Why Your Email Campaigns Should Never Take a Holiday

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Do you experience disappointment when reviewing your email stats during the summer months? If so, you’re not alone. Summer is THE prime time of year to travel. And it’s a notoriously difficult time of year to connect with leads. There’s the winter holiday season, and other one-off holidays—like Independence Day and Labor Day—when leads might not be taking vacations, but you know their office isn’t open. Are the out-of-office (OOO) replies crazy around the holidays, or what!? Recently, I wrote about the value which reply emails provide and how marketing and sales teams benefit from mining replies for account intelligence. They pack a powerful punch that can easily become your ‘secret weapon’ for getting ahead of the competition. If your business tends to pull back on email campaigns around the holidays because you know “no one’s around anyway,” I’m here to tell you the holidays are the perfect time to improve the health of your database, add new leads in your target accounts, and even increase connect rates. Yes, you heard that right. So here’s how you can do this.

Don’t Delete OOO Replies Yeah, I get it. These emails clog your marketing inbox by the hundreds, especially around holidays. But automated email replies—such as OOOs—contain a goldmine of intelligence which you can use for everything from adding a lead’s cell phone, to allowing a sales rep to connect with a lead at exactly the right time to close a deal. I promise it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Take a look Diabetes Email List at this typical OOO reply, and let’s talk about what you can learn. email reply Let’s assume you only had the lead’s name and email address as the result of an inbound campaign and frictionless form. With this OOO, you now know: The date Mark will be back in the office Mark’s cell phone number Mark’s title Mark works closely with Stephanie and Bruce, and that he’s recommending you contact them while he’s OOO Is your brain already off to the races? Let’s look at how to leverage this intelligence.



Update Your Database First and foremost, you received an OOO reply to your email and not a left-the-company or hard bounce—so you know Mark is still a valid contact at your account. He’s a good record in your database. Additionally, you now have a title and cell phone number for him. Long term, this will help marketing send Mark more personalized and targeted content, and will give sales the information they need to reach Mark directly. Add New Contacts Within Your Target Accounts Now let’s talk about Stephanie and Bruce. You’ve never heard of them, but this is one of your target accounts, so you’re eager to connect with as many influencers in the organization as possible. Remember, today’s B2B buying decisions are typically made by more than the person signing the checks. Gartner has found that it takes an average of seven people within a company to make a decision. And those folks are everyone from the C-suite and managers, to end-users whose opinions are valuable.