4 Reasons to Decrease Email Frequency

As the saying goes, less is more — and nowhere is this ideology more relevant than with email marketing. As subscribers are becoming more sophisticated and expecting personalized brand experiences, marketers need to tailor email frequency based on individual engagement and preferences.

While most marketers do understand the importance of not over-emailing subscribers, many still stick with this outdated practice. However, receiving too many emails from a brand is one of the biggest drivers of subscriber dissatisfaction, as highlighted by a recent survey from Yes Lifecycle.

Credit: eMarketer

If this isn’t reason enough to consider adjusting your email send frequency, here are four more reasons that prove the case that less is more:

1. Improved Inbox Placement

Mailbox providers put significant emphasis on subscriber engagement as a way to determine inbox placement. While your most engaged subscribers may tolerate a higher email frequency, those less engaged with your program are likely to ignore your emails or even mark them as spam as the frequency increases.

Understanding the relationship between email engagement and deliverability is crucial to email marketing success, and a recent study from Return Path and Demand Metric reveals that marketers who understand that subscriber engagement has a significant impact on filtering decisions are enjoying greater email marketing effectiveness.

In order to ensure your messages reach the inbox, it’s critical to have a strategy in place to identify and remove inactive subscribers from your list while focusing on mailing to your engaged subscribers. You should also be testing to determine the optimal frequency for your subscribers.

Credit: Return Path

2. Money Saved

Although sending an email is a relatively inexpensive form of communication compared to other marketing channels, mailing at a high frequency adds up cost over time. For example, sending six emails a week to your entire audience, regardless of their engagement level, is likely a waste of money — not to mention resources that could have been focused on other areas.

As marketers, we should be focused on subscriber lifetime value (LTV), as research has shown that around 80 percent of your future revenue comes from just 20 percent of existing customers. Pinpointing your own LTV, specifically the type of subscriber who yields the most value, will help you to identify your key audience segment, while testing can help determine their optimal frequency.

3. Increased Engagement

As email frequency increases, not only do complaints rise, but subscriber engagement can also begin to wane. Return Path conducted a study looking at over 199 million emails sent to more than 600,000 inboxes and found that read rate drops significantly as the average weekly frequency increases.

While there is no magic number for ideal weekly frequency, finding the right balance for your audience can help to increase engagement. Every brand is different, and although mailing every day may work for some brands, it typically is not recommended. The more messages you send, the more subscribers can begin to tune out, with your emails getting lost and overlooked in an already crowded inbox. Sending less frequently can actually help your emails to stand out more, piquing subscriber interest and generating a response.

Credit: Return Path

4. More Time Spent on Email Strategy and Advancement

With less of a focus on increased frequency, marketers will have more time to spend on advancing their email programs. From determining the optimal send frequency to adding additional elements of personalization or new email design techniques, it’s key to keep up with advancements in the email stratosphere to continue to be relevant amongst the competition.

So as you look toward achieving all your yearly email goals, ensure that removing inactive subscribers and optimizing for ideal frequency is at the top of the list. This one change can have significant impact on improving your email program, both from a deliverability and response perspective.