Hi Kelly.

Yes, not unreasonable. I used “may”, because I think it will actually depend on a range of factors. Not forgetting that a typical list is a mix of loyalists and non-loyalists.

The key message for me was that it may not always be the case. If you’re a travel comparison site, I think you can be fairly sure most people ARE getting competing offers by email. But equally there are many organisations where there’s a natural constraint to switching purchase source.

I only get emails from one domain registrar, one football club, etc. But many of the emails speak to me as if they were desperately trying to recruit me as a first-time customer in the face of competition, rather than recognize that I’m pretty much going to stick with them unless they do something stupid.

Thanks for these lessons. For arguments sake, could it be possible that the 10 or 11 newsletters that consumers on average sign up for be mostly composed of competitors? Reason being, if a consumer is interested in a certain area like cooking or electronics, wouldn’t it be reasonable to anticipate they would sign up for several competing companies’ newsletters if they aren’t exclusively loyal to a certain company – and let’s be honest, most aren’t? I’ve found that many marketers compete on price, which puts them in this continual cycle of discounting to compete because they’ve got their subscribers based on discounting and incentives. That’s my thought on your point #1.

All good stuff and takeaways. Thank you.

Would it be legal (and possible) to collect peoples IP addresses when they sign up to your newsletter? I am thinking that it might be a smart way of tracking long tail opens after a sent newsletter, tracking those who don´t click the links in the mail.

Thanks for a nice article