Email Appends - Worth a Deeper Look

Email Appends are something that seem to be catching on with B2C companies looking to move their customer touchpoints to the online space. Simply put, email appends allow companies to take offline customer data and match it up with a corresponding email address. An opt out email usually follows.

In theory, everyone wins. The customer will get email offers and newsletters and the company can save money by communicating via email instead of costly direct mail/telemarketing et al. In practice, it can be more complicated than this but it is someting we have coordinated for clients and have found it to be a cost effective email acquistion program.

I found this link titled "Email Appending - A new business strategy" (from a vendor so buyer beware) that gives a nice overview of the benefits of email appending.

One very interesting study that came out recently (shocker - from an email append data vendor - FreshAddress is a must read for anyone considering ways to build their email list.


Commercial clients average deliverable email append results:

Household appending: 16%
Individual appending: 12%
Nonprofits average deliverable email append results:

Household appending: 15%
Individual appending: 9%
Average deliverable email change of address results:

Email Change of Address: 8% (both commercial and nonprofits)