In my last blog I had recently signed up to email marketing from fashion company Dorothy Perkins, and enjoyed the perk of a one off free delivery for doing so. But now, a few weeks later, I’m reaching for the unsubscribe button. So what went wrong?
Lets take a look at my inbox.
In just one week they have sent me 9 emails. Frankly, I’m getting irritated everytime I see yet another email pop into my inbox with their name on it.
Dorothy Perkins has made what is arguably one of the most rooky mistakes when it comes to email marketing management. Email overkill.
Email marketing is an important marketing tool for companies to create and maintain effective relationships with customers (McCloskey, 2006, cited in Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2011) therefore it is imperative that firms get it right. According to Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty (2011), the frequency of sending emails is an important part of building customer relationships and finding a happy medium is difficult – too few could lose customers interest, whereas too many could irritate.
According to a survey by BlueHornet, 35.4% of people said they had unsubscribed at some point because of the frequency of emails received, compared to just under a third unsubscribing because of irrelevant content (Moth, 2014).
So just how do you strike the right balance?
There are many arguments for and against. Some, such as a study by Foreman (2013), believe that the more you email the customer, the more their level of engagement will decrease. Foreman’s study looked at how frequency of emails sent impacted on open rates, with a company example shown in the graph below.
Foreman (2013)
Foreman found that frequency and engagement are negatively correlated, meaning that the more mail sent the less customers engage with each campaign (Foreman, 2013).
However not everyone agrees with this. Campanelli (2013) argues that in fact the more emails you send the more engaged people become. Sending emails frequently ensures your brand remains at the forefront of customer’s minds, and shows that your company cares about them. The idea is that the more you email your customers, the more sales and money you will make (Roe, 2013 and Reeves, 2013).
But is this really true? Frequent emailing may ensure your company is remembered by the customer, but Campanelli doesn’t discuss whether that association is a positive or negative one. In the case of Dorothy Perkins, they have become an irritant in my mind, certainly not the result that they were trying to achieve I’m sure!
So how do you know when enough is enough?
Campanelli (2013) argues that it’s simple, if you send too much email you can always rein it back in if it doesn’t work. However, to me this seems like a dangerous approach. Customers can be stubborn creatures, and once a negative experience has occurred it can be difficult to win them back. A survey by Zendesk (2013) found that over half of respondents stopped buying from a company after a negative experience, and nearly 40% continued to avoid a company for two or more years after that bad experience. Some companies think that losing a few customers along the way is not an issue, as they can simply attract others, but according to Marketing Metrics (cited in Shaw, 2013) the probability of making a sale to an existing customer is between 60 to 70%, whereas the probability of attracting a new customer is just 5-20%. It can also take up to 12 positive experiences to make up for one negative experience (Newell-Legner, cited in Shaw, 2013), therefore keeping your current customers happy is much more important and an effective use of time than you may think. Clearly, a haphazard approach to your email marketing strategy can have longlasting negative effects.
To get the right balance, experts argue that businesses need to understand that frequency isn’t about sending more or less emails to everybody, but sending the right amount of emails to the right people (Roe, 2013). Reeves (2013) adds that there is a fine line between communicating frequently and adding value, and once you’re no longer adding value the customer becomes unengaged.
This is where the importance of targeting and segmentation come into play. According to Moth (2014), email frequency should be influenced by targeting and segmentation, and with consideration for the industry, overall business strategy and seasonal factors. You can segment your email database in a number of ways, but a good way to start is to look at the number of purchases they’ve made or their individual open rate. When looking to increase your email frequency, Roe (2013) suggests targeting your most responsive customers first, i.e. ones that opened an email from you in the past week, as targeting these customers is more likely to return a good response rate as they appear open to engagement.
It is also agreed that tailoring content to your email marketing segments is the way to go, as different segments have different needs and therefore require different content (Roe, 2013 and Moth, 2014).
Finally, if you do want to experiment with increasing your email marketing, there are steps you can take to limit the risk of that customer unsubscribing if you get the balance wrong. The BlueHornet survey (Moth, 2014) discovered that given the opportunity to opt down on the number of emails received rather than unsubscribe altogether, nearly half of those asked would take that option, therefore it is definitely recommended to make this option available to your email database.
To find out more about getting the right frequency for your email marketing campaigns, check out this BlueHornet webinar – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X12JL7D9HZw
REFERENCES
Campanelli, M. (2013) Dela Quist on Increasing Email List Size and Frequency. Emarketing and Commerce, 20th March 2013 [Online] <http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/article/dela-quist-increasing-email-list-size-frequency/1#> [Accessed 3rd April]
Ellis-Chadwick, F. & Doherty, N.F. (2011) Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing, Journal of Business Research. Vol 65, Issue 6, Pages 843-848
Foreman, J. (2013) Sending Frequency: More Is Not Always Better! Mailchimp, 23rd April 2013 [Online] <http://blog.mailchimp.com/sending-frequency-more-is-not-always-better/> [Accessed 3rd April 2015]
Moth, D. (2014) Email frequency: how much is too much? Econsultancy, 20th January 2014 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/64165-email-frequency-how-much-is-too-much/> [Accessed 3rd April 2015]
Reeves, J. (2013) Email Marketing: The Cold Hard Truth About Frequency. The Daily Egg, 13th March 2013 [Online] <http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/03/13/email-marketing-frequency/> [Accessed 8th April 2015]
Roe, T. (2013) Send more email, make more money? Econsultancy, 4th July 2013 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/62997-send-more-email-make-more-money> [Accessed 3rd April]
Shaw, C. (2013) 15 Statistics That Should Change The Business World – But Haven’t [Online] <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130604134550-284615-15-statistics-that-should-change-the-business-world-but-haven-t> [Accessed 8th April 2015]
Zendesk (2013) The impact of customer service on customer lifetime value [Online] <https://www.zendesk.com/resources/customer-service-and-lifetime-customer-value/> [Accessed 8th April 2015]