Email campaigns that target loyalty program members are more successful at engaging their audiences, generating higher open rates, transaction levels, and revenue per email, according to a report by Experian CheetahMail. Even email campaigns inviting prospects to join loyalty programs tend to outperform bulk promotional mailings.

Among email campaigns studied, mailings targeting loyalty program members boosted transaction rates 29% over bulk campaigns sent to the same clients (0.09% vs. 0.07%), and such programs increased revenue per email 11% ($0.18 vs. $0.17).

Loyalty mailings also lifted email open and click rates:

• Open rates for mailings sent to loyalty program members were 40% higher than for bulk mailings to the same clients: 27.4% vs. 19.6%.
• Click rates for such loyalty mailings were 22% higher: 4.0% vs. 3.2%.

Below, other findings from Experian Marketing Services' report, The loyalist: Leveraging Relationships With Existing Customers to Increase ROI.

Engaging Prospects

Mailings targeting prospects with invitations to join loyalty programs outperformed non-loyalty bulk mailings sent to the same customers, lifting transaction rates 28% (0.9% vs. 0.70%) and revenue per email 25% ($0.21 vs. $0.17).

Loyalty Mailing Types

Among various types of loyalty mailings, emails announcing rewards arrivals performed best, generating open rates roughly 5 times higher than loyalty promotional mailings (126.4% vs. 26.2%).

Overall, however, most loyalty mailings generated strong click rates:

• Welcome emails: 58.5%
• Reward statements: 56.1%
• Redemption reminders: 53.6%
• Surveys: 51.1%

Loyalty mailings also generated relatively high transaction and revenue levels. For example, loyalty surveys generated average revenue per email of $3.86, while reward statements generated $1.82 per email.

Similarly, with average revenue per email of $1.26, redemption reminders are worthwhile way to remind members to redeem their miles or points.

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Points Programs Preferred

The most popular types of credit card affiliation among US adults are for loyalty points (18%) and cash-back (16%), whereas airline (6%) and hotel (2%) affiliations are less prevalent.

About the study: Email data in this report is based on campaign performance of Experian CheetahMail clients with loyalty email programs, from Jan 2009 to June 2010. Over 5,600 transactional emails were compared to bulk campaigns for the same time period.