Why the size of your email list doesn’t actually matter
And how cutting back on subscribers can help drive sales
A successful email marketing list is one that’s continually growing, right?
Wrong. In fact, it’s not the size of your email marketing list that counts – it’s whether your subscribers are engaged. In other words, whether they’re opening your emails, clicking on your content and, most importantly, purchasing from you.
And yet, says LoyPal co-founder Adam Simms, too many businesses still measure the success of their email marketing programs by looking at list size.
“The fact that database size is still a primary metric in 2023 is incredible,” he says. “It’s the business equivalent of tracking how many matches you get on a dating app rather than the quality of those matches.”
After all, assuming you stay in business and continue to capture customers’ contact details (even if it’s just via online checkout subscriptions), your list will always increase.
A feel-good but flawed metric
Simms’ fellow co-founder, Andrew Fisher, explains that many brands report on email list size because it’s a reliably positive metric. “It provides cover for the marketing team to give a faux-accountable KPI and it provides a CEO with something positive to report to the board.”
The problem, says Fisher, is that focusing on list size means ignoring metrics that do matter – including engagement and conversion – and this can affect your bottom line.
For example, a low click-through or conversion rate requires urgent attention. “It’s a sign that the quality isn’t there or the messaging isn’t resonating. People have switched off and you’re just background noise in their inbox,” says Simms.
“If someone hasn’t engaged with anything you’ve said for a long period of time, the chances of them doing so are infinitesimally small.”
Why removing subscribers can drive sales
Whenever the LoyPal team start working with a brand, they differentiate between customers who are active and those who are lapsed. Very often, LoyPal will archive customers who haven’t engaged with the brand for a long time.
“As soon as you start pulling those people into their own distinct group, you give yourself the space to have two different conversations,” says Simms. “You can talk to active customers in a slightly more active way, and you can focus on re-engagement for lapsed customers.”
This also means that any decisions around content – what’s resonating and what isn’t – will be based on actively engaged customers and, therefore, more accurate.
Once you’ve culled the dead wood from your list, “spend your time and effort on customers who want to hear from you about the things that resonate with them.”
What is a lapsed subscriber?
The definition of a lapsed customer will change depending on your business and industry, and LoyPal’s technology can accurately identify when customers are no longer engaged. Often, brands that have acquired customers via heavy discounting will have a higher proportion of lapsed customers.
“A customer may only purchase from you twice a year, but they may open a dozen emails and visit your site eight to 10 times a year to consume content and look at offers,” says Simms. “You would expect the average person to show some signs of engagement about every one to two months and have made a purchase within the last six to eight.
“If both of those metrics start to get longer, then that customer should be going into an at-risk cohort. If they go for 12 to 18 months with no purchase, then they have probably disengaged.”