The Correct Frequency And Consistency To Adopt For Email Marketing

Email marketing is a delicate balance: You want to keep in touch with customers and prospects and stay top of mind, but you don’t want to pester them with the information which they don’t require. You want to obtain a steady stream of leads without too many spam reports or, even worse, unsubscribes.

We all have an understanding of how it feels to be on the receiving end of far too many useless emails. This means that it’s good to be sensitive to email marketing frequency. However, we’ve seen many businesses take such a cautious approach to email that they don’t take advantage of valuable opportunities in order to nurture prospects as well as generate sales.

What is the correct frequency to adopt for email marketing?

Selecting the best frequency for sending emails is challenging as we are searing for an opportunity to maximise response but to avoid ‘over-mailing’ that can lead to unacceptable levels of unsubscribes in addition to an increase in inactive subscribes as your audience may get the impression that they are being spammed.

Even if they do not unsubscribe they are going to become “emotionally unsubscribed”. Even worse, with over-mailing the company may have email delivery issues. This means that messages will not be getting through to the inboxes of your subscribers’ at all.

On the other hand, with ‘under-mailing’ chances to explain the proposition as well as promotions, or to get the correct product in front of the right subscriber, and sales may be lost.

Options to avoid the email marketing frequency dilemmas

Automatically reduce email frequencies for lower-responding customers

Establish a database field for activity or engagement level for each customer in order to help implement this.

Alternate frequency for different segments

One frequency size will never fit all. This means that if you find that open or click response is lower for certain segments, you then need to decrease the frequency when they are inactive. Offer customers the option to choose on frequency. You do this through their profile or, alternatively, “communications preference centre”. Offer options to change content and frequency preferences through profile or survey.

Increase direct mail or social media for customers with a lower email response. This is sometimes called “right channelling”. To test what the value of this is use a holdout group. Re-engagement campaigns in addition to re-activation campaigns make use pf content or discounts to encourage email subscribers to become active again.

Sender information in email marketing

When scanning as well as scrolling through their mobile inbox, your subscribers will not really see the awesome design of the email marketing. Instead, they see the following elements:

• ‘From’ name
• ‘From’ address
• Subject line.

It is thus imperative that you get these elements correct before you work on responsive design as well as the rest of your mobile campaign.

What you need to look at when setting up the sender details:

• Trust and authenticity – Making use of your brand name in the ‘from’ section is a great way to reinforce the brand as well as inspire trust. It’s also a very good idea to make use of your web domain for your ‘from’ address as customers are familiar with it. In addition, it is more likely that it has been set up for authentication.
• Recognisable and familiar – The ‘from’ name should be well known to the user who is scrolling rapidly through many emails. Involving a ‘from’ name that customers recognise may encourage an open. Putting in an individual’s name in the ‘from’ section is not a good idea unless that individual is well known to the recipient, for example, a broker or private banker.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to learn more about email marketing? If you do then you need to do our Digital Marketing Course. For more information, please follow this link.