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As Director of Sales and Marketing, Dave Dabbah is responsible for developing strategic branding, sales, and lead generation initiatives for Lyris Technologies, as well as growing its enterprise customer base through increased distribution of Lyris' pioneering email solutions. Dabbah brings 12 years of sales and marketing expertise to Lyris and was previously Vice President of Business Development for Uptilt, a developer of hosted CRM solutions, where he played a key role in product development, branding, and sales strategy for the company's automated sales solution.

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The Email Frequency Factor: How Marketers Can Prevent Falling Victim to Frequency Fever

Written on
March 19th 2007
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by Dave Dabbah  |
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Another example might be the political action newsletter I’m subscribed to. These text-heavy emails arrive in my inbox several times a week, alerting me to various issues up for vote or otherwise pending in Washington. While the issues are important to me, I don’t open these emails nearly as often. In this case, the frequency of their emails is likely affecting their clickthrough rate which will naturally affect their conversion rate. If the email isn’t opened, the recipient can’t act. Instead, they might try a weekly email, covering several topics of importance, to see if that email achieves a higher open or clickthrough rate. If I knew I was only going to get that one email a week, I might make sure to make the time to read it.

So, in terms of frequency, ask yourself, how timely is the message in your email? Is it something that has to be acted upon now, or could it instead be compiled into a larger email, a monthly newsletter perhaps? I am far more likely to read these monthly emails summarizing the important issues of day, than the email alerts stacking up in my inbox.

Clearly, the frequency in these two cases is dependent on the emails’ content and type of enterprise distributing that content. Let’s take one more example: an email which I get every day, highlighting a new shop, restaurant, gallery opening or other event in my city. These emails are light, fun, and short, and if I miss one or two, it’s not that big a deal.

This site sends an email daily. But that’s okay because this is made very clear when you sign up. Unfortunately, most companies do not do this, and this is one of the biggest reasons for email churn: signing up for a newsletter and then getting email way more frequently than expected or more frequently than the site itself described. “A few times a month” becomes 2-3 times a week, and subscribers opt out in droves. On the other hand, send too infrequently and that the subscriber doesn’t stay engaged, doesn’t even remember signing up! Either way, if you don’t set expectations well at the beginning, you may pay for it later.

So, what’s the optimal frequency? What do you need to do to follow in the shoes of those successful email mountaineers before you? The answer is dependant upon many factors and only you, with knowledge or your business, your content, with access to your analytics for your database, can know for sure what’s optimal for you. Others can mark the path, but it’s up to you to determine the route that will help you achieve your goals.



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Reader Comments.

These are great guidelines. Honesty is always the best policy. Our clients/advertisers are always looking for advice on this. We’ll make sure we point to this when frequency comes up!

Posted by Marcela Shine | 4:20 pm on May 1, 2007.

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