An increasing amount of businesses are adopting email marketing and experiencing firsthand how it can aid them achieve their marketing objectives at a much lower expense than other marketing choices. But, with this fast adoption of email marketing come some important questions that can ultimately make your email marketing initiative extremely effective, reasonably effective or an absolute disaster. In this article, the question we are going to focus our attention on is "How frequently should I send an email to my mailing list?" I have been asked this question a thousand times from business owners and marketing managers in every industry. Everyone seems to be wondering, "Should I be sending once a day, one a week, once a month, quarterly, or at some other frequency?" The answer to that question is largely going to be specific to your organization, your industry and your email marketing objectives. But, there are some useful email marketing guidelines that can help in determining the most optimal frequency. Tip #1: Think Like Your Audience One of the most vital things you can do when trying to determine the frequency of your email marketing blasts is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Don't think like the marketer, but think like the individual receiving your email in their inbox. How often are you going to want to get a message from your organization? If you think it would be excessive to get an email each and every day, then you can rule out the daily frequency right away. If you think you'd be interested in a weekly email or a monthly email, then that will nudge your email marketing strategy to that frequency. Remember, the ultimate success of your email marketing campaign is going to be determined by the interaction with your audience, so finding the optimal frequency for them is incredibly important. Tip #2: Say Something Valuable Why do you think people have joined your mailing list? It's most often because they feel you (or your organization) have something useful to tell them. That useful information can come in the form of an interesting article, a commentary on current events, a special discount offer, or anything else you can imagine. The fact remains that people request your email and are excited to open it because they see the value in what you are emailing to them. So, if you are sending a weekly email blast, but find you do not really have anything useful to say, then that might be a clue to adjust your email marketing strategy to something less frequent, such as a monthly email. After all, if you send out boring email after boring email, it won't take long for your recipients to stop opening your emails because the value just won't be there. This is why there is a tightly integrated relationship between the quality of your content and the frequency of your mailings. If you read one of your email marketing campaigns and think that it was not informative at all, then your audience will almost always agree. Be proactive in making sure you send out your emails when you've got something of quality and worthy of saying! Tip #3: Don't Go Overboard All too often people get super excited that they can send out an email marketing campaign to their mailing list and see more hits to their website, more traffic in their store, more calls coming into the switchboard, etc, etc. This, for some reason, drives people to go off the deep-end in terms of their emailing frequency. Just because email marketing is effective, it does not mean that you should be sending as many emails as you possibly can. Please understand that there is a very fine line between the correct frequency and being a nuisance. If you go overboard with your frequency and send emails to your mailing list way too often, you will likely see a big increase in the amount of un-subscribers and spam complaints you receive. It goes without saying that you want to keep people on your mailing list (and have it grow even bigger) so the last thing you want to do is annoy people by emailing them so much that they have to shout "STOP" and then remove themselves from your mailing list. If you ever get the sense that you are sending too often and there is some backlash by the people on your mailing list, then be sure to take immediate action to rectify the problem and try again to find the best frequency. With just a little bit of thought and a little bit of trial-and-error, you will be able to find the optimal email marketing frequency for your specific organization. Don't be afraid to reevaluate your strategy from time to time, because as you continue with your email marketing, your audience will evolve, and you need to be prepared to change with them.
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