Bronto Blog

The post Email Address Shelf Life generated several interesting comments. One in particular struck me as worthy of responding with a new post. Linda Bustos, a reader and fellow blogger asked:

Would staggering the deployment or "blast" help? Could you segment out the different subscriber types you described? (ie send the first batch to the most recent time lags, then send to the next time group etc)?

After the hair on my arms returned to its normal, dormant state (the word "blast" makes me cringe), I thought about Linda's question. My gut response was, "Sure. That would be a reasonable strategy." In fact, I've worked with clients in the past helping them implement this approach. I have always cautioned clients that "you must be very careful with this strategy." The key is sending to small segments - very targeted - and being diligent about tracking the key metrics. When your open rates, click-throughs, and conversions begin to slip while complaints, unsubscribes, and hard bounces rise…it's time to call it quits.

There is no determined hard-line metric for dipping open rates or rising hard bounces. This is where it gets tricky. Marketers who attempt this approach can quickly talk themselves into sending to one more segment. When you see the revenue continue to roll in, it's easy to get greedy - "Let's dip into the 9-month segment." Unfortunately, that one additional segment could lead to a block - honeypot address/complaint/hard bounce threshold (again, see the Email Address Shelf Life post).

So, I fall back to my conclusion from earlier - one worth repeating below:

If you continue to send email to customers that is random and unexpected, there will be consequences.

DJ Waldow
Account Manager at Bronto