January 20, 2006, Newsletter Issue #103: How Much Is Too Much (E-mail)? Part 1 of 2

Tip of the Week

One of the most pressing questions for an e-marketer is "how much is too much?" in regards to sending e-communications. One measurable factor that certainly helps in this debate is your reports and analytics. If you begin to see steadily declining open and click rates, or worse an increasing number of opt-outs, you may want to look at your frequency and see if you are over – or even, conversely, depending on your frequency, under – communicating.


In addition, there are several other factors that you can consider, such as the audience to whom the email campaign is being sent and what the intention of your message is. If you are sending purely promotional messages to prospects, once a week is probably overkill.

But if you send a weekly update on new product releases to your third-party sales channels, that is probably much more acceptable. Important and time sensitive news and information can be sent on a daily basis provided the audience knows they are subscribing to a daily newsletter and that they highly value the information.

Here are some "rules of thumb" that we have put together that may help you figure out just how much is too much or too little for your email campaigns.

How Often Does Your Audience Expect To Hear From You?

Because the nature of your relationship with the different segments of your audiences varies, each of these groups will expect to hear from you at different intervals.

1. Customers. The frequency you can e-mail customers is higher than many other audiences. While you don’t want to overwhelm them with non-critical messages, customers tend to expect e-mails from you with policy and procedure information as well as product and service updates. In addition, they welcome news of any special offers or product promotions that you can provide them.


2. Prospects. Prospects are a little trickier because you have not developed a full relationship with them yet. You want to provide them with meaningful information that may someday turn them into a customer, but you don’t want to make a pest of yourself or your company.


See you next week for Part 2.

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