Email Marketing Tactics #17: Provide Options for Recipients to Respond

All email recipients won’t respond to the same offer. That seems like simple common sense but many email campaigns ignore the advice. The person running the email campaign (or their boss) has a single item or event they’d like to promote and the email campaign pounds it to a pulp. For those people that aren’t interested in that particular promotion, they are never given a chance to interact. Intermix multiple promotions within the email campaign so a varied group of recipients have incentive to take the next step.

We’ve previously covered several common promotions: products, services, events, etc. It’s a good idea to include a few options in an email campaign. Ideally the options would span categories so that recipients have a chance to review products or specials but also get event announcements. At minimum, the single item should change. If there is one product offered over and over, sooner or later the email list will grow immune to the communications.

Varying the offers to recipients serves two purposes:

• It hits a wider demographic. Subscribers to email marketing campaigns usually have a host of reasons for opting in. Varied offers takes that difference into account and casts a wider net on what the individual might react to.
• It prevents list exhaustion. Even if a recipient is interested in a single promotion, they won’t continually be. Changing options keep recipients more engaged because they are seeing new promotions available to them.

Think of your email marketing campaign like a television station. You can’t show the same episode of the same show over and over without people tuning out. Mix up the promotions so different demographics find what they want and stay engaged with the communications.