And furthermore, what happens if we increase it? If we double or triple it?
If you increase the frequency of sending your email marketing campaigns, from one to two or three times a week, you will probably increase your sales. So why would it be a bad thing to send too many messages?
Because you may lose customers.
We did the following test: We sent 2 equivalent types of campaigns to a segment of underwear consumers. The campaigns contained a very similar offer.
From a total of 3,000 records, group A was sent 6 email marketing campaigns to each address. Group B, 12 email marketing campaigns per address, over a period of 3 weeks.
And we found that increasing the frequency of shipment to group B generated 11% of unsubscription compared to 5% for group A.
However, in group B, 15% of the subscribers purchased, compared to 6% in group A.
When investigating the quality of the unsubscribes in group B, it was found that many of them (70%) are good customers and have purchased in-store, both before and after the test was conducted. That is, they unsubscribed from the contact list, but have continued to shop in-store.
Turning to the quality of the unsubscribers, they were found to have made, before and after the test, purchases above the average of group A. In other words, they were good buyers.
It can be concluded, then, that while the frequency of mailings increased sales for the particular promotion, it generated a considerable leakage of subscribers, more than half of whom were very good customers.
This proves the relevance of the saying "Bread for today, hunger for tomorrow".
If you increase the frequency of your email marketing campaigns, you will achieve higher sales, but also a significant loss of subscribers.
It is important to know the quality of those who choose to unsubscribe. If you are losing good or the best customers....is it worthwhile to increase the frequency of sending?
How do you keep your best customers?
If you perform this test and the results are as shown, you know what to deduce.
One solution to avoid this relevant subscriber (customer) leakage is to treat this segment of frequent and important buyers in a different way than the rest of the segments of your base.
The real machine that is sometimes the generation of new campaigns prevents us from seeing that there are different types of buyers and that they should be treated differently.
If this increase in frequency had excluded important customers, perhaps only the increase in sales and not the impact on unsubscription could have been obtained, and the tactic would have been supportive.
After this, it will be possible to measure whether 12 shipments were enough or whether 20 were needed, but that is the subject of another interesting test to be carried out and analyzed.
Conclusions
In short, testing clearly determines what works and what doesn't in your email marketing campaigns.
On the other hand, there are no recipes for the ideal frequency; the key is to know your target group and know how they will react.
And finally, increasing frequency has effects whose analysis can work in favor of your business objectives.
