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Email Incentives Work, Study Shows

Not that you should be surprised, but we now have definitive proof that email promotions work.

We have good news for those of you who have been using incentives to recruit and maintain your panels. According to a study by Advertising.com, including a promotional offer in your email campaign can improve your open rates by more than 100%, and click-through rates by up to 1,000%. Now, of course, the type of promotion being offered plays a significant role in the success of your campaign, but it seems frequency is not a major factor.

Researchers analyzed four different combinations of promotion and frequency, across 6.2 million opt-in email messages, to arrive at their results. A bi-weekly newsletter with no incentive offered achieved the lowest open and click-through rates, while campaigns with incentives achieved incremental increases in performance based on the type of incentive being offered.

A monthly newsletter that included a coupon showed a 40% increase in open rate over the newsletter with no incentive, and a 398% improvement in click-through. However, a one-time mail out that included an instant win game won the day with a 133% improvement in open rate and 1,143% increase in click-through rate!

The point we're trying to make here is not that you have to give away huge prizes in order to increase your response rates, just that if you are going to give away prizes you should use them to your advantage. The key to making good use of this information is to tell your audience what your email contains before they open it. If you wait until the third paragraph to get to the point, you'll find yourself in the recycle bin almost every time. Write a catchy subject line, and the rest should take care of itself.

Posted on March 3, 2005
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