After spending days working on copy for a client’s email campaign, I started thinking about the age old question of how much really is too much. No matter what, you always want to have an onboarding/welcome campaign going on, but what happens after that? Do you send weekly? Bi-weekly? Monthly? Every 2 days? There’s no silver bullet, but there are a few things you can do to get an idea of how to answer that question for your business.
- Ask your customers. If you can, build a preference center and let the customer decide what they want to receive and when.
- Test it out. If a preference center is not an option, take a small sample of your list and try mailing to them at different cadences and see where people drop off.
- Segment. If you have a handful of different types of messages, make sure you’re getting the right one to the right person. If it’s relevant, they’ll most likely look it.
- Build a recurring email campaign. A weekly special or monthly newsletter will keep people coming back for more. Just make sure it doesn’t go stale.
- Keep an eye on the numbers. If your list starts to drop, then go back to the drawing the board and try it again.
- Ask your customers. Send them short email and ask them how often they want to receive emails from you.
In simple terms, you need to know your customers to give them what they want. We all have more ways to find information about your company than ever before, so utilize them. Use social media as customer research for your email programs. Use blogs to refer people back to your email program and use your website to promote it.
There is a saturation point, you just have to do find where that is for your business and tailor your email program for that.
Ready to advance your email marketing skills? Check out the on-demand class, "Email Offers, Timing, and Frequency". OMI instructor Karen Talavera will go beyond the basics into email optimization, and will reveal offer s that work, how to determine optimal frequency, when to send emails, and more. Get Instant Access Now.