“Does non-informative content in email marketing work?”
For many online marketers this is a burning question. Maybe for you it’s not, but maybe one day it will be for your client, so listen up.
In this discussion, non-informative content includes either or both of the following:
- the customer’s name
- the customer’s company (employer) name
So, let’s first establish which are the most relevant email marketing outcomes that we should be paying attention to:
- open rate (%)
- sales leads (# and % who reply to email with intent to purchase)
- unsubscription rate
Fortunately for us non-researchers, Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago) has created the research plan, captured the data, crunched the results, and provided some results for marketing managers to ponder.
- Mentioning the company name in the subject line of an email message affects the outcome:
- open rate and leads are improved (yay!)
- unsubscribe rates decrease (big yay!)
2. Mentioning the company name in the body of an email message affects the outcome:
- open rate doesn’t change (ok, no biggie)
- leads are doubled (!!!)
- fewer unsubscribe rates (bigger yay!)
In the case of the last point, Chintagunta found in his research work that unsubscribe rates actually decreased by 6% when the company name was used in the body of the email message.
This is insightful for those of us working on email marketing campaigns or guiding our students on these campaigns whether they’re in Intro e-Marketing or Integrated IMC. Personalization works!
Kwantlen Polytechnic University 