Are you disappointed that your email campaign didn’t produce the results you were hoping for?
If you’re like most marketers, you spend a lot of time perfecting your email campaigns, especially your subject lines. After all, they kinda make or break your campaigns.
On average, emails get less than a 20% open rate. (Yep, it’s a little bit on the low end. But that’s the reality.)
So if you want to make the most out of your campaigns and get as many eyes on your messages, it’s good practice to resend emails to those who don’t click or open the previous message.
In this post, we’ll talk about how to leverage resending emails for better results―more opens, higher click-through rate, a more effective campaign.
Why should I resend emails? Wouldn’t that irritate my subscribers?
Email marketers have long accepted the fact that some emails won’t get opened.
More often than not, the readers are not really doing it on purpose so there’s no need to take it personally.
As most people are busy, most emails are just being pushed down further into the inbox void. Thanks to hundreds of work emails, transactional notifications, and meeting invites.
Resending that email ensures that your recipient had another chance to see, open, and read that message or — if you’re good — even click that call-to-action (CTA) you included.
Yes, sending that follow-up email gives you a significant increase in engagement and conversions. Here are some cool stats to support this claim:
- 54.7% increase in the overall email reach
- CTR is 51.1% greater than your first email
- An email (with a different subject line) resent a week later has 30% more openings
- Additional email open rate of 11%
It’s safe to say re-sending to people who have not opened or clicked can get you a boost in open rate and CTR.
Using a marketing automation platform that lets you design a workflow to automatically send follow-up emails like Encharge is advantageous to marketers. It’s easy to do that on platforms like this.
Take your nurture email campaign for example. They [Encharge] can get you a 67% open rate & a 16% click-through rate on these lead nurturing emails.
And a not-so-secret tip? It only involves 4 simple steps to increase the engagement of your leads:
- Connect your lead generation software to Encharge and start collecting leads
- Segment leads based on your criteria
- Let your lead enter a certain workflow triggered by their activity
- For those who have not yet have not opened or clicked your last email? Encharge lets you send an automated follow-up.
Best and (and smoothest) ways to send follow-up emails
Let’s picture this scenario.
Someone signs up for your email list. You get excited as they entered your email sequence. Your goal is to cultivate a relationship with them that keeps them interested in your content. So you send a valuable welcome email.
Two things: they may open it or not. So what can you do if they didn’t?
- You should send a follow-up email based on the email activity of the receiver.
- Only resend once.
- Super important, don’t ever use the same subject line.
- Measure the success of that re-sent email.
Resending emails is not as simple as clicking the send button for the Nth time. Sending an identical email for the 2nd, 3rd time will be seen as spam.
Here are some best practices that you can follow.
1. You should send a follow-up email based on the email activity of the receiver.
If they did open, no problem. Your subscriber will receive the rest of the onboarding emails as planned. If not, send a follow-up email.
You can resend the previous email based on how they interacted with your last message. By doing this, you raise up the chance of your earlier mail being read and still relevant. Behavior-based triggers appear more accurate.
Email tools like Encharge let you insert a step to send an automated follow-up email as you design your flow.
How does it look?
First, you can choose a trigger, the contacts. They are people in a segment that will enter your sequence. They may be
- new sign-ups
- new people who downloaded your lead magnet
- new set of readers who read your gated contents
- list of webinar/demo attendees
The second step is connecting the trigger to your Send Email step. Say this is the first email of your onboarding sequence. Upon signing up, subscribers will receive it.
Your next action is to add a Wait step. This is very important since you need people to have a chance to interact with the email before you track their activity.
Following this step will let you see who needs a resend. Add Check Email Activity step. Thanks to the wait step, you accurately distinguished users from those who opened the last email.
This check will sort the contacts into 2 buckets ― whether they should receive the next emails or a resend of the previous message. You can check the person’s email activity and then send follow-up emails based on that.
Lastly, add the follow-up email/s.
2. You should only resend ONCE.
The thing with resending email is, you shouldn’t abuse the practice. If you do, you might come off as annoying. Worse, your account will end up being blocked.
Given that your subscribers intentionally didn’t open your email the first or second time, they aren’t interested in the offer. Don’t go for the third time.
3. You can’t use the same subject line twice.
You might want to change the subject line or preview text so the email doesn’t look like a copy of one they’ve already received. There’s no need to be afraid of experimenting with your subject lines when resending a message. Just make sure that you keep the wording relevant.
Do you experience writer’s block?
Don’t worry, there are free subject line generators out there. This free tool uses GPT-3 technology so the copy it produces sounds like from a human.
4. If you resend, split-test it.
Wanna know which kind of copy your readers like?
Try A/B testing the subject line first. With each test, you’ll get a better picture of what works with your audience, letting you optimize future campaigns to produce better results.
5. Test your subject lines with a subject line tester
Use a subject line tester tool to ensure your subject line doesn’t contain any risky spammy words. Apply the tips you get from the subject line tester and see if they lead to an improvement in your open rates.
6. You should always measure the success of your resends
If you want to know if your resend email campaign worked, define your goals first and the email marketing metrics involved.
A common way to measure campaign effectiveness is the open rate but CTRs reflect a more meaningful indicator.
Strategic resending of emails to boost conversions
If many times you’ve sent an email and got frustrated when you get no responses or conversions, increase your chances of getting the results you want by resending your email.
Resending email is sending the “original but tweaked” email to people who did not open (or click) on previous emails again. It helps you get the best results from your email marketing campaigns. The best way to do this is to use your user activity as the trigger.
But if you’re not using the right tool for this job, it may be difficult and time-consuming. You are unlikely to get the result you want to achieve. That’s why Encharge is here. This marketing automation software makes re-sending emails easy and intuitive.
With our system, resending an email will never feel like a chore again. You’ll love how much time you save.
Read next: Re-engagement Emails: The power of second chances to win customers
