Today is the third post in our series on email marketing, and we’re looking at a few things to consider when deciding how often you should email your list.
If you’re signed up to a lot of email lists, you’ll have noticed that some people email every day, some once a week, some once a month, and some only occasionally, if they have big news. There’s a good reason there’s so much variety. It’s simply because there’s no perfect, one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to email marketing.
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Every market, every niche, every audience and every person is different. While you’ll never make everyone on your list happy, there is a lot you can do to make just about any email schedule work.
Let’s lay the ground work first. You don’t want to have too much time in between emails, or your readers will forget you. Anything less than once a month is not a good idea, in most markets. But there are exceptions to every rule. I follow a couple of authors who only keep a list to let new readers know about their books. I only hear from them about once every six months, and I still open their emails because it means there’s a new book out I probably want to read. In most markets and for most business models, however, you don’t want to mail less than once a month, and ideally at least twice a month.
On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to go any higher than one email per day on average. Yes, you may have days when you have a good reason to send multiple emails, but on a weekly or bi-weekly average, once a day is probably enough.
If you plan to email that frequently, you may want to prepare readers by actually offering a ‘daily tip’, ‘daily quote’ or similar. One of my favourite subscriptions is to Darren Daily, a daily video from Darren Hardy. It’s usually only a few minutes long, but I watch it every morning over my first cup of tea, and it’s become part of my morning routine.
Start by looking at what you’re doing now. Then figure out how much you need to tweak things, in terms of when you mail and what you mail. Do you want to grow a closer connection with your market by emailing more often? Do you want to drive more traffic back to your site by emailing them links frequently? Do you want to grow your income by making more frequent email offers?
Once you know where you’re at and where you want to be, you can start to make a plan for getting from point A to point B. What you don’t want to do is to go straight from emailing once every few months to daily emails, especially if you’re doing it because you have a new product or program to promote. It’ll get your readers clicking the spam button like crazy. Instead, start with monthly emails for a couple of months, then let your readers know you have more to share with them and start mailing weekly. Then a few months later, ramp it up to daily emails.
Or find a good reason why you’re mailing them daily. For example, if you usually publish a weekly newsletter, running a high-value 10 or 30 day challenge for your readers is a great excuse to hit their inbox daily without seeming pushy or spammy.
Listen to your audience when you get feedback on email frequency, but also realize that there will always be someone complaining. Look at data like open rates, clicks and unsubscribes to get a better feel for what frequency will work best for you and your audience.
If you need some valuable but totally affordable help with email marketing, take a look at this online training, Funnels That Click, from my lovely online colleague, Connie Ragen Green. It’s currently available for less than 10 bucks! More details here.
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