I started to move a number of my subscriptions from an old email addresses to my new OtherInbox account and during the transition I’ve kept subscriptions to both my old address and my new address, to monitor how many marketers have different mail streams based on the subscribers length of time on file. In recognition of this I wanted to give kudos to the team over at Electronic Arts for segmenting their lists and recognizing where the life cycle of a subscriber is in their email campaign…
While the content of the messages is the same the subject lines have been targeted to the various life stages of these accounts. My older account gets the regular subject while the new one receives a targeted subject calling out this is the “First message” that I’ll be expecting in my new relationship with EA. The subject also sent the expected timing of communications from EA by mentioning this is a Monthly publication.
Here is the header of the old account with EA: 
And the new email address with EA:
It’s surprising how many mailers miss this simple relationship building step with their clients. Read more on a great activation program from Aeroplan, that had some amazing results: Unique Open Rates increased 32% and Unique Clickthrough Rates increased 58%. (disclosure – this is a client case study from my employer; ThinData Inc.)
Kudos should be given to EA for implementing lifecycle marketing, however, I do think having the ability to update your contact information within a manage preferences page or the like would have been even better to continue the relationship you already have with them. This will help when you abandon your old email address and they lose all the important tracking and purchasing data from that address instead of starting over from scratch with your new email address.
Hi Kelly,
Your right it would be nice to update an address, but many mailers I find are missing that – it’s 1) unsubscribe and re-subscribe (or not) or 2) update your address.
I’m also finding that some mailers will not take my new email as an acceptable domain and will reject my subscription/update. I find I’m simply unsubbing from those and moving on.
Thanks for reading.
Matt
@emailkarma