Problem with creating marketing campaign to send to ALL customers

[CapitalCyndiB]

I have found that when I create an email campaign in Marketing Pro to send a newsletter or flyer to our customers, if I select too many customers at once (for example, if I am selecting 10 zip codes at once that adds thousands of contacts), I get a lot of spam block replies.  So, I've had to break up the email list into several different campaigns to send at different times so I am not sending so many at once.  

I don't want to necessarily have to use an Email marketing tool like Constant Contact if I don't have to.  Any suggestions on still utilizing Marketing Pro to create a mass campaign that will send the email to ALL customers without it creating issues with spam?

[hdonalds]

Hey @CapitalCyndiB!

A better way to segment may be around customer recency instead.

If you're doing it to ALL customers, there's likely a lot of customers in that mix who haven't worked with your company for a while if at all. Because you haven't been in contact with them for a while, or perhaps they were a lead that never responded to efforts to convert them into a customer, you could be reaching out to customers with outdated or inactive emails. Even before AI was a hot topic in marketing, email service providers were using intelligent algorithms to start sorting emails based on the way customer's engage with them. If the email you're sending to is a "junk email", most likely a lot of their emails will sort into targeted inboxes (IE: Social Updates, Forums, and Promotions in Gmail) or spam altogether. You likely would likely have this issue any where you go. 

My rule of thumb is this: if a customer has not completed a job, called the company, or engaged in any way in over 18 months, I would no longer consider them your active customer and I would strategize other ways to get in front of them. 

While you can still utilize zip-code segments, I highly recommend utilizing your filter groups like such: 

• Inclusion Group 1:  
  • Your typical segmentation with Zones (or not)
  • Job Completed: Less than 18 months in the past
    
    
• Inclusion Group 2: 
  • Your typical segmentation with Zones (or not)
  • Last Call: Less than 18 months in the past

What these inclusions will do is look for EITHER of those conditions - either the customer has completed a job in that time, or the customer has at least called in that time. 

Once you have recency down, then you can start thinking about relevancy. They play hand in hand with one another. You could very well still reach out to customers who haven't worked with you in a while but the way you reach out may be different. Perhaps you don't send them a newsletter, but a postcard to the same effect you would a prospect with a few offers to try and entice them back through your door!

Additionally, you may consider setting up more automated campaigns to keep warm your sending up a little more. We find customers who have a few solid automated campaigns running (3+) tend to have better results with 1x campaigns all around!

Hope this helps 🙂

[CapitalCyndiB]

Thanks for the reply!  All of that definitely does make sense, so I will remember that.  In the specific instance I am dealing with today, our company is wanting to send out a notice to customers that we've changed our business name.  So, my boss wanted this email "flyer" to go out to all customers that we have in our system, even if we haven't been to them in a while (his decision to do it that way).  In most instances, we do have much more specific parameters when setting up a campaign to reach a more targeted group of customers.  This specific one is just very broad.  

Thank you!

[egamby84]

Are you able to upload a photo/flyer that you have created yourself in the campaign, or do you have to use the templates that are provided?

[hdonalds]

I took a look at your campaigns in ServiceTitan. Considering this is an outlier to your typical marketing behaviors, I'd say for this instance, this is fine. I would just expect to see boost in unsubscribes and low engagement since you will be reaching pretty far back! Unsubscribes are just your mailing lists way of "right sizing" to an engaged audience only.