Most emails sent by online retailers are universal and undifferentiated: the same message is sent to everyone, more or less.
And with the majority of digital marketing channels having very low variable costs (it doesn’t cost much more to send 1000 emails than to send one), this approach – of carpet-bombing subscribers and customers – used to be considered a ‘can’t lose’ strategy.
But, of course, it isn’t.
Every time a customer receives a marketing message they’re not interested in, they lose a bit of respect for that brand, they are a little less unlikely to open their next message and are less likely to click through on the next offer, even if it is more relevant to their needs…
