Kevin Cuddihy (kevin.cuddihy@stc.org) is media manager at STC and assistant editor for Intercom. He coordinates or assists with email communications for STC, his homeowners association, and UMPS CARE Charities, the official charity of Major League Baseball umpires. He’s the coauthor of the trivia book Christmas’s Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Kris Kringles, Merry Jingles, and Holiday Cheer.
