Email Marketing Frequency

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EMAIL MARKETING FREQUENCY

• How often should you send marketing emails?

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• INTRODUCTION

• CONCLUSION FROM SOME LARGE-SCALE STUDIES

• FINDING YOUR FREQUENCY

• TIPS FOR WHATEVER FREQUENCY YOU CHOOSE

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INTRODUCTION

• First, what do we mean by frequency?
  You may mix up the email frequency with email
  timing. Lets differentiate
• email timing demonstrates what time of the day or
  what day of the week you send emails
• email frequency indicates how many times a day, a
  week, or a month you send emails.
• There is no universal truth when it
  comes to defining email frequency as low or high
  as this fully depends on the brand and its
  audience.

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RISKS OPPORTUNITIES OF OVERSENDING AND
UNDERSENDING EMAILS
High email campaign frequency
Low email campaign frequency

• You may end up with users ignoring your messages
  or not having enough time to open and read all of
  them.
• It may become challenging to come up with fresh
  and relevant content if you need to create it
  every other day.

Your company name may get forgotten by
subscribers and your emails may start getting
sent to spam. Your sales may decrease as a
result of users not receiving enough offers or
simply forgetting about them.
Risks
More emails equal more unique chances of users
purchasing your products or at least interacting
with your brand.
You will be able to avoid email fatigue, low
activity numbers, and low sales. Sending out
fewer emails means you can invest more time,
energy, and ideas into creating unique content
and catchy design for each of them.
Opportunities
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WHAT STUDIES SHOW

• What they studied Complaints and read rates
  based on different weekly email frequencies.
• Findings The number of complaints is pretty low
  until youve sent five messages in a weekbut at
  that point, complaints skyrocket. Read rates also
  drop noticeably after five messages per week.
• Conclusion Return Path concluded their data
  shows subscribers are cool with up to about five
  emails per week beyond that, the ensuing
  complaints increase dramatically, and read rates
  drop significantly.

• What they studied Read rates and click-thru
  rates based on different weekly email frequencies
  for fashion brands.
• Findings The sweet spot is 6.21
  emails-per-weekat least in fashion,
  other industries might vary. At that almost-daily
  rate of 6.21 emails-per-week, a sender has the
  best chance of everyone on their list reading at
  least one of their emails.
• Conclusion If you send an email almost every
  day, your subscribers will be more likely to read
  at least one of themand that should ultimately
  lead to an increase in clicks and traffic. The
  study didnt provide any hard numbers on
  unsubscribe rates, but Zettasphere concluded,
  Increasing frequency doesnt increase the
  unsubscribe rate, but it will increase the number
  of unsubscribers per month but its unusual
  for the value in lost subscribers to be greater
  than the gain in additional revenue.

• What they studied Open rates, click-thru rates,
  and sales based on different monthly email
  frequencies. Their study focused on newer
  retailers with email lists of 5,000 subscribers
  or fewer.
• Findings Open rates and click rates go down
  with the more emails you send in a month. But
  customers continue clicking through and placing
  orders when companies sent up to 19 emails a
  month.
• Conclusion Especially for smaller eCommerce
  shops, sending at least two or three emails a
  week is going to help drive sales without
  irritating your customers.

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4 things to consider when Finding your frequency
1. How often will you have something worthwhile
to email to your subscribers?
2.  What do you sell and how big is your company?

• You want every single one of your emails to
  provide value to your subscribers (its one of
  the main reasons to keep an email marketing
  calendar). Whether thats value in the form of a
  discount or sale, value in the form of a product
  announcement, or value in the form of interesting
  content, its important theres some obvious
  value. When you demonstrate clear value and each
  email has a reason to exist, it should do wonders
  toward keeping your list happy, engaged,
  subscribed, and buying.

• Subscribers, without even realizing it, have
  varying built-in expectations for email frequency
  based on a companys size and industry. Flash
  sales sites and sites offering big discounts,
  massive retailers and sites with large catalog
  and personality-driven brands send emails almost
  on a daily basis.
• Smaller eCommerce shops with fewer products and
  fewer subscribers, premium and luxury brands and
  B2B companies usually send a few emails per week
  or month.

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4 things to consider when finding your frequency
3. WHAT IS YOUR COMPETITION DOING?
4. WHAT EXPECTATIONS DID YOU SET?

• One way to make sure your customers are
  comfortable with your send frequency is to tell
  them what to expect up front.
• If you say youll email daily, they
  know to expect that when they sign up. And if you
  say youll only email occasionally, theyd be
  turned off if you send every day.

• If you havent subscribed to your competitors
  email lists, you should. Watch how often they
  send emails to better understand what the
  customers in your industry are looking for. And
  beyond just frequency considerations, its worth
  subscribing because its very valuable to see
  what your competitors are doing right and wrong
  with their email marketingso you can avoid their
  mistakes and outdo on their successes.

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Use different frequencies for different segments
Tips for whatever frequency you choose
After you ramp up your sends, carefully monitor
your results
Offer an opt-down option for fewer emails
Segmented emails have been proven to lead to
increased open and conversion rates, and lower
unsubscribe and complaint rates. But beyond
segmenting by the classic criteria like age,
location, or gender, its also worth
considering doing some frequency-based
segmentation on customer behavior. Send more
emails to people whove shown theyre more likely
to click through and buy. Those people have given
you irrefutable evidence that theyre interested
in and engaged with your brandso the odds are
theyll be more amenable to frequent emails. One
more advanced tip around frequency segmenting
Consider a double open strategy. Thats where
you take the segment of your list that didnt
open an email and send it back to them a few days
later with a different subject line.
The scientific way to find your ideal email
frequency is to slowly ramp up your number of
sends, monitor the results, and pull back before
the unsubscribes and complaints escalate too
much. So when you increase your sends, keep a
close eye on your open rate, click-through rate,
sales, and unsubscribe rate. Ideally, youre
looking to stay in the zone where youre sending
enough emails to maximize your sales without
hitting the tipping point where your sales
numbers start going down because youve driven
away too many subscribers.
When you present an opt-down option, you can
potentially save subscribers who would otherwise
unsubscribe its not that they dont want to
hear from you, they just want to hear from you
less. In fact, more than 40 percent of people
who want to unsubscribe say they would rethink it
for an opt-down option. One of the easiest
opt-down systems is to give two options
Continue getting all emails, or just get one
round-up digest every week. Just that one extra
option to reduce frequency could save you lots of
subscribers and customers youd otherwise lose.
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CONCLUSION

• When it comes to email, the best strategy is
  always to listen to the needs of your audience
  and do your best to meet their expectations.

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THANKS!

• Does anyone have any questions?
• hello_at_smbelal.com
• smbelal.com

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