accidentally sent a campaign to the same 400 people twice and the second send got more replies than the first
Yeah so this is not a strategy recommendation this is me admitting I screwed up and then being confused by the results
Last month I was loading a new list into a campaign and I grabbed the wrong csv. Didnt realize until about 2 days later when a guy replied saying "you emailed me this same thing like 3 weeks ago" and I checked and sure enough I had sent the exact same first email to roughly 400 people who already received it and didnt reply the first time
Immediately felt sick about it. Started drafting an apology in my head. Checked the damage expecting a bunch of angry replies and unsubscribe requests
Instead I had 11 replies from the second send. 7 of them positive. From people who completely ignored the first email 3 weeks earlier. One guy literally said "yeah sorry I saw this before and meant to reply but forgot. Lets chat next week"
He MEANT to reply. Three weeks ago. And just didnt. And if I hadnt accidentally emailed him again he never would have
Im not saying go blast your old lists again thats not the point. The point is that we treat a non reply as a no when alot of the time its just a not right now or a saw it but got busy or a meant to respond but then my kid threw up and I forgot. These are real people with real lives and your email is competing against everything else happening in their day and sometimes it just loses that competition even when the person was genuinely interested
Made me way less precious about follow up volume. I used to feel weird sending a 4th or 5th follow up because I thought I was being annoying. Now I think about that guy who meant to reply and didnt and I send the 5th email without hesitating