Email Campaign Limits: What is Too Much
In the winter newsletter we pointed out the necessity of concise, crystal clear digital communications as a best practice for business success. In addressing email campaigns specifically, it's important to know what the email marketing businesses might not readily point out: it's relatively easy to arrive at an email saturation level according to most recipients. In an effort to build business rather than alienate clients/customers, it's helpful to try to establish what is Too Much.
To that end, recent statistics compiled by Email Marketing Reports are very insightful:
¦ In Merkle's "View from the inbox" report, 73% of survey respondents cited "sending too frequently" as the main reason for opting out of an email program
¦ In Epsilon's "Beyond the click" email branding study, 71% of respondents said it wasn't OK for companies they know and trust to send email more frequently than they already do
¦ According to a MarketingSherpa study quoted in their 2009 benchmark report, 25% of respondents who reported an email as spam gave "too much email from the sender" as a reason for doing so
Not adhering to clients/customers email quantity comfort levels can result in their blacklisting your email address - or worse- designating your email as SPAM. In this world so dependent on digital communications, you can see the problem with this right away.
There is no perfect formula to maintain the recipients in your email database, but we can offer some guidelines. Consider the personal and professional characteristics of individual recipients and the quantity of emails they may be receiving from other sources already. For example, are your recipients those who tend to be intensely integrated in the digital communications world; e.g., young adults, or businesses who are reliant on email communications to take orders, sell products, etc.? They may be quicker to block your promotional and marketing emails, unless it's a very infrequent mailing (e.g., monthly or quarterly). If possible, contract an email marketing service that allows you to break your target markets into distinct email groups so you can choose who might appreciate more frequent promotions.
Of course, the most important element of email marketing and promotion, even for newsletter content, is that it has something universally useful to offer; information and "specials" that inspire the recipient to avail themself to that limited time special you offer, and look forward to the next one.
Do you, in fact, find our newsletters useful? Please email us with your feedback. Visit www.coastalprintinginc.com for contact information. Thanks for reading!
With the mild winter a distant memory, spring has arrived early and Coastal Printing Inc is making the most of it. Visitors to our facility will notice new eye-catching window graphics (created by our Marketing Director, Isa Cann), and a newly resurfaced and striped parking lot. New plants to adorn the entrances are in the works, as well as colorful banners for all of the tenants at 15 Main Street. So much for the outside changes; inside Coastal Printing, we now have sculptures on display created by talented local artisan, Keith MacLeod of 
the product in the first place is better. To that end, we are encouraging clients to transport their files too large to email on flashdrives. This effort will also save time and money. For clients who need to transport files remotely, files can be sent using an FTP (file transfer protocol) program. The free software 
