The frequency of sending letters has a significant impact on the company's revenue and the level of audience engagement. Subscribers react to changes in the frequency of mailing in different ways:

Mark emails as spam

Every marketer is afraid to even imagine such a situation. But think about what is the first reason for unsubscribing. TechnologyAdvice conducted a study in which 472 network users were polled for the reasons for marking emails as spam:



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Then followed a survey on how to improve email campaigns. The results were obtained:





The overwhelming majority of respondents chose the option “Less frequent mailing”, which means that subscribers are still very concerned about the frequency of letters.

Conclusion: Before determining the frequency of emails, once again make sure that you have prepared high-quality content, the letters are personalized, and you will provide your subscribers with what they want. Ask yourself 2 of the most important questions: “What will the subscriber endure for themselves after reading the letter?” And “How can I make the content more relevant?”

Send complaints

If you do a frequent mailing of non-informative emails, then the rate of discoveries and clickability is falling. Other indicators may also deteriorate.

Return Path recently published data on how mailing frequency affects readability and the number of complaints:





As you can see on the graphs, an increase in the frequency of mailing increases the number of complaints. Also decreased reading rate. Readers simply can not handle the volume of letters that comes to them.



Conclusion: Test the frequency of sending letters to a small part of your subscribers in order to test its effectiveness.

Ignore or unsubscribe

Sometimes it happens that you double the number of letters to be sent, but you do not achieve the expected result. All because subscribers respond to it differently. Some mailings can increase your sales and engagement. But others on the contrary will reduce all indicators, and you will come to zero. To prevent this, give subscribers the opportunity to choose the frequency of receiving letters.



Tip: An effective way to combat ignoring letters is segmentation. You can separate subscribers according to the received data, segmentation will allow you to send relevant content for each group.

Sales increase

This is what all marketers hope for. And some still reach. The English insurance company Aviva increased the number of letters sent 12 times and increased the number of sales.





Earlier, the insurance company sent its subscribers one letter per year before the annual insurance period expired. But after merging with email agency Alchemy Worx, they developed a plan to send as many emails as possible. But Aviva did it quite carefully:

• Interviewed subscribers about what letters they would like to receive;
• Little by little they increased the frequency of sending letters.

Result:

48% more issued insurance

304% more unique clicks

45% more revenue.



The marketing company SimpleRelevance doubled the frequency of the weekly mailing of the travel company. They also added dynamic patterns and thereby increased engagement.

Result:

278% more viewed pages per month

60% less bounce.



Both of these campaigns have been significantly optimized along with an increase in the frequency of mailing. Aviva subscribers were polled about what content they wanted to receive, and their distribution was changed. The company SimpleRelevance has developed a template with dynamic content instead of sending all the letters with a universal template.



Conclusion: if you want to periodically increase the frequency of distribution (for example, before Christmas), then follow the quality of the content. Subscribers will be happy to receive frequent mailings only if they interest them.

How often do other email marketers do a newsletter?

The 2015 National Client Email report of the Email Marketing Association of the UK provides the following results:





Indicators of the frequency of mailings vary, but still a large part of marketers (39%) do the mailing 2-3 times a month.

In the Russian-speaking market, mailings are most often made 2 times a month, but the segment of online stores may differ and be sent 5 times a day.

How often do the newsletter?

In the table below, data from the MarketingSherpa about the optimal distribution frequency is shown.

This survey was conducted in January 2015. It is based on the responses of 2057 adults to the question “How often would you like to receive a newsletter from the company you are subscribed to?”. To which were received such answers:





Weekly emails are very effective, so most marketers send them. Monthly messages are also not inferior. But there is always the fear that this is too rare and you may simply be forgotten.

Summarizing all the above, we can say with confidence that we can not predict how the subscriber will behave after increasing the frequency of mailing. But one thing is for sure: the higher the value of your letter, the greater the involvement and readability of email mailings. Test more and you will find out how often your subscribers want to receive messages from the company.



Konstantin Makarov, CEO of the SendPulse mailing service