I get several daily e-mails from various sources. My favorites are news-based e-mails, like Retail Wire. These are super helpful to me and the information we need to get to our readers.
The e-mails that make me groan on a daily basis are the promotional ones. I can see the desperation of the major retailers just growing exponentially as places like Kohl's, Amazon, New York & Company, Athleta (now a division of Gap) and others hit my personal inbox on a near daily basis. It's a minor annoyance, but one that may force me to opt out of those, despite the sometimes appealing savings I may get out of an e-mail blast.
So my question is how often is too often? Daily is borderline stalking when it comes to "sale" e-mails, in my opinion. No one shops that much, so there's no reason to tell me about the sales on your website or in your store on a daily basis. Is weekly acceptable? Or twice a month?
3 comments:
We send an e-newsletter once a month and then an e-card usually promoting a product or event once a month, so our customers hear from us twice a month, unless it's the holiday season when we also send a electronic Christmas card. I agree with you- some of the larger retailer's emails are getting overwhelming.
I suppose for the big guys it all comes down to analytics. You could say that people vote with the "unsubscribe" or "spam" button. If an uptick in emails results in an uptick in unsubs, it's probably time to ratchet it back down.
For small businesses, I don't think it's much of a problem. You've only got so many hours in the day, and writing a good email takes a lot of time and effort. Therefore, you can only afford the time to do it at most once a week. Daily is pretty much out of the question.
We send a weekly e-newsletter, and we sometimes include sales and coupons. We have had great success sending "sneak peek" coupons. i.e. We'll give our loyal newsletter crowd sale prices a few days before the sales actually start. I hate anything that even looks a little like spam. Therefore, we do not send "e-blasts".
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