Yesterday was July 4, so I’m gonna share a little story with you about something that happened with a client a few years ago. This client is B2C, and they sell a product that people in a specific geography are very interested in. These people visit the company website and sometimes learn right away that they’re ineligible for the company’s product. But they are so interested in it that they fill out a HubSpot form, go into the client’s HubSpot CRM, and, in some cases, sit there for several months until they can be nurtured and learn they are eligible for the product.
Leading up to a national holiday, without telling me they were going to do this (because I would have told them “don’t do this”), they sent an email blast to everyone in HubSpot: customers and leads. The email said something to the effect of “Happy [insert holiday], we’re so thankful for you.” The call-to-action button sent them to the company website. The customers who received the email didn’t understand why they were being sent to the company website, but, even more importantly, the leads on the list learned they were still ineligible for the product!
Put yourself in their shoes for a minute: you signed up months ago because you were genuinely interested in this product, only to find out you couldn’t get it yet. Then, after hearing nothing for months, you finally receive an email from the company, click through with maybe a little hope that something has changed, and land right back where you started: still ineligible, still unable to buy, and now being asked to fill out yet another form.
I’m sure you can guess what happened next. These people, the company was so thankful for, many of them unsubscribed from the email list, which means the company can never email them again. Those people are gone forever. So when the product becomes available to them, they won’t know because the client won’t be able to notify them.
Yeah, this was a major mistake on their part, because it resulted in the highest unsubscribe rate they had all year. Up to this point, they had single-digit unsubscribe rates, which is the lowest I’ve ever seen from any company I’ve worked with. They had a pristine list. The leads they lost could have converted into monthly recurring revenue and been huge opportunities for word-of-mouth referrals.
The lesson here is that whether you’re B2B or B2C, be very, very careful when sending holiday emails. There are still many holidays to come in 2023, so think long and hard before you send an email blast and possibly blow up part of your list. Make sure it’s absolutely necessary (e.g., transactional emails that affect customers), and ensure your lists are properly segmented.
HubSpot makes list segmentation so easy! If you’re a HubSpot user, you can slice and dice your contacts in a million different ways based on the default and custom properties you’re using.
And make sure the messaging is right. Don’t just say “Happy Thanksgiving,” “Happy Valentine’s Day,” or “Happy Labor Day” just for the sake of saying it. People’s inboxes are getting flooded all the time. I unsubscribe from lists every day. It’s so exhausting.
If you’re emailing your prospects and customers, it better be useful, educational, and interesting; they don’t want just another email in their inbox (would you?!). Make sure you are delighting them always.
If you’d like to discuss any of this, I would love to chat with you!