Be Relevant! Email Marketing Blog

Email Marketing to Europe

As you know, I attended the Email Evolution Conference last week in Arizona where I was invited to sit on a panel with Kath Pay, Skip Fidura and Dela Quist to talk about the do and don'ts of email marketing to Europe.

Topics that we covered included the opt-in legislation in Europe, localization of content, segmentation and testing strategies, the need for templates that work in multiple languages, how do you coordinate things when there are so many different languages, countries and cultures involved, the fragmentation of the ISP market etc.

Here are the main takeaways from this session:

How do you organize an international email program?

There are two ways you can go about it: you can either manage everything centrally or you manage the email program locally. Personally I've dealt with both approaches in the past.

Are We Putting Too Much Focus on Deliverability?

I was reading this post over on the Deliverability blog in which Andrew Kordek interviews Exact Target's Morgan Stewart. This particular paragraph got me thinking:

So what is wrong with email? I mean what are the biggest problems that are facing the email industry today? Morgan’s answer is simple and yet so relevant.

First, he thinks that there is a pervasive print mentality in the industry. I could not agree more with him in that email is not direct mail.

Second, he believes that there is too much focus on deliverability, that while deliverability is a crucial part of email marketing, the share of voice in the email space is disproportionate to the detriment of his last point. Morgan believes that email is too siloed in most organizations because we still have trouble communicating the value of email to the C-Suite.

Is the share of voice that deliverability gets in the email space really disproportionate? I'm not entirely sure. True, there is a lot of talk about deliverability in the industry. But a lot of the conversation is actually more about the (database) marketing side than about the technical side of things.

Deliverability is more often than not used as a stick to force email marketers to keep in line:

• if you don't send relevant messages, then readers will mark your emails as spam and as a result your messages will get blocked
• if you don't practice good database hygiene, ISPs will think that you are a spammer and your messages will get blocked
• ...

What we are really saying is that email marketers need to be good database marketers. Email is not digital direct mail, agreed, but it IS digital direct marketing. And successful direct marketers need to also be good database marketers. Ultimately, applying good database marketing principles to email (together with having the right technical things in place of course) is instrumental to good email deliverability.

In Q4 last year I overheard someone saying: "in this economy, we won't be able to get more budget for email marketing, but we will be able to  get more budget for database marketing". Maybe the email industry should play the database marketing card in a smarter way so that we can get the attention of the C-Level executives?

What do you think?

How Can You Make Your Emails Stand Out?

In this article, Chip House offers these five tips to make your emails stand out in the inbox this year:

1. Differentiate to survive.
This year, differentiation is a must. Nearly half of those marketers responding to a MarketingSherpa survey last fall said they plan to increase their e-mail marketing efforts in 2009. So this coming year likely will be one of more crowded inboxes rather than less. Thrice weekly e-mails on "saving 10 percent" are what your competitors will send. What unique call to action will you use? How can you add and create value? How's your cardboard sign different?

2. Honor the subscriber.
The most important thing your e-mail program can do is elicit an emotional response. The best way to achieve this is to make an emotional connection with each individual customer. Do this by honoring customers' unique preferences for content, interests and behaviors. These are not new concepts, but in 2009, they become critical. Marketers who forget to honor unique subscriber preferences for communication, content, frequency and channel can kiss the inbox goodbye. 

3. Leverage the 'unmarketing'.
ExactTarget's 2008 Channel Preference Survey showed consumers are more receptive to receiving thank-yous and confirmations via e-mail than any other channel. Using current customer interactions to fuel communication, foster dialog and drive sales is a must. I call it the "unmarketing" because it happens in the background. Whether it's a welcome e-mail, order confirmation, statement, notice or customer service response, each communication holds promise to retain a customer, make a sale and/or improve your standing in how customers see you.

4. Engage or cut bait.
Rohit Bhargava, author of "Personality Not Included," recommends appealing to executives to "reach the right 500 people instead of the wrong 5 million." This is a great message for your e-mail program. Subscribers who aren't opening or clicking are either ignoring you, which is costing you money, or complaining about you, which is destroying your deliverability or your brand. So, start by sending only to people who opt in to your program, but monitor opens, clicks, sales and complaints, and either cut or attempt to get those subscribers to opt in again.

