Frequency to send to mailing list
How often should I send to my mailing list? The simple answer is as often as your recipients expect and would like you to contact them.
All forms of correspondence from you to your mailing list is a continuation of a relationship, regular contact with anyone you know is important to ensure that you will meet up again. Either party can decide that they do not wish to continue a relationship, and this is often forgotten by owners of mailing lists. They look at it as a one way piece of communication, from the mailing list owner to its contacts; they hardly hear of any direct complaints or praise from their contacts.
Internet users are becoming extremely used to dealing with unwanted mail, through the use of spam blocking tools and simply from unsubscribing from unwanted emails.
It is important to remember that although this is a one way channel of communication, it is only effective if it retains the audience. When someone signs up to a mailing list they should be made aware how often they will receive correspondence, or as part of the sign up process ask how often they will like to receive mailings. Ideally you want to focus on ensuring relevant information is sent, asking recipients what types of information they would like to receive. When someone un-subscribes from your mailing list they should have the option to comment on why they have decided to unsubscribe, this information should be used as constructive feedback on how you continue managing your mailing campaigns.
One person should be responsible for the mailing list to ensure that mailings are time tabled and organised throughout the year. Generally Sales people within organisations would send out emails as often as possible and initially they may receive a boost in their sales. Although statistics show that the sales might initially increase, over the long term a larger amount of people would unsubscribe and revenue will reduce.
You will also find that different types of people on your mailing list will respond better to different frequencies of emails, whilst some people will happily receive weekly emails others would much prefer monthly. Adapting your correspondence to account for these needs would seriously reduce the un-subscribe requests that occur.
Performance should constantly be monitored to understand how many people are opening emails when they are sent, try adapting to weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or even quarterly emails and see if more people open them.
Through the advancement of technology we all are contacted through many means such as Mobile phones and text messages, social networking websites, personal and work email.
We are becoming more technically tuned with new devices and methods of communication all the time. Be aware of this and make sure your communications contain quality information that the individual actually wants to receive.
You’re better off creating one good monthly email than weekly emails that mainly serve the purpose of fulfilling your need for the message to be communicated. A good technique is to send communications to separate areas of your mailing list each week; this allows a more consistent stream of response.
Ideally you should target different audiences within your mailing list with messages targeted specifically to each group, although this takes more time and possibly money. Overall it will reap more benefits as you should be more successful with your campaigns.
Work out how much it costs you to currently send out communications, taking account of time spent on this process, the cost to send through the your mail server. Break down the costs as much as possible looking at how much it costs to acquire new people to your mailing list and how much business you are losing from the individuals who unsubscribe. This will give you a current basis to start from, and then start segmenting and targeting specific relevant information to your different audiences. Although this may take more administrative time, you will more than likely see overall financial gains.
