Jun 1, 2010 - Comments: 2

Haven’t I Seen This Message Before? How To Avoid Email Content Déjà Vu

Posted by Heidi Strom Moon under Content Strategy & Web Writing , Interactive Marketing

Reflection As director of marketing, I’m subscribed to several different email lists for marketing newsletters, products and services. My main reason for subscribing is the content, but it also gives me insight into email marketing from the customer’s point of view. (For example, I’ve previously written about how to avoid glaring subject line mistakes.)

Last week was a case in point. One morning, I received a sponsored email message about a major email vendor’s white paper. About an hour later, I received the same message. And by "same," I mean identical: Same subject line, same content, everything.

At first I thought it was a mistake. Had the list double-sent the message? Was I subscribed to the same list twice by accident, perhaps under 2 different versions of my work email address?

When I opened both messages and compared them, I realized what had happened. This particular vendor had purchased a sponsored placement—and sent the same exact message to--two different email lists. It just so happened that I was on both lists, so I got the message twice.

(Now I’m going to assume that as a dedicated email sponsor, this vendor had no direct access to the addresses on both lists, so had no practical way to de-dupe addresses as they would have with an in-house list.)

So what can you do to avoid sending your audience the same message twice?

How to avoid email content déjà vu

When CDG Interactive runs email marketing campaigns for clients like Mondial Assistance and InterExchange, we take these concrete steps to avoid duplicating content:

  • First, be aware that such an issue can happen. Clearly, this vendor was targeting marketers and chose these lists accordingly. The odds were pretty good, therefore, that some of us would be on both lists.
  • Then vary the copy for each list. Start with the subject line. Can you target the copy even more narrowly? Are there differences between the lists, even subtle ones?
  • Take it a step further. If you’re not already doing so, run A/B split testing on subject lines and copy with the first list. When you write the copy variation for the second list, use the winner as your starting point—then run another A/B split test on the second list.
  • Don’t send them both on the same day. I only noticed the identical nature of the messages I received because they showed up in my inbox back to back. If I’d gotten them on separate days or even in separate weeks, I might have seen the second one as a second-chance offer and opened it to see what I had missed the first time around.

With just one of these changes, I probably wouldn't have noticed the double send. With all of them, I would have felt more individually targeted, not mass e-mailed.

Your Turn

  • Have you experienced email marketing déjà vu?
  • If you are on the delivery end, how do you avoid sending duplicate content to multiple lists?
[Photo: Lrargerich, Flickr Creative Commons]

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