Fresh e-mails worth three times as much
Posted by Dominic Yeadon 26 Feb 2008
This week's article is all about the shelf-life of e-mail addresses - the older they get before you use them, the more they decay. A list of fresh, regularly used e-mails will outperform older e-mails (read on for the actual numbers). Your own e-newsletter therefore absolutely MUST be broadcast (on time, every time) to keep each e-mail address fresh. Regular monthly or weekly broadcasts are best.
 The "Fresh vs Old" contest: If the e-mails are fresh, more get delivered (90% vs 73%), more get viewed (35% vs 31%) and more get clicked (36% vs 18%).
On a 100,000 list, you get 11,340 unique clicks (fresh) vs 4,073 unique clicks (old). That's nearly three times as many people getting closer to your products.
The longer you leave e-mails after collecting them, the lower the delivery rate falls. As a rule of thumb I found that you lose 5% delivery of the whole list every 3 months.
Not plucked out of mid-air - I crunched the numbers:
To find out exactly how much value was lost, (a while ago) I measured the value of e-mails by looking at our clients' business and consumer e-mail lists.
I knew the age of each e-mail, the delivery rate (D), views (V) and clickthroughs (CTR). I worked out a simple formula: VALUE = (D x V x CTR x 100). I calculated:
e-mail freshness = 0 to 3 months
Delivery rate = 90%, Views = 35%, Clickthroughs = 36%
VALUE = 11.34% (values around 12% are good)
e-mail freshness = 12 months
Delivery rate = 73%, Views = 31%, Clickthroughs = 18%
VALUE = 4.07% (values around 4% are poor)
Regardless of my journey into deep maths above - I have an important message for you: even if I didn't have numbers to back this up, wouldn't it just feel right to keep in touch with your own e-newsletter subscribers as often as possible? Isn't e-mail marketing all about providing valuable content in each issue? And doing so regularly. We are creatures of habit.
In a nutshell... if you are collecting e-mails, use them quickly. Fresh e-mails (0 to 3 months old) are each worth three times as much as older emails (12 months old). If you have a list of e-mails all expecting the next issue of your e-newsletter, make sure you broadcast it on time, every time. The e-mails stay fresh, you stay visible and sales figures stay up.
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