Reggie's articles in Catalog Success

Successful Email Appending
Bet you didn’t realize how easy it can be to grow and penetrate your house elist

February, 2008

By REGGIE BRADY

Many catalogers are missing important data that would allow them to make better use of both direct mail and email to market effectively.  Specifically, they don’t have the following:

1. Email addresses for many of their customers; consequently, they can’t use multichannel marketing to reach their best targets.  They can certainly mail their catalogs, but they are missing the one-two punch of using direct mail with email. 

2. Their email lists often don’t contain name and address information.  Therefore they don’t know the portions of their list that are current or past customers.  As a result, they can’t launch special campaigns to their best list segments. 

Appending can be a useful strategy to counteract both these situations.

Appending email addresses to customer files

Email appending has been around for several years.  But it’s seeing a big resurgence in use.  I’ve recently received emails from catalogers, publishers and major marketers asking for permission to send me email.  And it makes sense that this is happening.

According to a recent DMA study, email has the highest return on investment of any marketing channel.  That’s due in part to the fact that email to your own house list is relatively inexpensive and cost effective when compared to direct mail.  The cost of each appended name amounts to less than the cost of a catalog mailing.  Remember, you can’t send catalogs once a week; you’d go out of business.  But you can send email once a week to maintain frequent contact with customers. 

Couple that with the fact that catalogers who use a combination of direct mail and email can gain greater sales than either channel generates alone.

Here’s an example of an appending permission email I recently received.  The subject line was: A Special Invitation from Draper’s and Damon’s.  It’is short, focused, visually appealing and includes an easy opt-out link. 

The one thing I’d do to improve this email’s impact is to include a special offer with a promo code to capture attention, stimulate interaction and immediately generate sales.  

The ins and outs of email appending to customer files

Use appending only for existing customer relationships, and only when you have name and full postal address.  Only append to customers, and be mindful of how recenctly you’ve interacted with these individuals.  When customers haven’t purchased from you in two years, they probably don’t consider themselves to be customers and are less likely to want your emails.

There are many reputable email appending services.  Make sure there’s qualifying permission on the database of the service you choose, namely the individual opting in to receive third-party emails.  Use strict matching criteria so you’re matching on an individual and not a household level. 

In this easy process, you provide customer names and addresses to your selected appending service.  The service will typically identify email addresses for 25 percent and 35 percent of consumer files.  Match rates will be much less for B-to-B. 

A “permission pass” email containing the chance to opt-out is sent to those names.   You’ll likely experience an opt-out rate of about 2 percent.  After the campaign you’ll want to flag the opt-outs in your database.  Then you can begin sending regular emails to the balance of the email addresses. 

I suggest that you flag names in your database that come from appending.  This lets you monitor their productivity and measure how email appending’s effectiveness. 

Support any catalog drops with emails to customers on your email list.  It’s good to feature the catalog cover and highlight that the catalog is in the mail. 

Here’s an example from Orvis that’s been edited to show only the initial screen.  The email features two catalogs with the subject line:  “See 150 brand-new gifts from our latest catalogs.”  The first paragraph mentions the catalogs are in the mail.

Another approach is to explain that email recipients are getting a sneak peek at special merchandise.

Appending to learn more about email recipients

Many catalogers make it almost too easy to sign up for email.  They only capture email address, perhaps because they fear additional questions will depress completion rates.  A best practice is to ask for name and address information, but make information submission optional. 

If you only have an email address, use appending services to learn more about your email registrants.  Get names and addresses to use in the personalization and segmentation of your email campaigns. 

Conduct a further matchback to your existing customer database to flag those email recipients who are also customers.  Or, test mail a catalog to a portion of these names that aren’t current customers.

Being able to identify current customers among your email recipients allows you to be more intelligent about your email marketing, perhaps providing special offers based on their prior purchase history.  You can also support your catalog mailings to these individuals with email.  As mentioned previously, your combined response will be higher than what you typically receive from just direct mail or just email.

One other use of this type of appending is to find deliverable email addresses for your bounces.  Many catalogers do this quarterlys.  They take all the bounces that have been removed from their email distribution and identify another email address for these names.

Consider both types of appending efforts.  They’ll grow your housefile of email addresses and allow you to take advantage of multichannel marketing.  Test these techniques and measure their impact before you consider a rollout. 


Reggie Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy in Norwalk, CT. You can reach her at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net

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