How often is too often?

Article from November, 19th, 2003.

You've got an e-mail marketing campaign that works. People sign up for your newsletter and the sales keep growing. Everything is great. But you want to make more money. What should you do? Will increasing the frequency of your mailings raise your sales? Here is the answer to this.

DoubleClick Consumer E-Mail Study released this month shows that forty-two percent of respondents note too-frequent e-mails as a concern in 2003, compared to only 28 percent last year. The marketers also noted that the open and click-through rates drop significantly once the users start thinking you are contacting them too often. What is the right frequency? Here is what people say themselves:

Daily:

• News;
• Weather

Weekly:

• special offers from retailers, online merchants and catalogers

Monthly:

• account statements;
• bill payment communications

Here are some other interesting figures from that study. The research showed nearly half of consumers surveyed (45 percent) stopped doing business with companies altogether due to poor e-mail practices. These people were dubbed "e-mail punishers". What's interesting about them? They are the most valuable clients - they make about 12 e-mail induced purchases a year (the average among those surveyed is 9.2) and they spend over eleven hundred dollars on these purchases (the average is $939). The attitude among the consumers seems to be "If you send it too often and I'm busy, I'm just going to hit the delete key. If you send it again and I'm too busy, I'm just going to delete it again." Quite frankly, that makes sense. So what should you do?

The answer is very simple - let the people themselves decide how often they wish to receive promotional offers from you. The newsletter owners can offer an option inside the newsletter to select the most appropriate format - daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, full or digest, etc. The e-mail marketers should simply pay more attention to the open and click-through rates - if they are dropping, decrease the frequency of your offers. Simple, isn't it?

Relevant links:

    • Schedule your campaign with our bulk mail sender
    • Get rid of "dead" e-mail addresses

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