Paytronix Research Identifies Optimum Number Of Marketing Emails
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Finding the email ‘sweet spot’ to engage customers and up visits and spend.
Paytronix Systems, Inc., a leading provider of reward program solutions to restaurants and retailers, has released the first research brief in a new series that demonstrates for peak value, email marketers should send six emails per subscriber, per month. The series is titled, “Extracting Customer Insights from Big Data,” and are designed to help restaurants and retailers better leverage their data insights and marketing innovations to up customer visits and spend.
The point of the brief is to help retailers find their “tipping point,” or the number of emails past which customers will choose to ignore message or opt out of mailing lists. As the report states, “Unless messages are highly relevant, the more emails you send, the more they are ignored.” So retailers need to find the optimum number and content of emails to up their customer engagement, visits, and spend.
The research analyzed data from Paytronix clients who used their email tool between January 2015 and July 2015 to determine the optimal number of emails to send. Open rates were 47.1 percent when less than 1 email was sent per subscriber; 25.2 percent for 1-2 emails, 23.9 percent for 3-5 emails, 21.9 percent for 6-8 emails, and 16.6 percent for more than 8 emails in a given month. Visits per open saw similar patterns, while opt-outs rose considerably the more emails that were sent.
The research demonstrates that customer engagements should fall on a sliding scale based on the concept and guest visit frequency, but that 5.75 emails per month is the ideal volume to achieve peak effectiveness. "Every customer touch-point is vitally important to understanding and engaging guests, yet email campaigns remain one of the most widely-used and effective means to market to customers," said Lee Barnes, head of Paytronix Data Insights. "This research helps our customers identify where the total value peaks for how many emails to send before causing a negative impact -- the sweet spot for engaging customers without risking opt-outs and losing a subscriber forever."
The brief is available here.