PRIMARY vs SECONDARY EMAILS
Higher Email Open/Click Rates with Primary Email Addresses
PRIMARY VS SECONDARY/TERTIARY EMAIL ADDRESSES: Most people have multiple email addresses. There is the primary email address - which is frequently checked, and then there are secondary and tertiary email addresses … which are not checked as often. Secondary and tertiary email addresses are typically shared with entities with whom the user doesn’t expect a lasting relationship, or in situations in which their email may be available to the public. Low-cost data sellers mainly have secondary and tertiary email addresses since they’re prevalent and very easy to acquire, many of which are scraped from the web for free.
WHY FAILURE: One of the main reasons prospecting email campaigns fail is because the prospecting email list was packed with secondary/tertiary email addresses. Even if the email list is 100% deliverable, the campaign is still likely to fail … for the simple reason that the email recipients never check the Inbox of their secondary/tertiary email addresses.
PRIMARY EMAILS ARE THE BEST! Primary email addresses always have higher email Open/Click rates since primary addresses are frequently checked. Primary email addresses also have a much higher match rate when building a Custom Audience on Facebook … higher match rate since most Facebook members use their primary email address on Facebook. Primary emails are also common with subscription services such as newsletters / publications … as users often want daily updates from their favorite publications.
HOW TO IDENTIFY PRIMARY EMAIL ADDRESS: There’s no foolproof way to know if an email address is primary vs secondary, though we have built a propensity model that predicts with a high likelihood. Our model studies the domain (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.), name configuration, email gender metric, email check frequency, email data source (subscription, transactional, survey, unknown, etc.) … to name just a few of the model inputs. Our email database is a massive co-op database … with 1000+ companies contributing data … many of which are major national brands. Not all, but many of the companies that contribute data … indicate frequency that Inbox is checked and from this value we can predict primary vs secondary. Email data sources also influence the model; for example, people tend to use their primary email address with publications, thus these types of email addresses will receive a higher propensity score.
EMAIL AFFINITY RATE: Another effective metric is Email Affinity … representing the relationship between email address and contact name. From our extensive research, we confidently conclude that most (not all) primary email addresses have a correlation with the person’s name. For example, guess which below email address is “more likely” to be the primary email address for “Mark Smith.”
Most Likely: Mark.Smith@gmail.com
2nd Choice: M.Smith@outlook.com
3rd Choice: Mark18751@aol.com
4th Choice: MLS#1@gmail.com
5th Choice: Janet.Smith@gmail.com
MINIMUM 60% IS THE GOLDEN RULE: How do you know if your purchased email list is packed with primary OR secondary/tertiary email addresses? The 60% golden rule is an easy way to tell. Our research shows that “at least” 60% of people use some part of their name within their primary email address. Thus, we recommend never buying a prospecting email list in which the data seller does not guarantee a minimum 60% email-name affinity rate.
SUPER LOW PRICE EMAIL LISTS: Email lists that are packed with secondary/tertiary email addresses are always super cheap because these type of email addresses are easy to compile … and often these low-quality emails can be downloaded for free. For example, many governmental agencies will require an email address when registering a truck, acquiring a license, etc., and these emails are always put into the public domain for anyone to download … and this fact is why the participants never enter their primary email address.
EMAIL GENDER: Email gender is another easy way to determine if your purchased email list is packed with primary vs secondary/tertiary email addresses. For example, if the contact is Bob Baker but the email address is Tammy.Baker@gmail.com, then obviously Bob will most likely not see your message … since 95% of the time spouses do not forward advertising email to their spouses. Bottom-line, that email address is worthless … might as well be called a hard bounce. By the way, at no fee we can provide an email gender analysis of your email list; in seconds our proprietary software can scan millions of emails to determine gender email metrics.
DELIVERABLE BUT HARD BOUNCE: Of course, a “deliverable” email address is not a hard bounce email, but for all practical purposes the email address IS a hard bounce IF the email address is for the wrong person. For example, let’s say the contact name is Mike Jones … he’s qualified for your offer … the perfect demographic profile! However, what if the data seller’s email address for Mike Jones was: Mike.Smith@Gmail.com. Even if the email address is deliverable, it’s still a worthless email address since your offer is for Mike Jones … NOT Mike Smith. That’s no different than a hard bounce in our opinion!
COST: Yes, primary email addresses have a higher cost, BUT on the back-end the added expense is well worth it … since primary email addresses will generate “significantly” higher email Open/Click rates than secondary/tertiary email addresses … higher ROI for sure!