5. Leverage e-mail marketing technology.
It's come a long way. Want to integrate your e-mail system with your CRM system, track customers' surfing behavior after they leave your e-mail and then send them a relevant message based on their behavior? Many companies in multiple industries use these tactics now to great success. If you don't start doing so, 2009 could be a long year.

How Much is Too Much?

Steve Woods wrote a great blog post about email frequency management and control. Here's his advice on how to manage email frequency:

One conversation I end up in a lot with clients is the "how many times can I email a person per month?" conversation. Unfortunately, there is not a magic number, and attempting to govern around one can be damaging.

The reason that there's not a magic number is that email is only useful in the context of building a relationship, and in a relationship communication frequency changes dramatically depending on the type of relationship and where that relationship is at the moment.

Think of this question in terms of your communications with your friends and family - how many times per month do you communicate with your spouse? kids? Aunt Hilda? Neighbors? Old friends from school days? The answer is that it depends on the relationship.

It's the same thing in B2B marketing. If you are actively engaging with a prospect, and they are highly interested in what you are offering, they will want, and appreciate, frequent communications. However, if you're only lightly engaged with someone, and they have only displayed minimal interest, you will turn them off with more than a communication per month in many cases.

The answer is that you have to manage this from the bottom up, rather than the top down.

There is not a top-down X emails per month number that you can manage to. Instead, you need to understand your audience in terms of how much you have communicated to them and, more importantly, how engaged they are with you, and use that to guide communication frequency.

Use your understanding of your audience's response to your marketing (their Digital Body Language) to segment them into groups.

Use communication frequency and response frequency(email opens, clicks, form submits, web visits, etc) to define three segments:

• High Engagement: you have sent them many communications, and they have shown great inbound interest
• Moderate Engagement: you have sent them some communications, but their inbound activity remains occasional
• Low Engagement: you have communicated with them, but they show little to no inbound activity

From here, you can then use these segments to build a bottom-up frequency management structure. Look at your communications and define what category they fall into. If they are a "required" or "all recipients" category, you may not suppress against any of the groups (eg, registration confirmation for events the recipient just registered for, or the quarterly thought leadership newsletter).

If the messages are in an "active interest" category, you may suppress Low and Moderate Engagement segments from receiving them (up to the minute news, detailed product information, etc), and if the messages are in a "moderate interest" category you may only suppress the Low Engagement segment.

Hat tip: Dennis Dayman

More Email Marketing Resolutions for 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Chad White posted some great tips for your email marketing program in 2009. Here's a summary:

1. Each month replace one of your previously planned broadcast emails with a targeted email to a segment of your list. A well-crafted, targeted email can generate as much sales as a broadcast email, while simultaneously increasing engagement and reducing list fatigue. However, a targeted email does take a little extra effort to create.

2. Schedule a review of all your email forms and triggered emails. Sign-up forms, preference centers, welcome emails, triggered emails -- if you haven't done an inventory of these pages and emails and reviewed them to make sure that they're accurate and up to date, do it now. These tend to get set up and then forgotten about - sometimes for years.

3. Speak to the subscriber and not from the point of view of your business. Make sure that your emails and forms address consumers with them in mind. What's in it for them? What's appealing to them? And how does your email program help them?

4. Redesign your email templates with image blocking in mind.

5. Segment out your inactive subscribers. Send them different messaging than your active subscribers and at a lower frequency. Also consider sending them emails with a different template, one that has an unsubscribe link at the top, or offering the choice to opt-down to a lower frequency. After a long period of inactivity, you may also want to send a reactivation campaign, asking them to opt in again in order to continue receiving emails.

Read the entire article here.

2009 Email Marketing Resolutions

Let me start by wishing all of you (and your families of course) the very best for 2009! May it be the best year ever! :-)

On my end, life has been pretty hectic over the last couple of weeks. Starting my own business certainly took up a LOT of my time. Check out my brandnew website at www.tamaragielen.com. Advice and feedback are most welcome!

Back to business now.

