Amplifying Email Deliverability with the Right Email Frequency

You’ve penned an awesome marketing email, you’ve designed it elegantly, coded it correctly and the last thing you want is the mail to not reach your subscriber’s inbox. All your email marketing efforts go down the drain if your emails fail to reach their targeted subscribers.

Here’s a shocking fact – only 79% of commercial emails land in the inbox! Every marketer wants subscribers to read their emails, does not want to get blocked by an ISP, and also doesn’t want to be labeled as a spammer. So what stops emails from reaching their destination, what causes email deliverability issues?

Now, why do emails land in the spam folder or get blocked? Among the many reasons behind this, a major one is incorrect Email Frequency.

Welcome emails, autoresponders, offer emails, announcement emails, re-engagement emails! Hey, stop! Are you going overboard? Uplers say, maybe.

You have to send out just the right number of emails. But what might leave you in a fog is the dilemma between how much is too much and how little is too little.

Bypassing the two blunders

• Sending emails too often might rankle your subscriber and you can only pray they don’t punish you by unsubscribing or marking your emails as spam. Another possibility is that they may start ignoring your emails. Although this doesn’t directly impact email deliverability, it affects your open rate, which in turn upsets your deliverability rate.
• On the other hand, out of sight is out of mind – this means missing out on potential revenues. Also, the chances that your subscribers may forget about you and mark you as spam are high if you send emails once in a blue moon.

Thence, in order to ensure that your subscribers neither forget you nor get upset by the bombardment of your marketing emails, you need to set the tuning right. Moreover, consistency is a must. If you remain dormant for a while and then abruptly start mailing frequency, many ISPs will consider it as spam and phishing behavior.

So, how to tune your email frequency to ratify deliverability?

Stats to help you set the rhythm right

Marketingsherpa asked its 2057 conference attendees how often they like to receive promotional emails (coupons, sales notifications, etc.) from companies they do business with. The survey revealed that while 86% would like to see promo emails in their inbox at least once a month, there were only 15% who were interested in receiving promotional emails every day.

While catering to the preference of 86% subscribers should be your top priority, you can’t ignore the choice of the 15% either. The best way to deal with this situation is to focus on list segmentation, about which the Uplers will detail in the later part of this article.

Source: State of digital marketing DMA Report, 2015

According to the state of digital marketing 2015 DMA Report – in 2014, 19% of companies sent 1 email per month to their subscribers, 35% companies sent 2-3 emails every month, and 21% of companies sent 4-5 emails a month. While just 8% sent 8 or more emails every month.

Flawless Frequency Fundas

Uplers jot down 5 divine mantras to help email marketers set the frequency right:

1. Setting the email frequency right at the time when someone subscribes to your emails, is an excellent way to assure email deliverability. Directly ask the subscriber how often they want to hear from you.
2. Collecting subscriber information is fundamental, as this helps you in list segmentation, which means creating separate lists based on type of content subscribers want to read, frequency of emails they want to receive, etc. Now if you send one email each month to someone who doesn’t mind receiving them more often, or you send daily emails to someone who only prefers monthly contact, you are likely to be labelled as spam
3. It is essential that you identify dormant/inactive subscribers on your email list because this affects the email open rate, which in turn affects your email deliverability. By sending re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers, you might succeed in drawing them back into your active list; the rest of them can be removed. This will enhance your reputation.
4. You can’t really stop those disinterested ones from leaving but as a last resort, take the unsubscribers to your preference center. Here, you can offer them the choice of selecting email frequency. Lesser the unsubscribes, better will be your reputation. Moreover, respect the decision of those who still want to leave.
5. Stick to the same IP address and send emails at a consistent rate. If you change any of these, the likelihood of you being identified as a spammer rise manifold.
6. So, make sure you send the right number of emails to the right people. While the information provided here shall help you make a general decision about optimal email frequency, you must also consider your type of business and carry out frequency testing before you make a decision.

Wrap up

The ever changing nature of email deliverability makes it one of the most important points to consider for email marketers. And the frequency of emails you send to subscribers is a major factor influencing deliverability. Here’s how you can find out and set a fair frequency:

• While frequent emailing can ruffle your subscribers’ feathers, your subscribers may forget about you if you send emails rarely.
• It’s a good practice to ask subscribers when they opt-in about how often they want to hear from you.
• List segmentation comes handy in order to set the email frequency right, and in turn improves deliverability.
• Inactive subscribers means lower open rates; this affects email deliverability, give them a chance to set a frequency or remove them from your list.

Are you facing hurdles in designing or coding your marketing emails? If yes, let the zealous Uplers design beautiful emails and accurately code them for you so that you always hold all the aces.