Posted by: Bob Bly
October 7, 2008
Issue #518

How Much E-mail Is Too Much?

The other day, one of my online subscribers, CR, complained about a famous Internet marketer. "I unsubscribed from his list," she told me haughtily. "As soon as I joined, I got e-mails from him once or twice every day - and there’s no one I (or anybody else) need to hear from that much."

This begs the question: How frequently can you e-mail your online subscribers?

Or, said another way: How much e-mail is too much?

People have lots of opinions about this issue, which they support with arguments that are both passionate and logical.

The problem is: Their opinions are wholly subjective.

The fact is: There’s an easy way to objectively and accurately determine the optimal e-mail frequency for your online subscribers.

How does it work?

Well, every time you send another e-mail blast to your list, a small portion of your subscribers will opt out.

Why?

They decide that your content is no longer of value to them … or you are doing too much selling … or they don’t like your style … or you are e-mailing them too often.

The "opt-out rate" - the percentage of online subscribers who unsubscribe from your list per e-mail blast - is a Web metric that you can measure. A 0.1 percent opt-out rate means that if you have 10,000 online subscribers, 10 unsubscribed after getting your most recent e-mail.

When your opt-out rate is around 0.1 percent or less, you can rest assured that you are not sending too many e-mails to your list too often. If you were, the opt-out rate would be higher.

But when your opt-out rate gets above 0.2 to 0.4 percent, you are losing subscribers at too rapid a rate. For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers and you’re losing 100 subscribers every time you send an e-mail to your list, you have an opt-out rate of 1.0 percent. That’s much too high.

You should measure and keep track of your opt-out rates with every e-mail you send.

Adjust your e-mail frequency, ratio of sales pitches to content, message length, and topics until your opt-out rate hovers around 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent or less.

Then watch what happens if you increase the frequency of your e-mails - if, for instance, you go from one e-mail per week to two.

If you get a sharp upward spike in the opt-out rate - double or more - your subscribers are telling you they don’t want to hear from you that often. And you should probably drop the extra e-mail.

On the other hand, if you add an extra e-mail per week and the opt-out rate does not rise significantly, you are safe in continuing at the higher frequency.

But should you?

Yes.

We have lots of preconceived notions about what our market wants - and doesn’t want. And one of those preconceived notions is that people don’t want too much e-mail. But when the opt-out rate is low, your subscribers are telling you they DO want to hear from you often via e-mail.

That’s important, because the more times you can reach out to your list with a valuable offer, the more money you make online.

My colleague Amy Africa, a top consultant in business-to-business (B2B) e-marketing, says that one of the most common online marketing mistakes is not e-mailing your list frequently enough.

And if you are making that mistake … you are leaving money on the table.

Robert W. Bly
Guest Contributor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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11 Comments »

1. Comment by Tony Smith — October 7, 2008 @ 10:29 am

   thanks for that, I never knew that way of monitoring. This site is awesome for little tips like this!! Keep up the good work guys!

   Tony.

2. Comment by Loren Woirhaye — October 7, 2008 @ 10:49 am

   Like anybody doing email marketing, I’m on both sides of the equation.  I’ve noticed that there are dominant fads with the way a lot of Internet Marketing guys title their emails - when you have one or two sending these sort of …"I’m your buddy" type of emails it’s kind of refreshing - but as the cancer of assumed familiarity spreads I find myself growing weary -  Why not just tell me what it’s about in the subject line?

   Unless the list is built in a very specific, tightly focused way it’s going to be difficult to keep even a large minority of the subscribers consistently engaged.  I even ignore emails from even uber-copy-guru Clayton Makepeace occasionally, much to my detriment.  What keeps me subscribed to some lists while others lose my interest easily?  Unvaried subject matter/content is wearisome so I think I may lose interest when a writer fails to challenge me to go deeper into the general topic I subscribed to learn about - somehow the relentless posturing of big affiliate launches doesn’t do it for me and I unsubscribe - and it’s not because these guys don’t provide valid content - it’s because more and more often they want me to watch long videos to figure out what the point is.  I’d rather get it in writing.
    
