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Autoresponder emails winning over broadcast?

by Raydal
4 replies
According to the latest report from a respected industry
leader the answer is "yes".

According to Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association's
Email Experience Council report of April, 2012, triggered messages
had 96% higher open rates and 125% higher click rates than
"business as usual" messages.

See the report here:

Epsilon | Q4 2011 North America Email Trend Results: Open Rates Increase Over Previous Quarter and Year

I know this question has been raised before about broadcast vs. autoresponders.

-Ray Edwards
#autoiresponder #broadcast #emails #winning
  • Profile picture of the author ianherculson
    How is the end user supposed to know the difference of whether they are receiving a broadcast or auto-responder triggered message?

    This confuses me...
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Personally, I avoid broadcasts whenever possible, for a big variety of reasons.

      The first and most important reason, for me, is ...

      (i) Subscribers in many niches have told me in the past that they don't like "obvious broadcasts" because (a) they interrupt continuity, and (b) they make the sender look more like a marketer and less like a trusted provider of valuable information

      But I have a few other reasons, too ...

      (ii) It's very rare that I want everyone on a list to get the same information at the same time, regardless of how long they've been there and where they are in the series;

      (iii) It interferes with "subscriber expectation". It's really important, when opting people in, to set their expectations, and tell them exactly what they're going to receive and when. This dramatically increases open-rates and click-through rates. Sending "broadcasts" makes that very difficult;

      (iv) To me, it feels like "being in a hurry" and "aiming for quick sales" - exactly the things I like to avoid, because I earn far more in the long run by avoiding that.

      For me, the key concept is: interrupting continuity with an obvious promotion of something is really a much bigger deal than many people realise.

      It makes you look desperate to sell, and to many subscribers, understandably, that comes across very negatively and ruins your credibility and their trust.

      In my opinion, the people who imagine that isn't a big deal are typically those to whom open-rates of about 25% are acceptable (:p), perhaps partly because they have little awareness of customer perception of - for example - passing off a commissionable product-launch as "news". (In other words, not being aware of your customers' perspective very much at all!).

      Originally Posted by ianherculson View Post

      How is the end user supposed to know the difference of whether they are receiving a broadcast or auto-responder triggered message?
      They can easily tell this from whether the continuity of the process has been interrupted, i.e. whether it matches what you told them at the end of the previous message to be "watching out for in the next message, in 5 days' time", or whatever. This is a fundamental part of expectation-setting and continuity-maintenance.
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  • Profile picture of the author kochtgr
    Well this is logical since usually autorespoder messages are those that people get after they sign up so they wait to get them and read them. usually before people sign up there are messages like get a seven days lesson about... This is the reason that people sign up so they want to read the emails with the "lessons"
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  • Profile picture of the author JimWaller
    In my opinion, there are WAY too many variables for those metrics to mean much. Don't get me wrong, it's still interesting, but it's hard to determine what to believe based on those results.

    To me it makes sense broadcast emails would have a lower open and click-through rate because they don't have the expectation built up from a previous source. In an AR series, the first messages are expected because of the squeeze page leading to a success page telling them to look for a confirmation message. The confirmation page tells them to look for the first message in the series. Messages in series can tell them when to expect the next one. If crafted correctly, they can anticipate every message in an AR series.
    Conversely, the first broadcast message doesn't necessarily have the same level of anticipation. They might not know to look for it thereby decreasing the likelihood of opening and clicking through.

    At the very least, this may be a lesson to us about the importance of building anticipation and meeting expectations.

    Jim
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