In Stefan Pollard's latest ClickZ column, he shares 10 resolutions to make to get your e-mail efforts back on track in the coming year.

Here are his top 10 resolutions for e-mail marketers:

1. I Will Listen to Feedback
2. I Will Give My Subscribers More Control Over What They Receive
3. I Will Monitor More Than Open/Click-Through Rates/Revenue
4. I Will Practice More Segmentation for Increased Relevance
5. I Will Practice Good List Hygiene and Trim Inactives
6. I Will Pay Attention to the ISPs
7. I Will Work to Send Great Content
8. I Will Make it Easy for Recipients to Know Who I Am
9. I Will Be More Careful About Whose E-mail Efforts I Emulate
10. I Will Banish the Word "Blast" From my Vocabulary

Each of these resolutions comes with a number of tips on how to achieve them, so make sure to read the full article here.

It's Not About Email, It's About Great Customer Experiences

Great quote from Whitney Hutchinson in her latest Email Insider column:

Email marketing, as we probably all agree, is not the be-all and end-all. As David said, it’s simply one piece of the puzzle: a piece integrated with many other pieces, working together, to build a consumer experience with a brand (online or off).

It’s a tactical representation of a communication that we, the marketer, want to have with our consumer. It’s not the only communication that our organization has with a consumer, and that fact requires us to adjust our thinking. In the end, it’s not about email; it’s about the customer experience and how email plays into and supports that.

So what does that mean to you and me, who are responsible for the email channel? It means that it’s time for us to step up. To challenge our organizations to think of email not as a separate silo, but as an active part of the consumer experience.

We need to work with our colleagues in media and social marketing; with our Web development teams and our offline direct marketers, and say, “Let’s build a comprehensive communication strategy. Let’s build a true eCRM program that integrates all of the channels at our disposal to maximize customer experiences and value to our organizations.”

I totally agree! Continue reading her article here. It's well worth a couple of minutes of your time!

Email As Part of a Multi-Channel Approach

The reality of today's multitasking market place means none of us exist in a vacuum. As we all compete for engagement, the use of a single slice marketing medium approach is no longer sufficiently supportable. The exclusive path to sought after opportunities must be a shared one. Today is also a sensitive political environment with strong opinions on the use of various marketing tools and their perceived intrusiveness. Mindless communication blasts to anyone pre-qualified — or not — is often viewed as unwanted additional noise or junk and incents the clamor for a more responsible, self-enforced coherent approach.

Recently I was looking at soccer uniforms for my son's team. I went to a local retail outlet and registered for additional information. Soon thereafter I received a printed catalog in the mail with a variety of clothing options. Then I received a postcard notifying me of an upcoming event sale. No sooner did I get the postcard in the mail then I also received a follow-up e-mail supporting the same graphics seen in the postcard plus pictures of available uniform complete with my son's teams name displayed. I was directed to a Web site and the sale was made! This entire multichannel experience had me engaged. It was fun and had my attention with several distinct but related consistent touches.

Special emphasis should always be placed on when the prospect actually engages. In conventional direct mail that means use of available tools to confirm when an individual piece of mail is actually received in-home not just placed in the mail.

This then determines an “event,” and can and should trigger additional communication phases across multiple mediums including e-mail, print and even telemarketing. Driven by robust tracking options one can confirm within statistical reason when someone actually receives the individual piece of mail. These mailpiece tracking systems are powerfully used as a trigger for the now well placed and critically well timed follow up or supporting e-mail speaking to the same topic and engaging to the next step.

Source: http://www.dmnews.com/Leveraging-for-relevance/article/120410/

From Simple to Multivariate Email Campaigns

Here are some of my takeaways from this article by Stephan Dietrich:

There are two important things marketers can do to evolve their email strategies and improve interactions with customers and prospects. One is to improve the personalization within the emails themselves, and the other is to better coordinate these emails with other channels such as direct mail, phone and mobile.

Moving from simple to multivariable email marketing
Email marketing is evolving from simple approaches to more behaviorally based multivariable, or dynamic, approaches.

