Email Marketing — How often is too often?

Did you find your sweet spot, yet?

Have you noticed that big brands have a tendency to send email campaigns almost every day, sometimes, 2–3 times a day, and the smaller ones, let’s say a small or a medium business is more likely to stick to 2–7 days a month email marketing approach?

It’s definitely not about the cost cutting, because all smart marketers know that not tapping into opportunities can lead to major losses in sales. Neither it’s about lack of content ideas. It’s mostly the fear of either getting unsubscribed or landing into the “spam” folder.

So what’s that one strategy that bigger brands implement to mitigate risks of “over-emailing” or “under-emailing” under different situations

Email Marketing Campaign Approach

(Quick Tip)…before we jump into it remember that whether you decide to increase or decrease the frequency of your emails, make sure that the content doesn’t suffer. Generating quality content is time-consuming, and if you start compromising on this critical aspect of the marketing communication, chances are that your audience will start skipping your campaigns. In a worst-case scenario, they will unsubscribe from your newsletter and you’ll lose the permission to market them your product/services via emails. This is the dreaded result that no marketer wants to happen

SPLIT. SPLIT. SPLIT — ALWAYS

“experts believe promotional emails should be well targeted.”

One frequency size is never going to fit all. Let the first control group receive the same frequency of emails as you send currently. Start experimenting with different groups.

If you have a list of 10k subscribers, split them into 5k each. Test with different frequencies, and if possible, experiment with the content as well.

Let the first group receive 2–7 emails a month. Send out 10–12 emails to the second group and gradually increase or decrease depending upon the response.

Bear in mind that for noticeable results you may need a month or even two. It depends on your current frequency.

Monitor the engagement and performance of both the groups separately and compare the results over the period. Focus on these parameters:

• Open rate
• Click rate
• Unsubscribe rate
• Conversion rate

In this way, you will be able to find your sweet spot!

The best solution is to carefully test what works best for your list.

I’d be interested to know what you think is too high or too low a frequency in a sector.