Loyalty Means Improving Redemptions
By John Hennessy
Brian Morrissey, writing for DM News, reports on declines in email response rates based on data collected by New York ad technology firm DoubleClick. Click-through rates for its DARTmail e-mail service fell 10.5 percent and open rates declined 7.5 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. Doubleclick attributed the lower response rates to consumer fatigue brought on by too frequently sent, untargeted mailings.
Kevin Mabley, director of strategic services at DoubleClick says, “It’s a significant drop. People are getting a bit desensitized to the regular mailings clients are sending.”
On the positive side, Mabley points to much higher redemption rates for mailings based on a customer’s prior site and purchasing behavior.
“That’s what separates the higher performers from the lower performers,” he said.
E-mails suffering most included consumer products, which saw open rates fall 22.8 percent.
Moderator’s Comment: What must retailers and marketers do to improve content relevance and better align frequency of communications to shopper needs?
DoubleClick’s data doesn’t cover non-email messaging, but my guess is that marketing vehicles in other channels are experiencing declines in effectiveness
if their messages are irrelevant.
A well-run loyalty program demonstrates loyalty to shoppers by filtering messaging based on their preferences, adjusting both frequency and content.
It takes a fair amount of work to deliver the right message at the right time to the right shopper, but shoppers don’t have the time or desire to sort through
all the hand raisers trying to get their attention. In this day and age, getting it right may be the only way to stand out from the crowd. –
John Hennessy – Moderator