Clients often ask, “Am I emailing too much?”
The question you should be asking instead of quantity is….am I sending a relevant message to the right audiences?
“Think of an email contact like a friend who gave you their phone number. ”
Email marketing is a relationship.
Email is unlike an ad in print or social media where you anticipate the platform or publication your audience will view, then pay to have your message appear there.
Email is communicating with someone who already gave you their personal contact information, an email address. They gave it to you because they wanted to hear from you about something. Maintaining that relationship, ensuring a contact wants to continue to hear from you is your responsibility.
Think of an email contact like a friend who gave you their phone number. Your friend is probably expecting to hear from you and glad to receive your first call. Otherwise they wouldn’t have given you the number.
If you keep calling this friend about things you both care about and have good discussions, they will probably continue to be happy you’re calling. Will they answer every call? No. But that doesn’t mean you called too much. Sometimes they may be busy and can’t pick up. You’ll connect with them on another attempt.
What if you start calling them regularly to talk about things that don’t interest them? Maybe you originally connected over your kids, but have started telling them about a hobby you don’t have in common, or your work. Your friend might start looking at the caller ID and not picking up as often.
Is the frequency of your call the issue? No. The problem is you’re talking about things they don’t relate to.
The same happens with email. You can lose sight of what a contact wants to hear from you about and send the wrong messages and lessen interest.
If you are sending one message to your whole list every email, then you probably aren’t getting to know your list and having a relevant conversation. Start to collect a little intelligence about your list, allowing you to segment and send the right message to the right audience. Segmenting and sending content people care about is more work. You will actually email more often, because you need more variations in content to speak to the whole list. But the long-term relationship you foster will be more personal and beneficial for everyone.