    

3. Comment by Kyle — October 7, 2008 @ 11:44 am

   While tracking opt-out numbers is definitely a great tip, I wonder if it’s an accurate representation of what you’re saying.Personally, I’m more inclined to hit the "Junk" buttonin my email application than I am to scroll to the bottom of the email, click on the opt-out link, and then, as with some, fill in my email address on whatever form they send me to, and then click the submit button.By clicking "Junk," I’ve effectively opted out the company’s emails, but they have no idea.I know what you’re saying though. In lieu of guessing, the opt-out numbers at least give us something to go on, but I’d be wary of letting the opt-out numbers be the only determining factor.

4. Comment by Jim Ackerman — October 7, 2008 @ 12:09 pm

   I hear what you’re saying, Kyle.  While opt-out rate is a great indicator, it’s also important to make sure you’re engaging with your subscribers.  One trick is to send your subscribers "teaser" emails that get them coming to your blog (like Clayton does), so they can interact with you and each other.  Surveys, contests, anything you can do to request feedback and check the pulse of your list is highly beneficial.

   Another thing I like to do is make sure I’m providing 3-to-1 quality content to pitches.  It’s an arbitrary rule-of-thumb, sure, but I’ve found it works for me!

   Success!
   Jim

5. Comment by Iane — October 7, 2008 @ 12:49 pm

   Well, I think this is very much like how long a letter should be…it all depends on the relevance to the reader of what you have to say.

   I honestly think that Clayton e-mails a lot and sometimes I think sh*t, this is too much! But at the same time I know that most of the content is interesting and relevant to what I do so I never unsubscribe.

   So as everything in life…it all depends!

6. Comment by James — October 7, 2008 @ 3:28 pm

   Great subject speaking for myself opting out of any marketers email list depends on the frequency and content . After a short period of time they become very transparent on what their
   Intentions are. I feel most of us that receive these e-mails from Internet marketers are looking for content with value and products that produce the results that they want.

7. Comment by Jeremy Reeves — October 8, 2008 @ 8:21 am

   I gotta say…I’ve never heard those numbers before. I always heard anything under 5% is good (although I always thought that was way too high)

   Although…maybe they said 0.5.

   Oh well I’ll go with your recommendation - that’ll keep me creating more high-quality content.

8. Comment by B Fish — October 8, 2008 @ 9:43 am

   Maybe I’m a bit slow. Probably, in fact. But isn’t this only one side of the equation?

   People who unsubscribe are important because, presumably, had they stayed subscribed they might have sent in some money. Whatever that amount of money is, I can only guess at. But, since they unsubscribed, I might assume that they were slightly less valuable than those who are interested enough to stay subscribed.

   On the other hand, there are those people on the list who actually were inspired to spend because of those extra emails.

   So, the questions is, where is there more money to be made, by trimming the fat (the unsubscribers), or by keeping the fat while losing some spending by the more faithful subscribers?

   In other words, on my wee list of 10 subscribers, there may be two options:

   1- I send fewer emails. Only 1 subscriber drops, and the rest spend an average of $100 each.

   Profit total: $900

   2- I send mails every 10 minutes, and hang outside their houses at night throwing pebbles at their windows. 5 subscribers drop. The other 5 spend $200 each, and one proposes marriage to me.

   Profit total: $1000, one love-stricken fan, and reduced customer-care expenses.

   So, there are two factors here.

   What the unsubscribers might have spent VS  Increased profits from the remaining subscribers.

   Neither of which I am smart enough to figure out. But I am smart enough to know having just one of them ain’t enough.

   I suspect Mr. Bly has an answer up his sleeve…

9. Comment by tekstiurakoitsija — October 10, 2008 @ 8:05 am

   What a great article. I havent doing much of oline marketing via e-mails, but maby i should start now !

10. Comment by Kenneth Yu — October 11, 2008 @ 5:52 am

    Great one Bob.

    Well, there’s a divisive debate going on in the online marketing world.

    Agora and Matt Furey even recommends as much as twice a DAY, but seeing how much $ they’re making–they are probably on to something. If you have not noticed already, the 100m giant Agora has a lot of newsletter whose title starts with the word "daily".

    My guess is that if you disguise your pitch as actual content, people will not consider it as spam. It’s when you start blasting without offering anything of value that problems happen.

    Relationship building takes frequency, but tamper that with real value.

    My 2 cents worth.

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