“We can’t text them as well, they’ll get sick of us.” “We already emailed this week, that’s enough.” If you’ve ever said something like this in a marketing meeting, you’re in very good company. It feels responsible and considerate, and it’s one of the most common reasons businesses hold back on their email and SMS, even when the tools are sitting right there and already paid for.
The fear of being annoying is completely understandable. But the problem isn’t always how often you show up. It’s whether each message is worth receiving, and that’s a much more fixable problem.
Who are we actually talking about?
Before we get into numbers, it’s worth being clear about the audience, because a lot of the advice online mixes up two very different situations.
- People who already know you. These are your existing customers and the people who’ve signed up to hear from you. This article is about them, and about how often they’re happy to hear from you.
- Cold outreach. This is a salesperson reaching out to people who have never heard of the business. Most of the “send three or four follow-ups” advice you’ll find online is about this, and it’s a different game with different rules.
If you’d like to understand the different jobs your emails can do, from sharing useful information to following up on interest, we break them down in the three types of email marketing.
Why do people actually unsubscribe?
Sending too many messages can certainly drive customers away, but frequency isn’t always the biggest issue. Repetition, irrelevant content and receiving the same promotion across multiple channels can be just as frustrating.
Think about it from the customer’s perspective. If you’ve already received an offer by email, do you really need the same thing sent to your phone the next day? Particularly if it’s something you weren’t interested in the first time.
People don’t necessarily mind hearing from businesses they know. What they mind is receiving messages that don’t feel relevant or useful to them.
That’s good news, because the answer isn’t necessarily to send less. It’s to make sure every message earns its spot.
So how often should you send?
The honest answer is that there’s no magic number, and anyone who gives you one without knowing your business is guessing. What works for a clinic sending reminders will be very different from a retailer running weekly promotions. That said, there are a few practical ways to find the right rhythm for your audience.
Send by engagement, not by the calendar. Instead of sending everyone the same number of emails, tailor your frequency to how engaged they are. Send more to active subscribers, fewer to those who rarely interact, and consider removing inactive contacts altogether. The people opening and clicking are giving you clues about what interests them.
Treat automated messages differently. The “how often” question is usually about newsletters, promotions and announcements. A reminder someone needs, or a reply to something they just did, is a different kind of message altogether, because it’s useful to them right now.
Set expectations when people sign up. If someone knows they’ll hear from you once a week, a weekly email is exactly what they signed up for rather than a surprise.
Ask them. If you’re unsure how often your customers want to hear from you, simply ask them. And if people aren’t responding at all, that isn’t necessarily a sign you’re sending too much.
How do you make every message worth sending?
This is where coordination comes in. The businesses that get frequency right aren’t necessarily the ones sending the least. They’re the ones whose messages feel like they come from one brand that’s paying attention, where the text knows what the email already said and the person who’s just taken action doesn’t get chased about it.
Automated campaigns are a big help here, because they let your audience qualify themselves. Rather than sending everyone the same message on a fixed schedule, you can let each person’s actions decide what they receive next.
In Prodocom’s Campaign Board, you can build emails that respond to what someone does, so they get a personalised follow-up based on the action they took. Someone who shows interest hears more about that topic, and someone who doesn’t isn’t sent the same offer again on a different channel.
That approach helps tackle the problem we’ve been discussing. Each message builds on the last instead of repeating it, and the right channel for each step depends on the message itself. If you’re weighing up which channel suits which job, our guide on when to use SMS instead of email is a good place to start.
The takeaway
Your audience is unlikely to get sick of being helped. What wears people down is hearing the same thing over and over, or receiving messages that have nothing to do with them. So instead of asking “are we sending too much?”, try asking “is every message worth sending?” Get that right and the frequency tends to take care of itself.
If you’d like a hand working out the right rhythm for your audience, or setting up a campaign that responds to what your customers actually do, get in touch. We’re always happy to talk it through.