The four levels of email frequency

Email frequency remains a significant concern of marketers. Am I sending too frequently? Should I send more? How frequently should I send?

To get the best result the general aim is to keep your name in front of prospects and customers as often as possible. Ideally do this across many channels too, so your name pops out in news media, is listed in search results, drops into social feeds, is present in the inbox, shows up on the TV and everywhere else.

If we could persuade consumers to accept the marketing pressure we’d spend every minute of every day talking to them. Indeed follow them home and sit in their living room.

So just how much is too much? What are the levers that affect the right answer? The four factors that are important to the frequency question are

• Expectation
• Value delivered
• Brand advocacy
• Product or service type

Expectation
If at time of sign-up the email frequency is clear, it naturally makes the send frequency more acceptable. After all, if the customer didn’t want emails of that frequency they won’t have signed up. Daily deals are a classic example. It’s hard to be surprised about a daily email if you sign up for a daily deal email; likewise for publishing emails, such as daily headlines or a weekly news round-up.

This is not to say that you must advise email frequency upfront or even give frequency choice to the customer. Until the customer knows how valuable they find your emails they can’t make a judgement about how often they want your emails. They need a taste first.

Value delivered
Nobody will complain about highly frequency emails that they find valuable. Or that at least enough of them are valuable for the frequency to be acceptable. Rather than solving a concern about a frequency problem through reducing frequency, increase relevant value. Making an email less frequent does not automatically make it more relevant.

Brand advocacy
A customer who is fanatical about your brand will accept the highest frequency of email of all your customers. A fanatic is someone who can’t get enough of you. Customers who are among your best and most loyal will also be those who are happiest for high email frequency.

I’ve been a long-time customer of eBuyer and bought from them five times in the last 18 months. I expect to use them in the future, even though I have no current purchase need. eBuyer email me every two or three days. I happily ignore most of these frequent emails and scan over a few to see what’s new and what’s on offer. However I’ve not unsubscribed and have no intention of doing so. I haven’t because I’m a loyal customer and intend to continue to be a customer (actually I sometimes cheat on them and go to Amazon – eBuyer, hope you’re not reading).

A key point about frequency here is that if my click behaviour was used to determine acceptance of the emails from eBuyer it would be wrong. It’s the purchase behaviour that’s important.

Product or service type
What you’re pushing makes a difference, a publisher, a service provider or retail product business?

If you are a publisher then information is your product and valuable content will be more easily welcomed with a high frequency. Contrast this to a contracted service such as mobile phone, in which case your brand is in front of the customer every time they make a call. It would probably be wrong to start sending daily deals in order to retain and upsell other mobile services.

So, when you are experimenting and testing your email frequency to optimise your results, also consider how you are pulling on the four levers that enable frequent emails to be anticipated and accepted. Fulfilling expectations, providing value, and rewarding brand advocacy appropriately to the type of products and services are the fundamental starting points to the question of the right frequency.

Tim Watson, founder of Zettasphere and Chair of the DMA Email Marketing Council Best Practice and legal hub
@tawatson

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