“Friends and Family”: Big Payoff from a Few Small Words

Some would say that the winter holidays are all about friends, family, and spreading the cheer. For email marketers, this translates into opportunity for deeper customer engagement, increased response, and higher return on investment through the use of the viral and ever-popular “friends and family” campaign. While this trend is nothing new, friends-and-family campaigns have changed somewhat during the past few years.

The friends-and-family email campaigns of yesteryear contained very targeted promotions sent to preselected groups of employees, business partners, and perhaps best customers. These offers were highly coveted and were perceived as being “better” than those available to the general public. The campaigns not only were strong revenue performers but also became effective acquisition tools due to the virility of the included offers.

Marketers took notice of the outstandingly attractive results obtained, and now, most friends-and-family campaigns are not targeted but instead distributed to the entire customer file. Built upon consumer discernment and marketing legacy, the “new class” of campaigns capitalizes on a perception of exclusivity that, for the most part, strays from reality.

Lucky for marketers that leverage this tactic, however, it appears that the perception of friends-and-family offers being “special” continues—going so far as to outperform on all key metrics otherwise identical promotions without the friends-and-family messaging.

In a recent study, Experian CheetahMail’s Strategic Services team found that the most common offers during the holiday season for friends-and-family emails were 20% and 30% off. During this same time period, many businesses also sent non-friends-and-family promotions with the exact same offer values. When we compared the metrics for these campaigns, the results were clear: Friends-and-family emails had 30% higher open rates and 27% higher click rates, and they generated double the transaction rates and triple the revenue per email than bulk mailings with the same offer.

In short, adding friends-and-family messaging to your holiday email marketing arsenal requires little effort or investment and can provide an immense payoff. A few words really can make a huge difference.

Erin Geoghegan is marketing manager for Experian Marketing Services.