Reader Case Study: Friendly Letter Email Campaign Results

We had a lot of great comments on Wednesday's post about 1-800-Headsets' year end thank you email. I received an email from Get Elastic reader Martin Preikschas of Gold Guys Canada shared his own experience with the email tactic (coincidentally, also on December 29, the date of the Headsets email). His results were not positive:

On December 29, (the same date of the Headsets mail) I also sent out a non-marketing, "hey thanks" letter to our Gold Guys Canada base. I was motivated to do so because a) I wanted to remind our clients that we are individuals behind the face of our business, b) I wanted to reconnect on a personal level with our clients and c) I was tired of always crafting a "pitch" and relished the idea of a gentle, human letter.

I don't know if the Headsets results were the same as ours, but we saw:

• A 7% drop in both immediate and week-following opens
• An equal percentage of opt-outs to previous mails
• A 0% reply rate (shocking for us)
• A 14% decrease in click-through (not surprising since there are only two links in this letter)

The text of our mail is included below:

Subject line:

Big Thanks and Best Wishes from Gold Guys Canada!

Text:

Thanks for all the fun

We at Gold Guys just wanted to say thank you for a year marked by some great gold parties and many wonderful people. We thank you for welcoming us into your homes, and for introducing us to your families and friends.

We hope that in the coming year we'll get to see some of you again.

Best wishes for the New Year

We extend to you all sincere wishes for a 2011 filled with all the things that make life great - laughter, friends, family and growth.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Ruttner, Michel Korman, Barry Korman and Martin Preikschas,
www.GoldGuysCanada.com
www.My-Gold-Party.ca

My take away, due to the significant decrease in opens and replies, is that folks suffer from email fatigue during this time of year AND that they expect bold, call-to-action, value-proposition emails from businesses even if all you want to do is say thanks. In future, if I feel the need to get snuggly with our clients, I'll save it until I also have something tangible to offer to show our appreciation.

This doesn't mean 1-800-Headsets wasn't successful, as customer base, email content and a variety of uncontrollable factors are involved. But Martin's assessment of the reasons WHY the email campaign wasn't successful is valid. It's always important to test, measure important metrics and explore reasons why a result was positive or negative.