In a world full of digital communication, selecting the optimal email frequency is akin to balancing on a cliff edge. On the one hand, you risk becoming lost in the whirlwind of day after day of emails. Secondly, you run the risk of overextending your audience and pushing them towards the dreaded “unsubscribe” button. Searching for the perfect email frequency is not just about aesthetics, but it’s also a key aspect to creating a solid relationship with your audience and driving your marketing initiatives.
Understanding Email Frequency
The frequency of email is a term that describes the frequency with which a business or organization sends emails to their subscribers. This might include a daily newsletter, a monthly digest or promotional emails. It is important to choose the right frequency so subscribers are not burned out or frustrated.
What it Takes to Find the Perfect Frequency?
Email marketing remains one of the best means of engagement, in an age where consumers are constantly bombarded with information. Recent data also suggests that email marketing yields an average return on investment of $42 per dollar spent. But these figures depend on just the right amount of email engagement. If you send too few emails, your brand may become lost; if you send too many, subscribers may unsubscribe or reject emails as spam.
The Consequences of Poor Frequency
Subscriber fatigue: Over sending emails is a sign of subscriber fatigue. Email recipients might get overwhelmed or annoyed, and unsubscribe or worse, flag your emails as spam.
Diminished Attention: High-volume emails can undermine the message you’re sending. Emails can get out of hand and your subscribers may not continue reading.
Excessive Unsubscribes: If the frequency isn’t aligned with subscriber expectations, unsubscribes will rise. A high churn rate not only decreases your audience, but also affects your deliverability.
Negative Sender Image: Email providers keep track of users’ interactions. Having an excess of complaints or low engagement rate can negatively impact your sender reputation in the long run, which may affect future deliverability.
Determining the Ideal Email Frequency
Identifying the optimal frequency for email isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. It differs by industry, target audience, and even what you are sending an email to.
1. Know Your Customers: It’s essential to know what your ideal customer wants. Through surveys, engagement rates, and user analytics, you can also gain a clue as to how often your subscribers want to be contacted. For example, some consumers prefer daily updates, while others love a bi-weekly or monthly update.
2. Choose What to Send: The content of your emails can determine the frequency. Transactional emails (confirmations, receipts) are required, for example, and can be sent on a regular basis. In the meantime, your promotional emails should be weighed against what value you’re offering in general.
3. A/B Testing: Experimentation is vital. Use A/B testing to find the optimal frequency. Try launching emails at different times and observe open, click and unsubscribe rates.
4. Take a Look at Industry Benchmarks: Discover how many emails your industry sends per month. Emails can happen on average for e-commerce companies (3-4 times a week) or less.
Best Practices for Optimizing Frequency
Beginning with a Welcome Email: Create a welcome email to introduce subscribers to your brand and prepare them for future messaging. It’s also a great time to ask subscribers how frequently they’d like to hear from you.
Embrace Value: Make sure you create high-quality content that will help and not just sell. The more informative or entertaining your content is, the more frequency you’ll have.
Automated Segmentation: Segmenting subscribers based on behaviors and level of interaction can personalize your frequency using tools. Very active users will probably want to be in contact with you more often, and unactive users might want to see you less frequently.
Keep up: Track engagement metrics from time to time. If your open rates are dropping or unsubscribes are rising, it is a sign that you need to adjust your frequency.
Personalize Your Method: Utilize data to tailor emails to individual subscribers. Personalized emails are more open and read resulting in a more engaged subscriber base.
Getting it Right: Focus On Quality More Than Quantity.
In the end, the optimal number of emails is about quality, not quantity. A well-sent email that is relevant to your audience makes a lot more difference than a blizzard of uninteresting messages. You need to be able to create compelling, useful and timely content that drives engagement. If subscribers see you as having genuine value they are more inclined to open your emails regardless of how often you send them.
Conclusion:
Choosing the right frequency is a complex matter, one that needs to be constantly reviewed, checked, and adjusted. If you know what your audience wants, use data, and create valuable content, you’ll build a committed subscriber base that loves and awaits your emails.
If you’re using the correct strategy, you can learn how to master the art of email marketing and increase not only open rates and clicks but also make real connections with your customers (Relationships are your greatest digital marketing resource).
