Emails provide companies with a cheap and effective way to communicate with their active and potential customers. When sending emails, the number of recipients has a limited impact on the cost of the process, making them especially suitable for regular mass communication. However, unlike other avenues such as the use of the company website or social media, emails are private and a sender requires to use a specific address for each recipient (Larson & Draper, 2019). CommonBond has found some success in the use of emails more so in the year 2016 after it adjusted is emailing strategy. Nevertheless, the company’s success rate is quite low with less than 50% of its emails capturing the attention of its targets. The company needs to adjust both the content that it sends and also its approach regarding whom it sends the content to in order to improve its statistics. CommonBond focuses on emails as its primary mode of reaching out to its clientele but its rate of success in outreach is limited. The fact that the company seems to be celebrating a 15.6% rate of engagement reflects a system that has been struggling for long. For a start, less than 50% of the company’s target audience ever gets to read its emails (Guddal, n.d). This rate is troubling since a large cross-section of recipients have either interacted with the company before or are its active customers. Further, for the less than 50% who read the emails, only less a third are engaged enough to click to open in CommonBond’s best month, January 2016. In 2016, the figure was exponentially lower, at less than 10% (Guddal, n.d). Emails are supposed to be a personalized mode of communication as opposed to other modes such as social media. It takes a lot of effort to build an email list without risking ethical breaches. Further, it also takes great effort to develop the right content for emailing to a large group (Larson & Draper, 2019). The email should be acceptable to different people, yet appealing to each of them. CommonBond needs to improve the rates at which its audiences get to read its emails and follow through by clicking to open. A careful evaluation of the use of emails at CommonBond reveals that the company has a problem both with the content and with the emailing lists. The content is comprehensive but not attractive. Although the company uses multimedia content and colorful pictures in its emails, there is room for improvement. Secondly, the company sends similar content to all its target audience (Guddal, n.d). Since the audience varies, the company should try and vary content to suit different audiences. CommonBond has only seen limited success in its emailing campaigns and needs to improve to at least 75% getting to read its emails and 50% click to open rates. To achieve this improvement, the company needs to adjust the content it sends and to whom it sends it. The first possible alternative is the development of different emailing lists based on whom the recipients of the emails are. Currently, the company has mailing lists based on their relationship with the audience. Some are clients, others are potential clients, while others are friends or family members of staff members. However, the audience has its own characteristics. Some are young, others old. Some are undergraduate, other graduates. The audience also has a varied professional affiliation. The company can develop specialized emailing lists that clusters targets depending on common interests (Oklander & Oklander, 2017). If the audience finds the emails relatable, reading and clicking to open rates will increase. The second alternative is to make the emails more interesting. One of the ways of making marketing communication interesting is through the use of humor (Djambaska, Petrovska & Bundalevska, 2016). Both professionals and students are busy people yet they still receive a large number of emails on varying subjects. They are bound to ignore some of the emails they receive. However, a humorous email will attract the attention of an audience even when they are busy.
The final option is sending personalized emails to different target audiences at different times, as opposed to sending mail en masse. Examples of such emails include transactional emails and triggered emails (Larson & Draper, 2019). A good example of a triggered email is responding to clients who do not click to open emails. The company can send a triggered email with a message like “did you notice our mail”. Transactional emails, on the other hand, could go to customers who recently contacted CommonBond beginning with a message like “we enjoyed interacting with you”. The relevance of such messages could be appealing to clients.
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Solution
The most viable solution is a combination of the first and second alternatives as outlined above. CommonBond should take a fresh look at its mailing list based on the particulars available to the company regarding its target customers. The company should then create a new set of mailing lists depending on the nature of the audience (Oklander & Oklander, 2017). For example, law students can have their own group, teenage students another group, and older post-graduate students their own group. Non-students who are also customers can have their own group. The company can then develop humorous emails targeting specific groups, like courtroom jokes for the law students. The combination of the two approaches will improve emailing statistics for the company.
Conclusions and Recommendations
As reflected in the case study analysis above, the use of emails as a means of communication requires the combination of an ability to develop good content and mailing lists for sending the emails. Emails are especially suitable for CommonBond due to its nature of business. Student loans are personal and vary from customer-to-customer. Using emails cements the interpersonal relationship that CommonBond has with its current and future customers. However, the company has poor statistics for the numbers receive and click to open its emails. To improve on these statistics, it is recommended that CommonBond create new emailing lists based on the specific prerequisites of the customers. Secondly, the company should employ humor to capture the interest of the targets thus improving chances of click to read.
References
Djambaska, A., Petrovska, I., & Bundalevska, E. (2016). Is humor advertising always effective? Parameters for effective use of humor in advertising. Journal of Management Research , 8 (1), 1-19.
Duggal, R. (n.d). CommonBond Case Study. Stukent Inc.
Larson, J., & Draper, S. (2019). Internet marketing essentials: a comprehensive digital marketing textbook . Idaho Falls, Idaho: Stukent Inc.
Oklander, M., & Oklander, T. (2017). Segmentation and communication in digital marketing.
