Free Advice: Don’t Abuse Your Email List!

Four of the five local retailers that emailed me yesterday, on Thanksgiving, about their Black Friday and holiday weekend sales and promotions sent me the same email again today. That’s eight emails, from the same four retailers, within 24 hours.

Now, that may not seem like a whole lot, but when I deleted 50 more emails that had arrived from non-local retailers between midnight last night and 10am this morning, you can see how the competition for my attention as a consumer gets fierce!

I’m email savvy enough to use a dedicated email address for my lists subscriptions. One that I don’t require myself to check once per day and one that is certainly not connected to my Blackberry. Most consumers are not this dedicated, however. So when their email inbox becomes overwhelming, they start clicking on “unsubscribe”. And once they’re gone, they’re likely not coming back!

I’m going to just put this out there. Email publishers who email frequently, about the same topic, almost always see an uptick in unsubscribes when they took a quick look at their email marketing statistics. Oh no! That’s exactly the opposite of what they want to see happen – and quite unfortunate, too.

So remember the golden rules of email marketing: make it relevant, keep it valuable, and don’t overdo it! I also recommend analyzing your past email marketing campaigns to find out what really works for your audience. Think Tuesday is the best day of the week to send email marketing out to customers or email list subscribers? Think again!

Just because Tuesday at 10:00am seems to be the popular “buzz time” for email distribution among marketing types, I have personally audited many of my clients’ email marketing campaigns and found that each have their own personalities. And many times, the emails they’ve sent on other days of the week have significantly higher open rates. Why could that be? Again, you’re competing for your audience’s attention. Plus, your target demographic may have unique behavioral characteristics. (Teachers work from 7:00am until 4:00pm, bartenders work from 6:00pm until 3:00am… do you think they will be checking their email at the same time?)

If everyone sends emails on the same day, you better have the best subject line among the bunch. And that, is a whole ‘nother topic of discussion!

Want to discuss the analytic side of email marketing? Drop me a note and let’s talk shop! Not using an email service provider so that you can analyze your email marketing performance? Stop what you’re doing right now and send me an email. We have got to get you on the path to making your email marketing work for you! 😉

• Category: Communication, Email Marketing, Marketing