Sending too much email to subscribers can increase unsubscribes, spam complaints, and generally annoy the people on your list. However, not sending enough can be an even greater risk.
Best Tip: Watch your email frequency & follow our 9 Email Marketing Trends.
Why Email Frequency Matters:
When you send too much, recipients are more likely to not want to see your messages anymore. More and more people unsubscribe which results in diminishing returns for your email marketing strategy. When that happens, it’s hard (and expensive) to get back into their email inboxes.
And if you send too little email, you may be missing out on revenue or referrals. The key is to understand what a customer really wants from you and how often they want it delivered in an inbox that isn’t overwhelming them with emails.
Here are some tips for how much email frequency matters.
How Much is Too Much?
It’s not a question of whether you should or shouldn’t send an email, but how much is too much? There isn’t an exact formula for determining that, but there are two things you can pay attention to opens and clicks.
If your subscribers are opening your emails, then how many that you send won’t matter as long as they do open them. Once you get them to engage with your content in some way—whether it’s by clicking on a link or opening an email—you’ve made progress toward converting leads into customers.
That progress is what matters most, not how frequently you send it! So yes: Email frequency matters…but don’t sweat it if you overdo it just a little bit!
And make sure you aren’t sending these 10 annoying emails.
4 Ways “Under Emailing” Can Hurt Your Email Marketing Campaigns
- Deliverability to the inbox is tied to the sender’s reputation. If you don’t mail regularly, your reputation is unknown and can lead to pretty erratic deliverability issues. When those issues happen, it’s hard to mitigate because the ISP’s don’t know who you are.
- If you are erratic in your sending practices and under-mail, you run the risk of your subscribers forgetting who you are. That, in turn, can lead to them questioning if they even signed up for your brand. This increases the likelihood of them marking your emails as spam or, worse yet, unsubscribing altogether. Despite your best intentions to not clog their inbox, they will think its spam nonetheless.
- When you don’t send consistently, it’s harder for you to determine who is considered “dormant” vs. “inactive” insider your subscriber base. This can lead to messaging confusion and assuming that everyone on your list should receive the same type of message.
- In an era where people like to voice their displeasure with brands online, the brand damage that can multiple 10x in any digital channel can take a while to recover or, at the very least, address on a grand scale.
The Final Word On Email Frequency…For Now
Imagine if you will, the annoying Aunt or Uncle that decides to show up at your house unannounced and wants to stay several weeks. You saw them at the reunion last year and had a good time, great laughs, and they just assumed it was ok to come and “spend” some time with you. As invasive as it is someone staying at your house unannounced, the same holds by you invading their inbox without warning or any consistency.
Don’t be Aunt Karen and Uncle Bob, and invite yourself in the inbox when you feel like it.
