Every organisation aims to care for and prioritise their customers’ sentiments and needs. One of the most well-known and commonly applied methods to reach out to customers has been the use of emails. Emails are used to effectively communicate the organisation’s ideas, benefits, weekly updates and to even provide personalised messages. These mails range from simple, topical updates to weekly newsletters that prove to be great communication tools that effectively help bridge any communication gap between customer and organisation.

But, as the old adage goes “Too much of anything is good for nothing”, the same applies to customer emails too. While the right frequency of emails will guarantee you phenomenal results, an excessive amount of emails is only going to harm your organisations interests and render your brands image as that of an annoying and irritating organisation, which completely defeats the purpose of sending out emails!

In today’s article, we aim to try and solve the dilemma that haunts hundreds of companies with genuine intentions who unknowingly end up being misunderstood and painted in a negative light by their customers because of a lack of awareness on the part of the organisation with regards to the right email-sending frequency.

The purpose of the mail

Before you even compose a mail, you need to first figure out its purpose and the importance and relevance of the contents of the email. You need to prioritise emails according to their contents and value. Once you figure out the value and purpose of each mail, you can then move on to evaluate the frequency of the concerned mails.

Based on the value and relevance of the content, here’s a list of our suggested emails based on frequencies:-

  1. ‘Welcome mails’ – As the name suggests, these mails are used as a form of introduction for the customer. These are simple mails that help the customer feel familiar with the operations and services of the concerned brand. These are ‘one-off’ mails, i.e they need not be sent to the customer again.
  2. ‘Tips and Tricks’/’Updates’ – These mails are used to forge a useful and enriching bond with the customer by providing help in the form of tips and advice as well as company updates that are relevant to the interests of both the customer as well as the organisation. These mails should be sent on a ‘daily’ basis, thus keeping the customer updated while also maintain relevance.
  3. ‘Newsletters’ – Newsletters provide an enhanced, in-detail insight into the functioning of the organisation, thus enabling the customer to be able to get an up-close look into the workings of the organisation. Additionally, newsletters contain important content that is beneficial to the customer. Newsletters are generally sent on a ‘weekly’ basis, this is mainly because of the amount of content that newsletters typically feature. Sending newsletters on a weekly basis helps maintain relevance, while also ensuring the customer is not burdened with large quantities of content.
  4. ‘Seasonal campaigns/Event invitations/Birthday wishes’ – As the names suggest, these mails are only specific to a particular season/day of the year and are only restricted to those days or seasons. These mails may also be personalised (for example, birthday wishes) based on the purpose of the mail. These mails are only to be sent on periods based on relevance/season.

Know your customer’s expectations

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is overlooking the expectations and needs of the customer. Doing so results in mails that are of little to no use of the customer, thus possibly increasing the bounce rate while bringing down the image of the brand in the eyes of the customer.

Always do your research and study the needs and expectations of the customer. Do your customers enjoy being sent tips or tricks? Or do they prefer newsletters to daily updates? Are they happy with personalised emails or do they find them unnecessary and odd? Good research will only benefit your organisation in both the short as well as long term, and will result in positive results.

Another key factor is the industry you belong to. The frequency of emails greatly varies from industry to industry. For example, a clothing retailer may send out more emails than a tech company. It’s important to ascertain the value and need for emails before planning your strategies.

Study your competition

It’s a good practice to study your competition to learn from both their mistakes as well as their merits. You need not copy them, all you need to do is study their style and analyse how they carry out their work.

Using a competitor as a benchmark will motivate you to constantly work hard and improve to satisfy your customers in the best way possible.

Analyse your metrics

Many organisations often ignore or overlook their metrics as they do not consider them to be important. This is a mistake that can prove to be fatal as metrics provide information that helps organisations analyse and understand their strengths and weaknesses. You can think of metrics as a sort of report card. It helps you identify important factors and helps you understand if your frequency of mails is too high or too low.

According to Campaign Monitor, the following are rates you should aim for/work to achieve:

  1. An open rate ranging from 15-25%
  2. A CTR (Click through rate) of 2.5%
  3. A click-to-open rate ranging from 20-30%.

Segment your audience

Segmenting enables you to sort out your audience on the basis of various factors like activity, geography, demography and other such factors. Segmenting helps you to track and improve your mailing habits. It also means you aren’t emailing your entire list in one go, thus reducing risk and ensuring you don’t send irrelevant content to the wrong audience.

Customers with large rates of engagement should be placed higher in the list, thus prioritising them.

Ensure to pay attention to your domain’s reputation

Sending one too many mails will result in you being reported as a spammer. Paying attention to your domain reputation enables you to keep a check on the reputation of your domain, thus ensuring that your domain features in the good books of service providers and isn’t flagged as spam.

Marketing can be complex and intrinsic, and the same goes for emails too. Finding the right email frequency can be an exhausting task with plenty of trial and error, but sooner or later you’re bound to find the right frequency with enough of research and hard work. Happy emailing!