Email tool allows consumers to hit 'snooze'

Consumers can temporarily halt the delivery of email marketing communications with a new tool from email marketing firm Silverpop. The Snooze tool added to its Engage platform enables email recipients to cancel delivery of company communications and set the date upon which to begin receiving communications again. Consumers remain opted-in during the hiatus.

Loren McDonald, VP of industry relations at Silverpop, said that the company developed the tool as a best practice to help consumers manage the high volume of emails they receive and as an alternative to unsubscribing entirely.

“If all [email marketers in a given sector] are sending three emails a week, then on any given day you might get five emails from different companies,” he said. “Giving [consumers] the opportunity to snooze as opposed to unsubscribe will give those marketers a better opportunity to retain those people if somebody is just going through [their email subscriptions] and saying, ‘I've made my purchase in this category; for a while I'm sort of done with it.'”

The Snooze button can be found on the landing page that companies direct consumers to via an email's “unsubscribe” link.

The typical annual unsubscribe rate for Silverpop's customers is “only a couple percent, but if you're a large volume marketer, that's 2% of a couple million [subscribers],” said McDonald.

Messages sent during the hiatus will not be delivered upon its completion, but McDonald said Silverpop's clients have the option to trigger a welcome back email.