Multivariable, or dynamic, email marketing relies on multiple components to determine the next marketing step, including data obtained from user profiles and actual user behavior. For example, suppose a customer visits a women's clothing website where she has previously made a purchase. She clicks through a couple of pages, spends extra time on a page with shoes, taking a closer look at specific styles and colors, but then leaves the site without buying. The customer then is treated to an email offering a discount (her user profile is already in the system) on a pair of shoes -- buy one get one half-off -- promoting just the style she spent the most time viewing.

Maturing from multi-channel to cross-channel marketing
What is perhaps more wasteful than using simple email marketing is the use of email campaigns that are not well-coordinated with direct mail, telemarketing or mobile initiatives.

Coordination and consistency are very important -- imagine a customer's reaction to receiving two different offers from a triple-play telephone/cable/internet provider. One arrives by direct mail and offers a bundle of all three services for $99 per month. One arrives via email and offers the same bundle at $99 per month plus as an additional incentive, a free HDTV. The consumer calls the toll-free number on the mailed postcard and asks about the email offer. The call center agent isn't aware of the HDTV offer and cannot honor it. The customer is annoyed and, believing the experience may be symbolic of the type of service she can expect should she switch, decides to remain with her current provider.

Situations like this arise when companies take a multi-channel marketing approach versus a cross-channel marketing approach. "Multi-channel" infers the ability to drive marketing through multiple channels -- something most marketers have certainly achieved. Meanwhile, "cross-channel" denotes the ability to drive the coordination and consistency of a campaign's message across channels.

Source: iMediaConnection

Are we discriminating against our best customers?

In the November Issue of Infobox, Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx, looks at why we keep rewarding those customers who haven't opened your emails, who haven't bought in a few months and who abandon shopping carts etc, yet, do not implement a positive reward scheme for those who actually purchase regularly.

As Dela sums up 'Good customers need rewarding too; so when implementing an incentive based scheme, it is always worth asking yourself if you are discriminating against your loyal customers and how they would feel if they found out. This is a subtle but important change in emphasis that could yield significant results'. 'Tis a very good article and is sure to set you thinking: Are we discriminating against our best customers?

Also in this issue Stefan Pollard of Responsys is interviewed on the art of segmenting and the beautiful and creative Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon, advises on designing effective Holiday Season creatives, whilst Simone Barrett of e-Dialog, looks at how to protect your brand from phishing.

It's Time To Invest In Email Marketing

According to the below chart from MarketingSherpa's latest Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, it's time to invest in email marketing rather than cut costs:

clipped from www.marketingsherpa.com Marketers Say Email a Good Investment During Downturn Those that see the effectiveness of their email programs diminishing are much more likely to have short-sighted organizational attitudes toward the tactic. Nearly 50% of them consider email to be "free" or nearly so, compared to only one quarter of those who see email's impact as increasing. Organizations with investment-oriented views of email reap the rewards. They have higher open, click and conversion rates. In addition, they are much more likely to have a metrics-based grasp of how email works for them. Those with the "email is free" view, on the other hand, are more likely to fall into the group that doesn't track conversion. The key takeaway: Email should be the last place to cut budget and the first place to increase it. Modest investments in testing, best practices, measurement and, most importantly, providing relevant content will generate powerful ROI

Borders: A prime example of e-tailing done right

Previously in this blog, I mentioned the UK bookstore chain, Waterstone's and how they were doing a great job offering offers only available via email. Well - it looks like Borders are on par with Waterstone's email marketing strategies.

Now - apart from the From address being noreply@bordersmail.com (please see previous post regarding this), I think Borders are doing a great job with their email marketing and offers. Last week they offered a £5.00 voucher to download and print off and spend in-store. To avail yourself of this offer, you simply had to click the image which then takes you to a printable pdf which has a barcode on it. Simple but effective.

I also love how they use video in emails. I also receive Borders TV Newsletter which I believe deals well with the 'how to use video in email' issue which is so often brought up.

The newsletter shows the screenshots of the various video's within the email, then upon clicking the screenshot you're taken through to Bookzone TV and the video starts to play.

 

These are great ideas which are simple to achieve...but I don't believe they're ideas which are limited to retailers...so how about it?....let's really put the email channel to work and accomplish some great results.

