Why less is more in third-party email marketing

Publishers live and die by numbers, and the pressure is always on to grow your audience base. More eyeballs. More unique users. More advertising revenue, right? Not necessarily when it comes to email programs.

You’ve heard the expression “less is more.” The same applies for audience members who participate in permission-based email campaigns. Don’t get me wrong, big numbers tell great stories, and speak to the popularity of sites, content and more. But with email programs, less is more for a big reason: results. Here are three reasons why you need to love that opt-out:

When it comes to third-party emails, revenue trumps volume

1. Effectiveness. Having large numbers of permissioned audience members can be nice, but it’s all about the right message to the right people at the right time. Wasted messages that miss the target will never produce good results, not to mention tremendous time and effort down the drain on both your part, and the marketers. I’d even argue that it puts your brand at risk by de-sensitizing the recipient to messages to the point where they start ignoring them altogether.
2. Intelligence. You love the clicks, and so do marketers. They tell us a great deal about what audience members like, and what offers resonate. But a wise list owner learns even more from an opt-out. Think about it: For every opt-out you receive, your audience member is sending you a message of what they don’t like. You can learn from that, and zero-in targeting for the next offer you or a marketer sends.
3. Revenue. A smaller pool of higher responders is much more attractive than a larger pool of indifferent recipients. For example, if you send an offer to 100,000 opted-in members and 15,000 open the message, and 750 people took action, that’s an open rate of 15% and CTR of 5%. Not bad, you say? Now imagine if you had a honed list of 30,000 high-responders, and 15,000 opened the message, with 3,000 people taking action. That’s a 50% open rate, and 10% CTR. Which list do you think would be more valuable to marketers?

Remember, a carefully worded opt-out is important. A recipient who says “no” doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to hear from you the list owner any more. They just don’t want to receive marketing messages in the future. And it doesn’t mean they’ll stop visiting your site. Quite the contrary. Providing audience members with choices on how they interact with you will breed loyalty, and when they do hear from you, they’ll be more likely to tune in, rather than tune out.