John W HayesI had one of those conversations recently in which a client told me that he sent out an email marketing newsletter every 3 months. Any more than this, he surmised, would simply annoy his clients and do more harm than good.
I guess his clients either have very long memories and absorb and react to every single piece of information they receive by email, or they just don’t get that many emails, meaning that everything that lands in their inbox is a big deal (the last time this was true for me was around 1996).
I asked him what kind of products and services he bought online. His purchases were fairly standard, mainly books from Amazon, groceries from Tesco, hotel rooms and flights from Expedia and the occasional random purchase from eBay.
I then asked him to check how many emails he received from these big name brands on a weekly basis.
Despite his inbox being hit multiple times by each of these big organizations in a relatively short period of time, he remained loyal to them. He admitted they didn’t annoy him and they would occasionally prompt a website visit and perhaps even an unplanned purchase.
So why would his emails annoy his subscribers if he sent them more often?
Well, they wouldn’t unless they were irrelevant, disengaging or just plain dull.
Now here’s the thing – my client sells wine and can get his hands on some pretty tasty stuff. Knowing I had spent a number of years living in Central Europe, he recently found me the most amazing bottle of Hungarian Tokaji (“Wine of Kings, King of Wines,” according to Louis XV of France). His product knowledge is unbeatable and his clients love his business. Why wouldn’t his subscribers welcome more emails from him?
I suggested he up his game and start sending out (at the very minimum) a weekly campaign.
He now sends every Wednesday, prompting his customers to buy wine for weekend barbeques, parties and other social events. His emails are informative and fun and keep his audience engaged with his service even when he doesn’t get the sale. In short, his email campaigns are a joy to receive and quite inspiring.
And guess what? Because he is delivering relevant, timely and engaging campaigns nobody is annoyed with his newsletters (and this is reflected by a nice uptick in his sales). In fact, to prove this point, the number of unsubscribe requests he now receives has dropped significantly from his quarterly sends (when clients would have forgotten about their previous engagements and viewhis “out of the blue” communications as spam).
Isn’t it time you increased your email marketing frequency?
This post first appeared on the iContact Email Marketing Blog.
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