Defining Your Welcome Strategy

Andrew Kordek wrote a great post on the importance of having a welcome strategy. Here are the most important points. Read the entire post here.

clipped from thescrappyemailmarketer.wordpress.com welcome emails are probably the most important emails your program can have.  They can generate millions of dollars in revenue if you are an eTailer and are the first impression of your email program to new subscribers. Here are a couple of questions and comments to consider on a welcome strategy. - Do you just sent them a welcome email and then put them into a promotional stream?  If so, how would that make you feel as a customer? - Do you have a 1 or 2 touch strategy in truly welcoming folks into your program? What I mean by this is do you send them 1 or 2 or even 3 emails warming the customer up to your regular promotional stream? - Some of things to consider over those touches are sending them to a preference center for progressive profiling, giving them coupons to purchase or send them examples of your current promotional stream.

The Impact of Social Networking on Email Marketing

Some clippings from a great article on the role of email in a social networking world by Renen Watermeyer:

clipped from www.imediaconnection.com As brand owners turn to social networking sites and services as a marketing channel, many industry observers are beginning to question the role that email marketing will play in a Web 2.0 world. In reality, however, email marketing volumes are not declining email and social networks do not compete with each other for online marketing spend or for end-users' attention. Instead, they complement each other and can be used in an integrated fashion to create better user engagement than either could on its own. Companies will need to evolve the way that they use email by making better use of transactional and triggered emails that are relevant to the customers, rather than blasting them with untargeted promotional messages. Perhaps the most important factor of all is to measure one's marketing campaigns in an integrated fashion. This enables marketers to understand how their email and social networking marketing are interacting to drive engagement with their audience.

The Decline and Fall of Email for Acquisition

Some very valid points in this e-consultancy article:

clipped from www.e-consultancy.com The use of email marketing to drive customer acquisition is in significant, and terminal, decline. email is not a customer acquisition tool. In fact it never has been, but in the early years of the media, the novelty of receiving email meant that acquisition and lead generation emails wereopened and clicked on. Any email marketer who thinks that consumers expect and deserve regular, mass email marketing will find their reputation and results flowing rapidly down the toilet. Email marketing is a retention tool, and used cleverly it is the ‘killer app’.  Cold emailing as a core business proposition just doesn’t work because the need to flog as much data as possible is totally contrary to email marketing’s core requirements - targeting, relevance and quality.

Content and Segmentation Are Key To Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

A couple of weeks ago I attended an email marketing conference in the Netherlands at which Bill McCloskey was a keynote speaker. He did an excellent job!

He recently wrote an article for the UK DMA's Email Marketing newsletter Infobox (to which I highly recommend subscribing by the way) that drives away the point he was making in his keynote speach. Namely, that you shouldn't focus your attention on getting more emails delivered (you can pay someone to do that for you), but you should instead focus more on the the message that you are delivering to those that do receive your emails.

Deliverability, the ability to get your message through the often
byzantine gantlet of rules and regulations constructed by the ISPs to
keep your message out of the inbox, is a very hot topic.

Why? Because it is a solvable problem. There are vendors out there with a SOLUTION to that problem. And vendors sponsor trade shows. And so we have a disproportionate amount of conversations about reaching incremental groups of customers, but almost no conversation about what you send to the people you do reach to make your message more compelling. And that is because technical problems are relatively easy. Creative problems are much more difficult to solve.

The real secret to email marketing has nothing to do with deliverability, rendering, or any number of other technical issues we discuss to take our minds off our dwindling response rates. The real secret has to do with Creative. What are you sending to the customers that you reach to make them want your message in the first place? Not only want it, but desire it?

Key to a successful email marketing campaign is providing something unique through the email channel, something that the customer can’t get any other way. Everyone wants to be an insider. Everyone wants to be part of an exclusive club, to get the deal before anyone else hears about it, to be in the know before the masses. Leveraging the inbox to create that exclusive insiders club is the key to a successful email marketing programme.

A great place to start creating that ‘insiders’ relationship with your clients is in your welcome letter. Welcome letters have the highest open rates of any email you will send. People are expecting it. They just signed up for your programme. And yet it is amazing how many marketers throw this opportunity away.

