Help! We're Hammering Customers with Email!

Until around 10 years ago, direct marketers were rarely guilty of mailing customers too often.

Of course, email marketing changed all that.

As we all know, email advertisers don't pay for printing, mail house services, or postage. As a result, a lot of email marketers figure, Why not blast away?

I'll tell you why: It may be considerably more profitable to email customers less often.

Don't believe it -- or don't want to believe it? I feel your pain. I really do. Some of you spend serious money to acquire each opt-in, and your business model depends on vigorous email to the customer base.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to determine your optimal email frequency: Test it.

Take a large enough sample size of brand spanking new customers and place them into two or more test groups. Include a control group that receives your standard email frequency. Then simply subject them to different email frequency schemes and add up the bottom line results.   

To give your lower frequency strategy higher odds of success, work with interesting -- rather than trite -- creative concepts and offers. Take advantage of the technologies that make it easier to launch interesting segmentation schemes and event-triggered campaigns. And try leveraging relevant Web 2.0 stuff -- as well as online video and audio. 

You may be surprised to learn that you don't have to send nearly as much email as you thought. You just have to be smarter about it.

By the way: The cool "Email Hell" logo near the top comes from the coolest t-shirt supplier on the planet, T-Shirt Hell.

Comments

[Kelly Rusk]

great post and excellent idea!

I guarantee, if you ask someone who seems to be sending out an excess amount of email why they do, the answer you get is usually along the lines of "because that's what our competition does."

Of course, the right answer would be "because that's what our subscribers want." Though I haven't heard that one yet!

[Robert Rosenthal]

Thanks, Kelly. Some email marketers need to replace opinions with facts.

[Ted Grigg]

Let's first admit that we can go to the well one too many times and burn our customer relationships.

I have already put some companies I like on my spam list because they send far too many emails to me. I just don't have the time to deal with all of the emails anymore.

The reality is that when push comes to shove, many CMOs are pressured into meeting monthly numbers. They know they can get one more email out and make money. They also know that with continued abuse, they will experience diminishing returns. But they can always deal with that issue later. So they go for the short term results.

I hate to admit it, but the brand people I have worked with in the past would not do what some of us as direct marketers do to abuse our customers with our avalanche of emails! Could they actually be right about this one?

All I ask is that we develop sensitivity to our customers so our relationships with them have a chance to blossom over the long term.

[Robert Rosenthal]

Well put, Ted. It's strange how some email marketers only see an upside to sending huge amounts of email. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.