Tips to Getting Email Frequency Right!

Published in the April 20th issue of Marketing Pros (http://www.marketingprofs.com/), Ardath Albee was recently cited in "Three Tips to Getting Email Frequency Right" offering the following advice:

Accept that the length of the buy cycle is the length of the buy cycle. "If it's 8 months, trying to increase the frequency to complete the program in 3 months isn't going to change that," she argues. "Buyers will move at their own pace." Attempts to speed things up with additional email messages will likely annoy your leads and cause campaign fatigue.



Plan with a realistic view of your content-producing capabilities. It takes time to research, write, vet, approve and publish high-quality content. "Map your processes to a timeline so that you can meet the frequency schedule you choose to follow," Albee advises. "Better to space it out and do it well than to rush to publish based on an artificial schedule you cannot maintain over the long haul."


Coordinate the timing of email campaigns with each of your company's departments. "Unless you can isolate your targeted lead list," she says, "you need to look at the entire universe of email that they could be exposed to from your company and plan accordingly." You might think you're giving leads plenty of space, but they'll feel bombarded if they're also getting product announcements, corporate newsletters and webinar invitations from others in your organization.


The Po!nt: Take the time to clearly map things out. There's no simple formula for correct frequency, and yours depends on a host of variables—internal and external.

OK - non of this is truly groundbreaking or "HOLD THE PRESSES" important. BUT...do we actually implement them? These are good rules to e-live by.

Email Member Acquisition and Renewal Metrics

I recently reviewed a Silverpop study of for-profit promotions average click-thru and open rates.

But what about click-thru and open rates for membership acquisition and renewals?

In 2009, in three acquisition campaigns for three different clients, we sent out over 130,000 emails. Open rates ranged from 16% to 18.77%, with click-thru rates ranging from 3.49% to 5.66%.

Obviously the sample size is still small. But, what is interesting is how closely the open rates and the click-thru rates are clustered -- especially given the divergence of markets that received these emails. This gives me confidence that we might actually be seeing a trend.

Interestingly, when looking at renewals, I'm seeing an open rate of almost 30% and a click thru rate of almost 18%. In comparison to the acquisition open and click-thru rates this makes perfect sense.

This is the first step in reporting this data. I welcome anybody to report their responses as well.