Email marketers often wonder the optimum frequency for sending emails. Is the number being sent too high or too low? It’s vital you reach your customers and foster engagement without flooding the email inbox — and that is feasible in today’s world, thanks to automation tools. But how much email is too much?
Email fatigue occurs when your subscribers tire of emails they are receiving. They begin to ignore incoming messages, then delete the messages and eventually unsubscribe. Email fatigue can happen because of mailing too frequently or mailing irrelevant content. You must make sure you are sending the right message to the right people at the right time.
Take a look at these five tips that will help eliminate email fatigue and make your email marketing campaigns successful.
Use email analytics to recognize the signs of email fatigue.
Top email marketing platforms, such as Campaign Monitor, give marketers deep analytics about how their subscribers are interacting with their emails at every stage of the funnel. It’s not enough to just know that engagement is decreasing or unsubscribe rates are increasing. Marketers need to know which campaigns, and specific emails within them, are causing subscribers to disengage. A gradual decrease in engagement numbers, such as opens and clicks, are a clear sign of email fatigue. Use the analytics found in your email marketing platform to analyze which emails in your sequence are getting lower open and click rates. The Direct Marketing Association found that 39% of marketers send 2-3 emails per month. After that point, they found diminishing returns that led to email fatigue. Depending on the quality and interest level of your subscriber list you may need to send more or less often. The best approach to identify your optimal send frequency is to AB test different sending frequencies, titles and content for these emails to increase these numbers. Monitor which frequencies and email content is getting the best open and click rates to determine the winning test and implement that moving forward.
Update customer preferences.
Securing permission to email a subscriber initially is vital, but it’s not a one-time thing. Revisit this continually to adjust for the evolving preferences of the subscriber. The needs of your customer will change and grow, so you need to build an effective email marketing strategy that strives to drive customer engagement. Consider offering various options for subscriptions based on email frequency or topic and encourage the recipients to share their preferences. This form of personalization is exactly what your customers need to welcome the emails they do receive.
Find the right frequency.
Do you pay attention to how much time lapses between the emails your customers receive? Some customers may be willing to receive a daily email; some may only want one per week. Email marketing platform, Campaign Monitor, explains how often to send promotional emails to make sure the content you’re sending is pertinent. The frequency at which emails are sent is just as important as the value of the content within those emails. Mix content and special promotions in with offer emails to keep customers wanting to come back for more. A successful business masters the art of delivering targeted emails at non-invasive time intervals.
Segment your list.
A concept you can’t ignore is the importance of sending the right message to the right person – and timing is key. Per DMA, 77 percent of email marketing ROI happened because of targeted and segmented campaigns.
Your subscribers are unique individuals with their own set of needs and interest levels. To engage those customers, you need to communicate with them accordingly. There are endless ways to segment your email list so you provide the most relevant content with every sent email.
First, keep in mind where your contacts live – if you’re a brick-and-mortar business, you know you need to target people in town. Consider the age of the recipient; you could be emailing a high school student or a retiree, and the email should be created accordingly. It’s a pretty basic concept, but one that will pay off: Tailor your emails based on their individual needs.
Demographic and behavioral data can tell you more about the subscribers on your email list and help you ensure the emails they receive are ones that will pique their personal interests.
Know when to step back.
To combat email fatigue and its consequences, you need to know when to organize a re-engagement campaign and when to let subscribers go. Unengaged subscribers hurt your performance metrics. Instead, focus your resources on leads that continue to show interest. Ask yourself if you’re providing value to your customers and take every measure to make sure you are. Your subscribers don’t want to receive the same type of information again and again – redundancy is a turn off.
There is no one magic solution to combat email fatigue. By employing a combination of the above techniques: data analysis, updating customer preferences, perfecting email frequency, segmenting your lists, and knowing when to cut some customers loose, you will most likely be successful in preventing email fatigue.
