How Should a Small Business Determine the Best Frequency to Send Their Email Campaigns?

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By our thoughts

EMAIL FREQUENCY!!
EMAIL FREQUENCY!!

Whether you know it or not, frequency is something that can either make or break your email campaigns.  If you send too often, you may be perceived as annoying and too aggressive.  On the other hand, if you do not send often enough, there is a chance that subscribers will forget that they signed up, and lose interest in the process.  So how does a small business go about solving the frequency dilemma.  A lot of it depends on the specific logistics of your organization, but the following are some tips that work for almost all marketers.

Evaluate Your Content

Perhaps the easiest way to find the optimal frequency level for your email campaigns is to consider your content itself.  For many small businesses, a monthly frequency is perfect for delivering something like a newsletter.  If you want to proposition your prospects with sales offers, a weekly schedule could be the best decision.  If your content is time sensitive, subscribers may expect to hear from you every other day or even on a daily basis.  When trying to pinpoint frequency based on content, try to remember that your subscribers also have promotional messages from other marketers to deal with.  Recognizing this will help to prevent you from overwhelming them with email. 

Perform Segmentation

One of the most important things you need to remember is that the exact same frequency may not be right for all your customers and prospects.  Performing precise segmentation can help to assure that you are contacting your subscribers at the right time.  For instance, if you have both B2B clients and stay at home moms on your list, it may be wise to put them in different groups and target them with messages at different times.  Segmentation has close ties with testing, so the best advice is to take the results, and react accordingly. 

Ask Your Audience For Help

There is no one golden method for determining frequency.  It is different for every small business, and what works for the next marketer, might not work for you.  You can read all the market reports you want, but sometimes, the answer you seek literally lies with your audience.  There are a few ways you can ask them for help, starting with adding a survey to your opt-in process.  You could also add a link in your message that directs subscribers to a page that allows them to change their frequency preferences.  Another option you have is to give them the power to reduce the number of messages they receive. The latter is something that may not only help you determine an optimal frequency, but also keep your contacts from unsubscribing as well.

Like we said, there is no cut and dry solution for determining frequency, but there are ways to make it easier.  In the end, whatever you decide on will depend on your audience, what they want, and what you are able to deliver.  We hope that the tips in this article will help you figure it all out and make the right choice for your small business. 

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