A reader wrote in with an interesting question about my last blog post, which was about why some pay-per-click campaigns will generate more email complaints than others. The main factors I listed were: Disconnect in text of the ad, Keyword disconnect, Display network differences.

Following is the reader's response to that post (edited for brevity):

"I've seen the items you list all affect the quality of leads we generate from our PPC campaigns and the idea of tying lead quality to deliverability costs of sending to those leads is something I'm going to start tracking in our PPC metrics. However, I was surprised that you didn’t list 'Timing' as a factor. One way we’ve been able to really bring down our complaint rates is by speeding up the time between when we acquire a lead’s email address and when we start sending to that lead. Previously, we were batch-processes based and there could be a day or two after someone gave us their email address and when we sent them a first message. We moved to a more advanced email system that allowed us to trigger a send immediately after someone types in their email address. With this move to immediate sending our complaint rates dropped dramatically."

This reader does make a good point. The moment you acquire a lead, that lead starts going stale. The longer you wait to follow up with leads, the more they could lose interest or simply forget about having opted in to your marketing program. And the staler a set of leads are, the more complaints they will generate when you send email to them. That’s why it’s important to start your sending campaigns immediately. If there are variances in the timing of your follow-up messages of your PPC campaigns this will likely affect the deliverability you see to the generated leads and to the overall conversion success you have with those leads.

Many marketers address these timing issues with drip campaigns. In a drip campaign, a scheduled series of emails is immediately begun when a lead’s email address is captured. Drip campaigns can be a great way to make sure you’re getting the most value out of your PPC campaigns that you can.

The reader further asked, "So, in a previous post you’ve already given out a formula for calculating the cost of bounces in PPC analysis. How about a formula for calculating the cost of a complaint?" This is a great question which I’m going to answer with a formula in my next post. Stay tuned.

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