There are two reasons for opt out, frequency and relevancy.  How can brands or marketers most effectively address these to make sure campaigns are meeting both of these requirements?

This is a particularly hot area right now, and we are seeing a lot of interest in this area of opt out management. If you ask a marketer the problem they are having with opt out it is different than what others in the organization would say. All too often we say opt out management and hear that is associated with compliance, but as marketers we know it’s different than that. You want to service that customer not just sell them, but they won’t let you.

So how do we reduce the amount of opt out, that’s the first step. The top two drivers are frequency and relevancy. Relevancy of communication will be specific to the individual, so I would go back to preference management; allowing recipients to input where the right volume for them is so you allow them to opt down rather than opt out. It’s going to have a much better impact to your organization and to that customer. To deploy preference management is the first thing you’re going to want to do and the first practice you’re going to want to put in place to prevent future opt out.

The second one is contact governance which means making sure you actually adhere to it. The unfortunate part is that the minute you ask customers what they prefer, you have to do it or you’re going to do even more harm. You do need to have the systems in place to ensure that you’re adhering to that contact governance strategy for the individual. 

Understand before you execute a campaign, “what should I be doing?” Which means not just, What can I do,” but also, “What should I not be doing for this campaign?” One suggestion is, go and find out what your opt out rate was on your last campaign, and see how that compared to your response rate. Which is higher or lower? See what that number looks like; might be a little eye opening if you do that exercise.

Finally there are things that you can do to get them back, that are completely in accordance with loyalty and their preferences. This includes when they come to you. When that customer comes to your inbound touch points, make sure you service them well. If you try to get them to opt back in, don’t just fasten the opt out back in during any interaction. The best practice guidance is making sure that you prove it first. Make sure that it was a successful interaction, a positive one. Maybe it was a cross sell that occurred. Maybe it was just a service one. Once you’ve shown that you can deliver value you have better earned the right to say, “by the way I’m glad you find this of value.  If you like I’m happy to capture some quick preferences now so that we can let you learn more about more of these things that you like and I’ll make sure we don’t send you things that you don’t care about. Do you have one or two minutes for me to capture that right now? “

Jeff Nicholson

Regarded as a thought leader in his field, Jeff works closely with industry analysts including Gartner and Forrester and is a frequent presenter upon topics including event-triggered marketing, customer analytics, customer communications, campaign management, business process management and dialogue marketing strategy.

Insights above are taken from the Q&A follow up to the Pitney Bowes webinar, “Customer-Centric Marketing: Making the Move from Campaigns to Cross-Channel Dialogue.”   As a Loyalty 360 member you have the opportunity to access playback and view the presentation in its entirety at: “Customer-Centric Marketing: Making the Move from Campaigns to Cross-Channel Dialogue”

Recent Content

Membership and Pricing

Videos and podcasts

Membership and Pricing