Hold On to What You’ve Got

According to various published reports, the average American company today loses 20 percent to 40 percent of its customers every year, and it comes at quite a cost. Research shows that when a company retains just 5 percent more of its best customers, profits can increase 25 percent to 85 percent depending on the industry. Accepting the fact that “churn” is part of business today, multichannel marketers should have a process in place to try to recover some of these lost customers. Churn is when marketers lose names or customers and replace them with other acquired names

A recent whitepaper from data solutions provider Melissa Data, Win Back Lost Customers with E-Mail Append, offers several e-mail options to help retain your customers in light of the high cost of customer acquisition today. Listed below are some tactics the whitepaper advises putting into practice.

1. Take advantage of e-mail append. In this process of adding e-mail addresses to your postal customer database, which already contains names and addresses, marketers obtain e-mail addresses by matching those records from their databases against a third-party database to produce corresponding e-mail addresses.

Usable for both B-to-C and B-to-B catalogers, the whitepaper cites the practice’s potential benefits, including reconnecting with lost customers, increasing the value of your housefile, increasing customer participation and retention rates, driving traffic to your Web site, reducing marketing expenses, maximizing response rates, personalized communication with consumers, and the ability to measure the success of your marketing efforts.

2. Maintain good list hygiene. To prevent bounced e-mails due to inaccurate e-mail addresses, maintain a clean and updated e-mail list. According to published reports, if you have an average bounceback rate of about 2 percent to 3 percent per month, you could be losing about 25 percent to 36 percent of your subscribers due to e-mail address changes and other issues.

Consider using a data hygiene service provider to identify and correct invalid e-mail addresses on your list. Errors can occur from typos, wrong domain names, formatting problems and/or changed e-mail addresses.

Another option is to use an e-mail change of address (ECOA) service. ECOAs provide current e-mail addresses for those that are old and invalid, or those consumers who’ve changed their e-mail addresses. This service will also update your housefile with customers’ preferred e-mail addresses.

3. Honor consumer requests. The practice of suppression — removing names and e-mail addresses from your lists — can greatly improve your company image. Honor the requests of businesses and consumers who don’t wish to be e-mailed or have opted-out of your list.

4. Choose wisely. Selecting the right service provider is vital to the success of your e-mail marketing campaign. Here are several questions and points to consider before making your decision:

* Do they have proven experience in the field?

* Focus on customer service: Are they friendly, easily available and do they offer you the best solutions with prompt service?

* How long does the turnaround process take to receive your appended e-mail addresses? (On average, it should take about two weeks, depending on the size of the file.)

* That said, be cautious of service providers with extremely fast turnarounds (e.g., a day or two). This could indicate the service firm isn’t performing the opt-out option, or it could be sending you a “raw” database of e-mail addresses.

* Don’t pay for bounced e-mails.