E-mail Marketing – How many emails is too many?

At work the other day, I was forwarded an email with a co-worker asking for my thoughts to a question. The question went along the lines of: “How many emails in a defined time period should we be sending to our customers? How many emails is too many?” My answer? One!

But really, how many emails is too many?

Here were my thoughts on the matter.

When people sign up for a mail-out, it’s likely because they are:

• curious as to what they’re going to receive
• interested in something they saw from a related communication
• enticed by some sort of incentive, or
• doing a competitive analysis to see what other organizations are doing with their mailouts, or trying to get their hands on an HTML email template they can use as a basis for designing one for themselves

As long as that person gets something valuable out of the mailing, they’ll stay subscribed.

When do they unsubscribe? Anyone read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell? I think people unsubscribe when a series of things happen that tips them over the edge:

1. They receive a message that doesn’t have any content that speaks directly to their interests, and
2. They receive similar messages from other sources (either from you or from completely different lists they’ve signed up for), and
3. They look in their inbox and suddenly see it’s getting full of emails that they don’t need or want or have any useful need for

Once those 3 things happen, they’ll be on the verge of unsubscribing and all it will take to push them over the edge is one more email from you on a day when their inbox is already really full. So to answer, “How many emails is too many?” in this case it really is just one!

The Key to Email is VALUE

Often a company will be sending out regularly scheduled emails – for example a monthly newsletter or a weekly update of recent discussions in their online forums. In general, these will be well-received provided the recipients signed up to receive the mailings.

In many other cases, though, people will still sign up to receive e-newsletters, not know for sure how often or when they’ll receive the email.

In general, when you send an email to someone and they aren’t expecting it (for example, they didn’t sign up to receive a regularly-scheduled mail-out or they didn’t first send you an email expecting a reply), it stands to reason that they’ll be surprised when they receive your message. People like surprises when they get something. People don’t like surprises when they are asked for something.

So following this line of thought, if you’re sending mail-outs that people aren’t expecting, you’ll want to make sure you are giving people something that is of value to them (i.e. something that’s meaningful, relevant, generally interesting to them, or has actual monetary value).

But what about the “should” from a marketer’s standpoint?

On the flip side of all this is the perspective of what you “should” do to help build your business and your brand. And on this side of the communications, you “should” be sending out as many emails as it takes to keep your existence in people’s minds.

You’re competing for their attention and need to do what you can to keep it when you get it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to send a lot of emails – it could just mean you have to send them one or two a month that will grab enough of their attention to get them to visit the website.

Provided you then have something of value on the website, that will be enough to keep them coming back or it will at least be enough to stop them from going away the next time you send them another message.

What about email marketing usability?

As far as usability goes, Jakob Nielsen is talked about a lot in circles of usability. The guy drives me nuts sometimes, but he also often has useful (or at least thought provoking) info on emails, for example check out these links:

What do you think?

There’s no place for unsolicited email, but what about semi-unsolicited email? What kind of emails do you like to receive? What do you value when it comes to email offers or promotions? What drives you up the wall and prompts you to unsubscribe?