81% of recipients unsubscribe from brands that send emails too often. So, should you resend the email campaign that was ignored the first time? Although your concern is justified, resending emails has its benefits. Here are some to consider:
Resending emails isn’t a long or complicated process. Here’s how to resend your emails in Selzy.
Resending emails doesn’t require any special skills or complicated schemes. However, here are some principles to follow if you want to make the most of resending emails.
Resending emails too soon might annoy your recipients. If one sees a familiar subject line that they just saw in the inbox, they’ll treat your email as spam or even unsubscribe from your newsletter.
You can also analyze your previous email campaigns to identify when exactly recipients open your emails. Based on this information, you can find the best time to send an email again.
In Selzy, you can do it in the Recipient behavior tab. Here’s what it looks like:
For example, the campaign above got most, although not all of its opens during the day it was sent. It was also sent on a Friday, so resending it at the beginning of the next work week is a reasonable solution.
Although resending emails is a common marketing practice, you shouldn’t do it with every email campaign or just too often. If you resend too many emails, your subscribers will get annoyed. Here are some emails worth resending:
The subject line is the first thing that your recipient sees in their inbox. Based on their impression of it, they decide whether to open your email or not. So, changing your subject line can increase your chances of success with resending emails. Moreover, a subscriber might recognize the subject line in their inbox if you don’t change it — this may worsen your image in the eyes of your contact base.
Don’t know how to “change the subject”, so to speak? Here are some examples for your inspiration:
Original | Updated for the resend |
Don’t miss our annual sale! | Our annual sale ends soon! |
Join us for our event | Save the date for our event |
Save 15% with our special offer | Get your 15% discount |
Automating processes, resending included, saves your time and mental energy for more important things like strategic thinking. Selzy’s updated campaign flow allows you to set up the resending date so you don’t have to do it manually.
In the Review and finish part of the campaign flow, find the Email Schedule settings, and select the Resend to those who have not opened checkbox. Then, you’ll be able to customize the resending settings, including the new subject line.
There is a difference between resent emails and follow-up emails. Different sources suggest sending up to 5 follow-ups for one message. However, this does not apply to resending. Why so?
Each follow-up email is a different message where you try to find the right approach to a prospect who doesn’t reach out to you. You appeal to different pain points, describe different advantages of your product or service, and provide success stories. It’s not the case for resent emails — you’re just copy-pasting the same message because it wasn’t opened the first time. So, if you keep resending identical emails over and over, you’ll end up with spam reports and unsubscribes.
There is no 100% guarantee resending emails will be successful and effective. However, we do have some tips for you — consider using them to make the most of resending email campaigns.
A/B testing for the resending emails can help you identify your strong and weak points. It can also help you check out if resending works for your audience — you can split the contact list into two groups and resend your campaign to one of them.
Alternatively, you can make two different subject line versions to see which one performs better. Here are possible subject line variables you can test while resending email campaigns:
After you perform the resending email testing, check the results. The most obvious thing to do here is to pay attention to email open rates. Although open rates are not necessarily the reflection of your email campaign success, they are still worth working on. You can use them as an A/B testing metric to identify the best subject line version. Email opens also demonstrate how many people received your information and increase conversion odds.
If you don’t understand what you’re doing wrong, ask your subscribers directly. You may create a survey or ask them to reply to your email with their feedback. To gather as many responses as possible, try making your surveys easy to navigate. You can make a multiple-choice questionnaire or a sliding scale.
Asking for feedback will help you avoid common email mistakes like consistently sending irrelevant content. It’s also an opportunity to understand your audience better, enhance your email marketing campaigns — and, of course, learn how your subscribers really perceive email resending.
As beneficial as resending emails is, some of your subscribers may react negatively to them. Some leave negative reviews, while others reply directly to your emails. To keep a warm relationship with your customers, it is important to react to negativity. Here’s what you can do to achieve the best results:
So, you already know that resending emails increases engagement but to what extent? Here’s an example we discussed in FWD: by Selzy.
In April 2024, we ran the first-ever promotional campaign for FWD: by Selzy subscribers. However, we ended up sending the wrong discount code, so we sent a correction email as a hotfix. Thanks to resending, the total open rate of this campaign reached a whopping 73%.
Here are some numbers to put that into perspective:
Will you achieve results like this? It heavily depends on many factors. If you want to maximize the results of your email resends, experiment and evaluate the data. You may want to take campaign type, sending and resending days of week and time of day, subject lines, and other factors into account. However, this case demonstrates how powerful resending emails can be — if applied to the right emails at the right time.
Resending emails is a strategy worth giving a try. It gives a second chance to the campaigns you’ve spent time and effort on to boost your open, conversion, and engagement rates.
To make sure your emails don’t end up unopened in your recipient’s inbox, do the following: