To Send or Not to Send? That is the question…

by Paiton McDuffie | May 11, 2021

You’ve taken the time to develop an incredible marketing email – one you know your audience will find interesting, one that is beautifully designed, engaging, and relevant. After your campaign has finished sending, you scurry back to your reporting dashboard to review your results. And what do you find?

Your open rate isn’t as high as you anticipated and your click rate and CTOR are falling short too. Those users that opened the email only skimmed it and didn’t even bother clicking a single one of your links. No one downloaded your white paper or forwarded the email to a friend.

The age-old question of email marketers at this stage is, “Well, do I send it again?”

The answer is a complicated one and is technically both “yes” and “no.” First, identify why you want to resend the email. Is it because this email is really important and you don’t want your audience members to miss out on the info inside? Or is it because you want to bolster those open and click rates to look better when you put together your quarterly reports? The motivation behind the resend heavily impacts the results, so take your time in answering this question. 

Ideally, you should only resend really crucial email messages. Continually hitting inboxes multiple times with the same (or similar) message when your contacts aren’t engaging is a surefire way to get them to unsubscribe. Think about the lifetime value of a contact in your database when answering this question. What you’re ultimately looking for are engagements that lead to conversions, not just high open and click rates (although those are nice too). 

Reasons why you should resend an email campaign:

Resending a marketing email gives those audience members who didn’t interact with the first send a second chance to engage with your content. Maybe they just had a really busy day or their inbox was overflowing and they missed it. Sending again increases the chances of your missed audience members seeing your message. This could be especially important for “Thank You” or customer appreciation emails. Again, use your discretion here and determine if the message you’re considering resending is really important.

Resending a message also allows users who might have opened the email but didn’t click anything another chance to take advantage of what’s contained in the email. This is especially true for emails that contain free downloads like white papers or case studies. 

Sending an email message a second time also allows you to further A/B test. You should be A/B testing something in every email message you send, but resending a campaign allows you to gather even more insight into what your audience prefers. Take this opportunity to craft a new subject line or to tweak some of the content in the email. Your audience doesn’t want to see the same exact email in their inbox multiple times. 

If your motivation in resending your email is anything other than the reasons above, you might reconsider moving forward with the send. Ensure the email warrants a resend and try changing a few things before hitting that schedule button. Test a new subject line or try sending on a different day of the week or at a different time. Make sure you’re only testing one variable at a time though! Check that your audience has been segmented so that you’re only sending to non-openers or to openers who didn’t click – resending to your entire original audience again is never recommended. Be sure to give a little bit of a buffer between the original send date and the resend date – usually 2-4 days is the sweet spot.

Resending email campaigns can be a powerful tool in moving the needle of engagements that lead to conversions. But it is a strategy that should be considered thoughtfully and executed with the utmost care. Happy emailing!