Make sure to read the article titled "The True Secret of Successful Email Marketing", as it contains some examples of companies that are doing it right by leveraging the welcome letter to develop a strong relationship with their clients.

Email: Isn't It About Communicating?

The global financial meltdown reminds us again how important good communications are in our societies.

In 1929, the United States experienced a major stock-market crash, which precipitated disastrous bank runs – thousands of account-holders descended on their local financial institutions, demanding their life savings in cash – and contributed to what we now call The Great Depression.

As news spread over the last few weeks about potential failures in the financial markets, the specter of the bank run rose again as people talked again about withdrawing their hard-earned money before it disappeared.

But it didn't happen and isn't likely to happen in most countries throughout the world. I believe we will avoid failure because of the systems and protections enacted throughout the world to avert these runs and because of the instantaneous nature of communications.

While TV, radio and the Internet alerted people to the financial-system meltdown, customers could go online and read press releases from the affected banking institutions and government bodies and be reassured that their savings were either insured or protected.

Where does email come in to play? I personally have direct relationships with three financial institutions (not including credit-card issuers, mutual funds, etc.). Only one of them has reached out to communicate with me about the market turbulence in the last few weeks.

This company has sent me three separate emails, all meant to educate and reassure me about my accounts and status of the financial markets.

One of the other institutions is, in fact, a well-known bank that has been in the headlines in the last few days as pieces of the bank will be sold to another bank. But nary a communication from them. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

As marketers, we spend most of our time talking about things such as customer acquisition, conversion rates, average order size, revenue per email and other short-term top-line-oriented metrics.  But, at its core, email is still a communications channel from consumer to consumer and between businesses and consumers.

The emails I received from the one financial institution recognized that we had a relationship and sought to strengthen it through timely, candid and reassuring communications.

My point here is not to talk about the quality of crisis communications but to make us think about all the ways to use email beyond the typical approach of sell, sell, sell.

For most businesses and consumers, email is still the most efficient and quickest way to communicate. When developing your email program and communication cadence, build in the aspect of basic, value-added communications: keeping your subscribers and customers up-to-date on both good and bad news.

It might be as simple as a notice that a popular product is out-of-stock, a bulletin that seminar registration is full, a Web site will be down for maintenance, or you have to add a fuel surcharge because of higher jet-fuel costs.

At its core, email is a communications vehicle, not a just billboard for your latest free-shipping offer. Use email for all it can be.

The Secret is out!

Bill McCloskey has written an excellent article for Infobox, The True Secret of Successful Email Marketing.

I love Bill's line of thought: "The real secret to email marketing has nothing to do with deliverability, rendering, or any number of other technical issues we discuss to take our minds off our dwindling response rates. The real secret has to do with Creative. What are you sending to the customers that you reach to make them want your message in the first place? Not only want it, but desire it?"

He then goes on to give some examples (including images) of some welcome letters which do it right and go towards building a rewarding relationship with their subscribers..

Read Bill's article: http://email.dma.org.uk/_Attachments/Resources/4388_S4.html

Direct Mail Versus E-mail: You Decide

In this article Barry Abel lays out the benefits of email over direct mail. Here are some of his arguments:

E-mail costs: For companies whose customers are largely online, e-mail is a cost-effective replacement to direct mail. For organizations that have a blend of online and non-online customers, it can be a welcomed alternative for e-mail-equipped recipients that also lowers the cost of marketing for the company.

Direct mail efficiency: A direct mail campaign can take weeks to design, lay out, print and mail. Moreover, while deliverability and response are trackable with direct mail, they take time. Undeliverable mail can take weeks to be returned and addresses must be manually removed from a list. In addition, response can take days by postage paid reply.

E-mail efficiency: An e-mail campaign can take as little as a few hours to a few days from concept to receipt, enabling companies to respond rapidly to market dynamics and competitive pressures. In addition, with e-mail sent by an advanced e-mail delivery system, bad addresses are discovered within minutes and culled from a list. Then, marketers know exactly how many recipients opened the message.

Read the full article here.

