Email marketing is a form of direct marketing in which you send messages to people who have shown interest in your product or service. These individuals are called email subscribers, email contacts, or just email lists. You can use email to send out news letters, alert subscribers to price changes or special offers, or encourage them to attend events.
If you’re new to email marketing, you may wonder how often you should email your list. Do you send a weekly email newsletter? How about a daily digest of fresh content? Or do you wait until there’s a special offer or discount, then send out a single email with a link to it?
The answer to this question depends on a number of factors. To find out how often you should send email campaigns, you should set a benchmark for yourself based on your product and industry. Then, you should decide how effective your particular email program is and whether or not you should be increasing or decreasing your email marketing activity based on that. Let’s examine each part of this question in detail.
How Often Should You Send Email Marketing?
Before you begin your email marketing journey, it’s important to set a benchmark for yourself. Is your email list growing or shrinking? How much time do you spend sending emails? What results do you expect from your efforts?
Knowing the answers to these questions will help you determine how often you should be emailing. If you’d like, you can find the answers to all of these questions in our Email Marketing Best Practices report. You can download the complete report for free here. While the report may not provide exact numbers, it will give you a clear picture of whether or not you’re on the right track.
What Is Your Product Or Service?
Your product or service is the thing you’re selling. Whether you’re an online store, an affiliate marketer, or a brand selling a private label product, you’re probably using a platform (e.g. Shopify, Wix, or GoDaddy) to manage your sales channels.
Your product or service doesn’t have to be complex. In fact, the simpler the product or service, the more effective and efficient your email marketing should be. Research has shown that consumers respond better to simplified messaging.
If you’re running an eCommerce store, your products might be able to vary in terms of size and volume. Some products are seasonal and only available for a limited time, while others are widely available at all times. Your pricing may also change depending on the season or times of year. For example, avocados are widely available throughout the year and have a stable selling price, so you might not need to vary your discounts very often. Clothes and accessories, on the other hand, are commonly marked down around Christmas and in some cases, limited edition items mark special occasions (e.g. Black Friday). You might need to adjust your pricing strategy based on the needs of your customers.
How Effective Is Your Email List?
How effective is your email list? To understand this question, you need to benchmark how much value your list provides for your product or service. When you do this, you get to answer two important questions:
- How engaged is your audience?
- How often does your audience respond to marketing emails?
If you have a growing email list but you aren’t getting consistent click-throughs or sales from your campaigns, it may be time to adjust your strategy and try a new tactic.
On the other hand, if you have a shrinking email list but you’re still hearing about your product or service in the news, it may be time to increase your activity. In this case, it’s important to keep in mind that engaging with your audience is more effective when your goal is to make a sale. Creating an engaging experience is also more efficient when you’re reaching out to people who would be inclined to buy your product or service.
How Should You Personalize Your Email Content?
Personalization is key in email marketing. In today’s world, consumers have hundreds of email addresses to keep up with, so if you want them to pay attention to your email messages, you’ll need to make sure the content is relevant and interesting. To accomplish this, you can
- use a variety of tactics to determine the interest of your audience;
- personalize the content based on their behavior;
- or use software to automate your email campaign.
If you’re using email marketing to promote just one product or service, the answer to this question is fairly simple: you should send email campaigns whenever there’s new information you think they’ll find interesting. But if your goal is to grow a long-term, engaged audience, you may need to personalize your emails beyond just the subject line and content. Consider looking into tools like ConvertKit, which can help you automate the process of creating personalized emails, or drip marketing software, which can automate the collection of email addresses and create email campaigns for you.
Do You Need To Use Automated Email Campaigns?
If you’re new to email marketing or you’re looking for ways to increase the efficiency of your existing campaigns, you may wonder if automated emails are the way to go. After all, wouldn’t it be great if you could just set the automation level on your email marketing software and let it go to work?
While this may seem like an easy solution, automated emails pose a variety of problems. For starters, humans have to set the emails up manually, which can be a tedious task. Also, whenever you do have someone check for spam, the email will be interrupted as it will be held up in a queue.
If you plan to use automated emails, consider looking into a hosted email service like MailChimp, which can help you set up automated campaigns quickly and easily. Once you’re in their system, all you have to do is follow the mailing instructions and you won’t have to worry about anything else. You can’t go wrong with hosted email services, as they have everything you need and will ensure your emails don’t end up in spam.
On the other hand, if you have a large email list but you don’t want to use a hosted email service, you can always opt for a self-hosted solution, like Bluehost, which provides you with a free domain and lets you install WordPress to create your website. Once you have your own website, you can use email marketing plugins like MailChimp or HubSpot to create and run your email campaigns.
Do You Need To Market To Everyone Or Just To Decision Makers?
Your product or service may be targeted towards a specific group of people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should limit yourself to just those individuals. If you have a large enough email list, you can simply send out an email with a compelling offer and include a small bit of relevant information about your product or service. Then, you can segment your email list and send out personalized newsletters to those who’ve shown interest in your content.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you have a small email list and you’re looking for ways to quickly and easily grow your audience, you might want to consider marketing to the general public. After all, not everyone on your email list will be a prospect for your product or service. Even if they are, it doesn’t mean they’ll be interested in your offer at this precise moment in time. To ensure you reach the maximum amount of people, you should consider marketing to the masses via social media or print media. When done well, these tactics can get the word out quickly and effectively.
The bottom line is that every business and marketing plan is different, so you have to ask yourself what’s important to you. Do you have a growing audience you’d like to engage with or is your goal to convert a specific group of individuals into buyers? Do you have a large enough audience to split your time between marketing to the general public and pinpoint audiences?
Once you’ve determined how often you should be sending email marketing, you can decide how effective it is and whether or not you should be increasing or decreasing your activity based on that. Happy marketing!