Finding the right email frequency is one of the many issues that email marketers have to figure out in order to have a successful email program. What happens when they change their email cadence, such
as emailing on more days of the week or emailing more than once a day at different times of the year?
That was one of the questions my company wanted to answer in its annual study of
email marketing benchmarks. We found some interesting results when we compared email activity on retail and ecommerce messages sent between Black Friday and New Year's Eve:
-- Open and
click-through rates were lower in this period compared with emails sent the rest of the year. The mean (average) unique open rate during the holiday period was 17.6%, compared with
20.9% for the rest of the year, while the mean unique click rate was 2.8% (3.6% rest-of-year). The click-to-open rate, however, was comparable (14% holiday, 14.8% rest-of-year).
--
Hard bounces, unsubscribes and spam complaints also were lower compared with rest-of-year mailings. Hard bounces were 2.4 times higher in the non-holiday mailing season. Results were
closer for unsubscribes (0.10% holiday/0.12% non-holiday) and spam complaints (0.010% holiday/0.014% non-holiday).
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Now, do you expect me to conclude that increasing frequency will kill your
open and click rates but reduce list churn? Not so fast.
The "Frequency Math Effect"
Sending more frequently to your database can affect email performance and
metrics. Another factor, one that isn't as easily identified, is the Frequency Math Effect. This comes into play when you compare changes on rates (percentages) instead of total or cumulative
numbers.
When you increase your email cadence, you increase your total email touches. But, you're also giving your recipients more opportunities to ignore or to unsubscribe from your
messages.
Suppose you move from emailing four times a week to daily, or from once a day to twice daily. The total number of emails you send will go up, but you'll normally see a decline in
activity rates because your recipients don't usually change their open or click habits at the same pace.
This holds true for list-churn metrics, too. When you increase frequency, your
recipients have more emails to act on, whether it means unsubscribing or clicking the "report spam" button. If subscribers aren't opening emails at the same rate they do when you send less frequently,
these rates also will go down.
This doesn't mean you should run into your boss's office and brag about how you reduced list churn when you increased frequency, because you would be wrong. You
might just be spreading more recipient actions over a larger number of emails. That's the frequency math effect.
Look at the Total, Not Just the Rate
To get a more
telling view of email frequency and its effects on performance, add up all email actions (opens, clicks, conversions and resulting revenue, unsubscribes, spam complaints and hard bounces) to get a
total number for the entire time period.
Compare this number to a period when you have lower frequency, and you will see whether increasing frequency resulted in more positive email activity,
including -- I hope -- higher revenue or conversions. But you will also find that you incurred more list churn through unsubscribes, hard bounces and spam complaints.
The numbers in the chart
below show both rates and actual numbers for opens, clicks and unsubscribes generated on higher frequency in the holiday period:
Your Big
Question
Are you meeting your business goals (acquisition, conversions, revenue, upgrades, order value or whatever you need to fulfill the plan)? Was the increased revenue worth the
tradeoff from higher list churn?
That's a call only you can make.
Until next time, take it up a notch.