How often should you email your list?
When companies launch a new email marketing campaign, this is often something they get nervous about. They seem to think that there’s an optimum frequency, and that if they get it wrong, their marketing will go down the drain.
I blame all those Internet memes and blog posts, discussing “When’s the best time to email your list” and “What day will get you the most email opens?”
They promote the idea that there is one, scientifically proven way to do all this – and that’s just not true.
The answer to “How often should I email my list” is, unfortunately, more complicated.
It’s a bit like the question, “How much should I charge?”
The answer is the same in both cases: “As much as the market will bear”.
The ideal – for you and your audience – is to email them as often as you can, while still keeping them engaged.
The more often people hear from you, the closer the relationship you build with them, the more value you’re providing them, and the more business you’ll win – provided what you send them is genuinely useful and welcome.
Let’s break that down.
“As often as you can”. Never commit to a schedule that you and your team can’t maintain. Emails have to be thought up, written up, and followed up. If you take on too much, your email marketing will prove an enormous stress, wither and die.
“While keeping them engaged”. Luckily, this is something you can easily test. Every good emailing marketing automation platform will tell you exactly how people are interacting with your emails – how many people are opening them, clicking on links, how many times they open them, how many replies you get, and so on.
I suggest turning up the frequency of your emails, and watching your data carefully.
What happens when you go from quarterly to monthly? From monthly to weekly, or to every 3 days?
As your frequency goes up, you’ll probably see a slight increase in the unsubscribe rate. However, it may be worth it.
We’ve found that when people on our list opt into one of our resources, triggering an email every second day, the open rates for our emails double. So I don’t mind if a few people drop out. Those who remain are much more engaged.
If the figures show that you’re emailing too often, turn the volume back down. Or, give people the option to receive a weekly summary instead of a daily email, so they get your best stuff – without getting annoyed.
Alternatively, segment the people who are most engaged, and email them more often than everyone else.
In general, I find that companies vastly under-estimate how often they can email their list, while keeping their audience happy.
Lots of companies send out emails every single day, and they get lapped up because they’re relevant to their audience.
For their first couple of days after joining the Brainstorm email list, people actually get more than one a day, because they’ll never be more receptive than when they first sign up. For ongoing emails, we generally recommend a minimum of once a week in order to keep up a relationship.
So relax a bit. There’s no right or wrong answer to this question. It’s whatever works for you and for your audience.
Experiment, run a few tests – and enjoy the journey.
