3 Tactics for Email: Promote, Personalize and Be Relevant

In 2006, JupiterResearch reported that the average untargeted email campaign had an open rate of about 20 percent, a clickthrough rate of about 9.5 percent and a conversion rate of only about 1 percent. Conversely, the average targeted email campaign had a 33 percent open rate, 14 percent clickthrough rate and 3.9 percent conversion rate.

2. Personalize your emails. You know the subscriber’s name; simply use it in the text of your emails. Williams-Sonoma tested personalized images and saw conversions increase 50 percent. Golfsmith saw revenue jump 167 percent when it used personalization.

3. Use promotions in your transactional emails. The problem with most commercial email is that about 80 percent of it doesn't get opened. That’s not the case with transactional emails (e.g., “Your product was shipped today”), however, which are opened and read at about double the rate of promotional emails. While customers are reading about the transaction, HTML can promote a related product below the fold.

Arthur Middleton Hughes is co-author of “Successful E-Mail Marketing Strategies: From Hunting to Farming,” (RACOM, 2009). He's also senior strategist at e-Dialog. He can be reached at Ahughes@e-dialog.com.