In this day and age of marketing, companies and publishers have access to possibly the most valuable tool in their arsenal. A direct link to their current and potential readers; the mass email. With publishers now asking for consumers to exchange some sort of data in order for them to access articles, consumers feel that publishers are abusing this power and are effectively sending them way too many emails. This therefore begs the question; how many emails are too many?

The Importance of a Great Email Campaign

Email campaigns are a very effective way to market to your potential readers and your audiences. The importance of obtaining a user’s email address has never been so important with the ability to now send mass emails and run email-marketing campaigns. Think about it, the ability to notify your current and potential customers about new information to them, at any time –due to the beauty of mobile phones- is a very powerful tool to have. Nevertheless, with such great power, it’s very easy to go overboard and abuse this responsibility. To put it very simply, it requires a very fine balance when running email campaigns.

Negative Effects of Sending Too Many Emails

Running an email campaign that sends out too many emails runs a few risks, which in turn will have a negative effect on your brand and how customers perceive it. These are effects such as decreased engagement, increased opt-outs, and in some cases, even having your IP banned by ISPs. The brief talk of finding the balance above however is key in email campaigns, because arguably, too little emails have an even more adverse effect on a company’s brand.

Sending Too Few Emails

After establishing what can happen if you send out too many emails, the adverse effects of under emailing can be as disastrous. You can miss revenue opportunities, have a lack of inbox presence, and an inconsistent sender reputation. All of these can in turn to maintaining a clean contact list, and you could in turn fail to avoid spam traps.

Trial & Error To Find The Right Email Campaign

 We’ve identified what can happen if you don’t run a successful email campaign, so how do we go about running a successful one? A smart way to go about business is by running field tests. Testing email frequency and seeing which styles and methods reap higher engagements and clicks with your readers. Why guess when you can run tests and actually find out which method works best for your company and your audiences?

Personalisation & Segmentation

Personally, I feel that this is the most important point made in this blog. Email personalisation works for me when I open emails and I’ll explain why. The fact that it feels as if someone has taken the time to spell my name correctly, and see what my likes and interests are automatically builds a rapport between the sender and I If an email is tailored for me. If, for example I’ve just received a personalised offer, I’ll more likely click on it and purchase something, as opposed to a generic email that’s sent across the board. I’m sure I’m not the only person that feels this way, but that fact that I feel that this email is individually tailored to me goes a long way.

At Evolok, personalisation and segmentation are key components of our strategy. Not only do we offer real time segmentation and personalisation, and the same applies with our email campaigns. The ability to send our targeted emails through segmentation is a strategy that when executed properly, can pay dividends. Nevertheless, emails should be carefully targeted; otherwise you may run the risk of over-emailing. 

Understand Your Subscribers Engagement To Emails

By giving your subscribers the ability to choose how often they’ll receive marketing emails when they sign up will also greatly reduce the amount of readers that unsubscribe, as it puts the power into their hands. By utilising this method, you may not be able to reach your audiences as often as you’d like to. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, as your readers will only be receiving content that they absolutely want, which means they’ll value your emails and trust your brand as a reputable source.

It may be find to find the right balance, because as businesses we always want to seize an opportunity to market at any given opportunity, but sometimes it’s more fruitful to take a step back and listen to what the customer prefers. Run tests, give them the opportunity, and make the most of the powerful tool which are email campaigns.