Resending Emails: Increase Revenue With Automated Remailing

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On average, only 18% of promotional ecommerce emails are opened, meaning that the other 82% go unread, left gathering dust in the inbox archives. But that does not have to be the case.

Resending email campaigns, or remailing, can help you improve this situation by up to 30%, making it a powerful addition to your email marketing toolkit. Unlike some advanced marketing techniques, remailing doesn’t require any sophisticated solutions. But there are a few things to bear in mind before incorporating remailing into your marketing strategy.

In this article, we’ll cover the most frequently asked questions about remailing, things to consider, and situations when it may be best to avoid using them. So carry on reading and learn how to quickly improve revenue from your email marketing campaigns.

What is Remailing and How Does it Work?

Remailing, or Campaign Booster as we call it here at Omnisend, is an email marketing feature that allows marketers to automatically resend email campaigns to recipients who didn’t open it the first time.

According to our research, the majority of all email opens occur in the first 48 hours. This means that after two days have passed, you can safely attempt to re-engage subscribers by resending the same email to customers who didn’t open your initial email campaign—as long as you follow remail best practices.

Why Should You Consider Resending Emails?

There are five clear reasons why you should consider adopting remailing into your email marketing strategy.

1. Eight out of ten promotional emails are never opened. The reasons are simple:

• Customers fail to notice your email in their inboxes;
• The subject line is not catchy enough;
• Customers are no longer interested in your brand.

For the third point, you should read about customer reactivation. But for the first two reasons, your email campaign is worth a second chance, and remailing is exactly what you need.

2. By resending your campaign, you get a second chance to approach your customers and significantly improve your email campaign performance. Find the chart below.
3. It’s time-efficient. Resending your campaign can take as much time as simply composing a new subject line.
4. If you follow email marketing best practices and keep your list clean, remailing the most important email campaigns won’t harm your list or your sender’s reputation.
5. The most significant benefit is the growth in sales.

Best Practices of Resending Emails

First, when resending the email campaign, use a different subject line. For example, if the original was broad, make the new one actionable. If it was text-based, use numbers. If there were no emojis, use emojis (if relevant). Just be sure to make it noticeably different.

Second, we recommend resending email campaigns after 48 hours. If email recipients don’t open your email in the first two days, it’s almost certain that they won’t open it at all.

Third, don’t resend more than once. If recipients ignore your email a second time they are indicating there is not immediate interest—move on.

What Results Can You Expect?

It’s essential to understand that resending the same campaign to non-openers shouldn’t be treated the same as the original one—after all, you’ve already removed the most engaged portion of your audience. The results of remails should be measured separately from the first-sends.

Usually, the open rate of the remailed campaign is about half of the original campaign. Click and conversion rates may vary. However, by boosting email campaigns this way, you can improve the aggregated overall campaign revenue.

Let’s analyze one Omnisend customer in the fashion & apparel space with a customer database of roughly 30K. The average open rate of their original campaigns is 17.9%, while the average of boosted campaigns is 8.6%. This means, by utilizing remails, an additional 2,100 subscribers opened the email per send. Even though both the click and conversion rate were slightly lower than the original sends, the remailed messages generated 10 extra orders and accounted for nearly 8% of total campaign revenue—money otherwise left on the table.

We can see how powerful the remailing can be for a brand.

The Best and the Worst Cases to Use Remailing

Although resending emails might look like the holy grail, this tactic shouldn’t be overused.

The Campaign Booster is perfect for the following campaigns:

• “The last chance” sale reminders
• New product alerts
• Popular back-in-stock emails
• Other IMPORTANT messaging

Here are some tips for when you may want to avoid resending emails.

1. Don’t resend your campaigns if you are a daily sender. You are at risk of overwhelming your audience with promotional messages, which might result in more spam complaints and unsubscribes. If you notice your unsubscribe rate increase with remails it is a sign to dial them back.
2. Don’t resend every single email, especially if it’s not essential and won’t “wow” your audience.
3. Resending is not the best choice for announcing flash sales and other time-sensitive messages. Instead, consider sending SMS campaigns that are more effective in such time-sensitive cases.
4. Don’t resend email campaigns to unengaged contacts. If you don’t keep your list clean and have a dedicated re-engagement strategy, flooding their inboxes with emails won’t help you. On the contrary, you can spoil your sender reputation by repeatedly approaching unengaged customers.

You find more about resending emails with our Campaign Booster here.

How Recycling Your Content is Different from Resending?

When we talk about resending campaigns with Campaign Booster, it means that email content remains the same. The subject line is the only element that is changed.

However, if you don’t feel comfortable sending the same email twice, consider recycling email content. By recycling content, you keep the same email idea, slightly adjust visuals and copywriting based on previously created content, add a new subject line, and segment out the audience that opened the original campaign. Since this content is new, you have the option to also send it to previous openers who did not convert.

This strategy is different from remailing, but it helps to save time by removing the need to create a new email from scratch and gives you the flexibility to set up a new sending schedule. Recycling content can come in handy for email campaigns that span over a longer period of time, such as Father’s Day.

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The numbers prove that remailing works. This strategy is not as sophisticated as in-depth audience segmentation or personalization, but that’s the best part—anyone can do it. Remailing critical email campaigns can be the secret tool that helps your email program increase sales.