Respecting The Glut of Email

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Greg 2 Comments

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If a little is good then a lot much be better, right? We’ve all learned our lesson, and we know the appropriate answer to that question.

Email marketing works. Plain and simple, email helps to drive sales. And there is evidence that increasing the frequency of emails is good, up to a certain point.

But there is a delicate diminishing rate of marginal returns (ha, there’s my economics classes talking), and we need to be mindful of respecting that point with our email marketing.

In a Marketing Sherpa email marketing study, email recipients cited reasons for becoming turned off to email marketing:

• 58% said the emails weren’t relevant to them
• 44% said they received too much email from the sender
• 31% said they simply receive too much email overall to pay attention to it all

Politicians have now become infamous for the over use of email. This morning’s Washington Post there was an article about how the current presidential candidates are starting to send out too many emails, making desperate pleas for more donations to fund their expensive campaigns.

Daily deals sites like Groupon and Living Social use email to alert their subscribers of deals. Their entire business strategy depends on sending email. We subscribe to those daily emails. We’re asking for them. But even they become too much.

The take-away

Once you’ve established a routine of sending regular emails to your subscriber list, gently test sending more. Carefully watch your engagement stats and determine whether you’re seeing an increase in desired business activity. If you suspect you’re getting close to reaching your email frequency threshold, you’re probably there already.