Email Marketing, Part 3 – So how much is too much?!

10/11/2011

We all have moments where we’ve cursed that repetitive email popping in to our Inbox with an automatic response of hitting the ‘Delete’ button. That’s even without reviewing it’s content! We just know that it will be a waste of our time looking at it – the content isn’t pertinent!

Needless to say no business wants to make their audience have such a response to their communications.

Within our previous Blogs we’ve discussed how to ensure the content of any email marketing campaign remains specific to your clients and also given numerous ideas on types of content. The next thing to consider is the frequency of such emails – what is the right balance? a few points need to be continually considered:

 

  • Historical recipient responses – a good starting point is to analyse previous emails. What was peoples activity? Obviously this may vary by commodity type but a few things to consider are (i) what links were followed, (ii) was there an increase in purchases of a product type as a result.
  • Seasonal variances – is it pertinent to increase/decrease depending upon the time of year i.e. Christmas
  • One size fits all (?!) – perhaps it’s not possible to have a generic ‘one size fits all’ approach to communicating with your audience! Consider whether it’s possible to change the frequency for different segments or reduce emails for the lower responding customers. It might also be possible to give customers the choice on how often they receive such messages

 

This is an ongoing task that needs constant assessment and as such reflected in the email marketing strategy.

Once you’ve assessed your audience’s responses this will assist in finding the right balance between over and under exposure with future emails.

One final point to make is that perhaps this Blog reaches you a little late and you’ve lost the interest of a number of customers already – all is not lost! Perhaps once you have your newly considered email marketing campaign organised it’s worth distributing a re-engagement campaign with an offer.

Ensure your customers understand and appreciate your value by fully considering all the aspects we’ve discussed in this and previous Blogs…lets make sure your email isn’t one of those thrown in to the Trash!