I don't think you should entirely replace direct mail with email, both channels have their place in the marketing mix. Smart marketers use direct mail for their higher value customers/segments and add the email channel to their communication mix to strenghten the offline channel.

For segments where direct mail is not very ROI positive, I would definitely recommend increasing the use of email marketing and reducing direct mail - because due to it's cost-effectiveness you'll be able to reach out to a larger target audience, while still being able to segment and target this audience with different messages.

Would love to hear your view on this!

What Is the Optimum Frequency For My Newsletter Program?

Many email marketers (and a lot more CFOs) think if a little email is good, a lot more is even better. It's an easy assumption to make. If a campaign or program does great business once, it will the second, third and fourth time, right? Certainly, that's what your boss thinks, especially during high-volume retail seasons such as Christmas, Mother's Day and back-to-school. But it just isn't necessarily true.

Remember that email is different from other marketing channels. Optimum frequency isn't just the number of "drops" you want or need to make to reach your ROI goals or your quarterly revenue projections. It's also how often your subscribers want to hear from you.

Yes, in the short run, doubling your weekly mailings from one to two might give you a decent lift on the bottom line. But, stop right there. Over-mailing has long-term risks that can not only wipe out your short-term gain, but also leave your program in the hole.

On the other hand, not mailing often enough may hurt your email program in the long run as well.

So, not surprisingly, "What is the optimum frequency?" is one question I hear all the time from email marketers. Problem is that it’s the wrong question. Instead, ask this: "How can I create an email program that uses demographics, preferences and behaviors to maximize my customers' lifetime value?"

The real costs of over-mailing
While moving to a higher frequency can deliver increased revenue in the short term, it may actually end up costing you money over the longer term. Here's what can happen:

• You lose subscribers by annoying them to the point that they click the spam button, unsubscribe or simply delete your emails unopened.
• Your churn rate then climbs significantly, requiring you to spend more money to replace these lost subscribers. And you've lost any potential revenue from these fallen-away customers.
• Increased frequency may raise spam complaint rates above certain ISPs thresholds, getting your messages blocked or filtered and reducing your overall delivery rate–costing you direct revenue.

Detecting subscriber discontent
How do you know if you are over-mailing? Track not only process metrics like click-through, bounce, unsubscribe and spam complaint rates but also strategic metrics–total revenue per campaign, average revenue per email, average revenue per order–over several campaigns. In particular, compare different time periods during which you sent emails with greater and less frequency. Look for spikes in unsubscribes and spam complaints and corresponding drops in opens or click-throughs.

Monitor your feedback and reply-to addresses for subscriber comments and analyze the rate of frequency and channel preference changes (if you offer options). Conduct regular subscriber surveys to obtain direct feedback.

Under-mailing can hurt, too
Most frequency discussions warn you not to send too much email, but sending too little email can also cripple your marketing program.

Email is a digital, immediate medium. Subscribers forget about you if you wait too long to start sending email or send infrequently. Quarterly mailings are for paper newsletters. Email newsletters should generally go out at least monthly.

Additionally, what is too frequent for some subscribers might be too infrequent for others. Offering subscribers frequency choices, such as monthly, twice monthly, weekly or "whenever we have an offer," means that the optimum conversion and frequency combination might be once a month for one segment and 15 times a month for another.

Why customization and relevancy impact frequency
The right frequency is both unique to the recipient, but also directly driven by the relevance and value of the emails. "Batch and blast" emails sent twice a week might be spam-complaint material for a subscriber, but twice-weekly emails based on preferences and behavioral data, for example, might be the perfect cadence for the same person.

The first thing to do to move your program forward is to create a customer preference center if you don't have one, or promote the one you have. This lets subscribers set the frequency, format and content they want. Then make sure you deliver on those expectations.

Better yet, move to a lifecycle, behavior- or trigger-based approach. This method changes the, "What's the right frequency?" question to, "When do I send emails to optimize the value and relationship of each segment?" And because many of these messages can be triggered by customer activity, once set up your program can almost run on autopilot.

When you build your program around your subscribers, their preferences and behaviors drive the optimum frequency and your program success.

Source: Silverpop