Keep in mind the tolerance level of your customers as you plan your email marketing campaigns.
5 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Are you respecting the inboxes of your subscribers and potential customers? How often are you sending them emails? Do you respect their time and have data on when the best time is to send them an email? From my own experience, after reading so many different ways, you can have customers opt-in and subscribe. Having one marketing campaign sent once a month for promotions provides the best results.
If you do a monthly newsletter, highlight any signifcant promotion at the very bottom. It doesn’t overtake the newletter details and flows with the articles or details in the newsletter. Run the newsletter at one point in the month and the promotional one at another time in the month. For example, we would run the newsletter at the beginning of the month, then maybe a promotional one toward the middle or end of the month so that they dont overlap into next month’s newsletter. We found that less is more, especially when the informaiton is quality and useful.
As a consumer, it bothers me to receive excessive emails for large stores and brands when my email was provided as a signup method without knowing of any opt-in, requiring me to unsubscribe from each of the promotions. I would recommend viewing your frequency methods by imagining yourself on the receiving end of your potential newletter, marketing or promotional campaign and considering how you would want your inbox to be treated. We recieved significantly higher open rates and engagements this way as customers would look out for the emails instead of deleting them with no response results, by respecting their inboxes along with providing quality information and product insights.
Related: Suprising Data on How Often to Send Promotional Emails
Many websites that cover email marketing may suggest more emails be sent to gain the success you need, but I would position my arguement in favor of sending singular emails per month. We used this minimal email approach and loaded it with quality information or details regarding something beneficial to them that doesn’t require any of our products or services that can be helpful to them as a consumer. It gets back to being authentic. You are there to help your customer or provide a service. Respect their inboxes and provide value in your communication to better the chances of them opening your emails or promotion. You will be competing for their time with everyone else who has their email and continues to send excessive messages. Using other social media sites allows us to post other promotions while respecting our buyers’ emails. We prefer to engage them personally with emails to create an open door for them to reach us outside of promotional emails and newsletters.
Why does this work for us? I personally believe we have set a tone that information sent from us is valuable to them, and we are not trying to sell them. We make them aware of product offerings when we have new details. Consumers are educated before they buy, and for us to assume otherwise would hamper the way we communicate our information and how often. I believe customers know you need to sell to be in business. Position your product and service to add value and communicate in well thought out newsletters with promotions that add value. We have found customers like free items or services that parallel what they are buying. For example, a free flashlight with a sleepbag purchase.
Related: Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2020 By Industry and Day
When you focus on communicating quality in your email marketing by being effective with timing and frequency, you are providing a better chance to increase conversion rates. When you combine paid advertising, organic traffic and email marketing, you will allow for a better for qaulity traffic to your website. Your customer will be more likely to engage your emails. Too often, I recieve an email product promotion, and before I have time to finish researching the product or service, I am sent three or four more emails regarding the same promotion or product. Personally, I open email more when I hear less from the company, and when I do, it is something valuable, or it simply says hello and that they miss me buying from them. In doing this, they move to the top of my mind for the next time I buy. They are then first on my list to inquire what products or promotions are new and whether they have discounts.
If you have been sending more than two email campaigns a month and are not pleased with your results, I challenge you to try sending no more than two spaced out email campaigns of quality each month and measure it for six months. Then, ask your customer for feedback about their preference. The results and answers may lean in your favor. This is all relative to your industry, product and customer base, but if its not currently working, try this approach. It worked for us with highly effective results, and I am confident it can work for you.
Related: 2020 Email Marketing ROI Statistics
