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.
