How Often Should you Send Prospects Emails?

July 24, 2015

You’ve done it. You’ve finally cultivated a strong emailing list. After months of strong content and social media marketing and lead generation, your subscriber list is long, and your click-through rates seem to be steady.

But now that you have subscribers, how can you keep them interested yet not annoy them with too many emails? Is twice a day too many? Should you send out general emails or should you be tailoring your content to fit certain demographics more? What if your small business has a small subscriber list?

The key here is to balance your email frequency so that your emails feel like gentle reminders rather than persistent junk mail. Yet every company is different, and all email subscribers have different expectations. So how often should you send your prospects emails? That’s a question we’re going to answer now.

It’s Complicated

The truth is that every email subscriber list is different. As frustrating as that is, it’s true. What you may consider to be too often is actually just right for readers, and what they consider to be too many emails may seem like good marketing to you.

To help guide you along, here are some simple rules to follow:

1. Keep Holidays in Mind: Sending out message on a holiday or within a few days of a holiday is not a good idea. By now, viewers are out attending parties and spending time with their families. They’re not looking at emails, and they won’t until after the holiday is over. At that point, all those emails will be considered outdated, and the user will probably just delete them. If you have a promotion that ends just after a holiday, make sure your do plenty of promotion beforehand so people anticipate the sale.
2. Try an Early Afternoon Time Slot: When you return to work after lunch, what’s the first thing you do? Before you get back to work, you probably check social media and your email account just once more. So do many others. If you’re unsure when to send emails (we’ll offer more advice on this later), start sending them in the early afternoon and go from there.
3. Get Help with Marketing Automation: Marketing automation software tracks all the emails you send out and reports on information such as open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates. Using this information, you can determine how often your prospects enjoy receiving emails from you. If you haven’t already set an expectation – daily, monthly or whatever you prefer – send out several emails throughout the week and see how they perform. If you see interest waning as the week goes on, you’ll know to send emails at the beginning of the week.

Some marketers have success sending out bi-weekly newsletters and even monthly newsletters because it builds anticipation. Since your emails only come around so often, they appear to be worth it to stop and read.

Time of Day

Having a set time of day to send out your emails builds a sense expectancy among your readers. If you’re consistent about sending out emails around a certain time of day, then your readers will come to expect your emails. They’ll look out for them, and they might even look forward to them.

When it comes to setting a time of day for your emails, you can do a little split test to determine the best time to send out your emails. You want to send them out at a time that is most convenient for your readership, meaning when they are most likely to check and read their emails.

Whether you’re targeting small business owners or teenagers, the best times to reach them could be vastly different. Small business owners usually have their email accounts open all day and are constantly checking them, but they might not get the chance to read emails until lunchtime. Teenagers are usually in school all day and might not get access to their email accounts until dinner time. Knowing the habits of your demographics can help you better time your emails.

Remember, marketing automation software can be invaluable in the success of your campaigns. With it, you can schedule your emails in advance so that you don’t have to physically hit the send button when you want to send out your emails. You can also use marketing automation to segment your email subscribers. If you want to send one email with a certain promotion for a certain demographic, marketing automation will help you do so.

To keep subscribers on board and give them an idea of what to expect, mention how often you plan to send out emails. If you send out daily reminders, say so. If you send out monthly or bi-weekly newsletters, make sure your subscribers know. Setting this expectation will keep your unsubscribe rate low and your click-through rates up.

So now that you have some guidelines for how to send emails to your prospects, how will you be changing your email game? Share your thoughts with us!