My inbox is getting SLAMMED with marketing promotions, is that happening to you? I recently got married, so I was doing a ton of online shopping to find the perfect gifts for our wedding participants. Now, these stores won't leave me alone! And this started even before the holiday craze.Being in the marketing business, I certainly appreciate a good marketing campaign, however I do have a bit of advice for these companies, SLOW DOWN! Treat your marketing list like gold, especially if they are people that have purchased items from you before. Be courteous and strategic.
Lead nurturing is an important part of generating sales, but e-mailing your list of customers too frequently, without a target in mind, can cause your messages to be automatically deleted, decreasing your open and clickthrough rates and increasing your unsubscribe list.
So how often should you e-mail your database? You're not going to like this answer, but I'm going to say it anyway, “that depends.” Some products and services with a short sales cycle can consider twice-a-month or once-a-week frequency. Other products/services that have a long sales cycle may consider a once-per-month frequency with very targeted messages (a focus on industry, department, company size, etc.). The important thing is to watch the numbers and let them tell you what you should do.
- Do some testing to see which days of the week, and which time of day, generate the best results.
- If you start out sending messages once-a-week and you see a high number of opt-outs, try slowing things down to twice-a-month.
- Be targeted with your messaging, divide your list by audience type, then check to see if one of your targets responds to the frequency differently than the other.
And if you haven't been using a system to track this information, make sure you start today! You can reference our previous article on Holiday Marketing for suggestions on e-mail marketing products.
