Frequency:

It has probably happened to you: you find a company whose products you like and you sign up for their mailing list only to get bombarded with more email from them than you can possibly handle. This scenario is all too common, and many consumers don’t just ignore and delete excess messages—some get frustrated and report them as spam.

According to Dave Chaffey, 42 percent of consumers in a recent survey said that reduced frequency would be the best way to improve permission-based commercial email.¹ But what is the right frequency? That will vary by customer. To get a really good feel for it, you’ll need to do some testing and develop separate mailing lists with different maximum and minimum frequency guidelines. But until you can get tests underway: 

1. Sending no more than once a week a good basic guideline for promotional mailings.
2. Definitely do not send more frequently than once in a 48-hour period.
3. For the sake of yourself and your staff as well as your readers, plan on sending newsletters no more than once a month, with the potential for periodic supplements as content allows.
4. Among the various types of list mailings you send out, aim for not less than once a month—you don’t want your readers to forget about you any more than you want to risk annoying them.

You can actually get started building separate frequency-based mailing lists before you test, though. How? Ask new subscribers how often they want to hear from you when they sign up. Give them a range of options to choose from and have the ez.newsletter system file them into separate mailing lists according to their answers.

Testing methods will be discussed in greater detail in other white papers. Suffice it to say that, when you are ready to test for optimal frequency, segmentation can help. One group of readers may respond best to monthly deliveries while another responds better to weekly mailings. Plan, test, adapt, analyze, and refine.

Timing:

Much like frequency, the best timing for email blasts will probably vary, and should be discovered through segmenting and testing. But until testing gets underway, keep these things in mind:

1. There is some evidence that first thing in the morning on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday is best for people who are likely to read the message at work, so this is good timing to start with if you do a great deal of B2B outreach.
2. Evidence shows that first thing in the evening on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday works best for people who are likely to read your message at home. Shoot for these days and times if your business is mostly B2C.
3. For the B2B set, reasearch shows that 7–10:30AM is a good time range to shoot for, but keep in mind that crossing time zones can throw your timing off. You may consider segmenting out readers from different coasts and/or countries and timing their mailings differently.
4. Remember before, during, and after testing that the best day and time for your customers or business segments may change over time.

Bottom line: start out on a Tuesday or Thursday and test from there.

One more thing…keep your lists fresh. If you send on a monthy basis, consider removing soft bounces after the second bounce. If your frequency is higher, remove soft bounces after four or five sends. Don’t send to hard bounces more than three times, regardless of your frequency. But don’t worry about unsubscibes—the system takes care of those for you.

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