How many emails do you get each week (heck, each day!) that are part of an email campaign? If you have a website, you likely have an email opt-in (or you should). This helps you gather contact information about your website and social media visitors so you can stay in touch with them through email marketing. It’s a vital part of owning a business, but you need to be careful about how you use the information you gather.
[bctt tweet=”Email is a vital part of business, but be careful about how you use the information you gather.”]
I’ve signed up for countless opt-ins over the years and have garnered some valuable information through the freebies that were offered for signing up. However, there are a few things that encourage me to quickly hit the “unsubscribe button” and I recommend you avoid them like the plague.
Sales Emails
There is nothing wrong with using email marketing to sell a new product or service, or even to promote special pricing on something you offer. However, when every other email you send is salsey, you will quickly turn off your reader. And they’ll turn you off by unsubscribing.
The purpose of an email campaign should be to provide value to your audience. Let them know about what you’re doing, but provide information and resources along the way. If they’re interested, they’ll click through to your website or link (at an average of about 3 percent, according to MailChimp, my email service of choice).
When you’re constantly trying to sell me on something, I’ll get annoyed pretty damn quick.
[bctt tweet=”Email campaigns: stay top-of-mind without being annoying.”].
Email Spam
I try—and fail more often than succeed—to have zero emails in my inbox at the end of every week. That’s quite a challenge when my inbox is bombarded by emails from the same three to five email campaigns on a daily basis. I’m either being sold to or the business has “new” and valuable information to provide. Though the “new” is often open to interpretation.
Don’t spam your audience. Find relevant, valuable information to share with them. And if you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t. Everyone has opinions on how frequently you should email: Constant Contact recommends about once a month while an Entrepreneur contributor found that two to four times a month might be ideal.
The real answer is, it depends. Your industry and audience determines how often you should send emails. Segment your list and test to see how frequency determines your click-through rate. And if you notice your unsubscribe rate directly correlates with the frequency you’re sending emails, try another approach. Slow down the frequency and provide more value to your audience with each email.
The bottom line is, your audience signed up for your emails for a reason. Provide valuable information in each of your emails and don’t give them a reason to unsubscribe. But start spamming them and you’ll quickly weed out potential customers.
