How often should I send newsletters for maximum effectiveness?
The bulletin, also called anewsletter, is mainly informative, informs about the news of the products, the services that it issues, and the users subscribe in the spirit of being informed of any evolution. Therefore, periodic is necessary. However, what frequency is the most appropriate? If we were to establish the percentages of importance for an electronic newsletter to have a positive impact, we would say that: Content has 50%, Design 30%, and Frequency / opportunity 20%. We can have excellent Content framed in a spectacular Design, and a bad Frequency will cause us not to have the desired impact, thus wasting the effort and resources invested for communication.
The first thing to avoid, as it is the greatest evil, is to overload the box of our readers, in other words, having an excessively short Frequency (sending newsletters too many in a row), which leads our readers to consider not reading us or even worse unsubscribe.The Frequency is directly related to our content, if we are a news agency, a daily shipment will be adequate, if we sell cars, a fortnightly shipment may be excessive, but if we are the Ferrari user club, a weekly email will be optimum.
The first question we must ask ourselves is:
How often can we have relevant information to communicate in our Newsletter?
The second question is:
How often should I communicate with my readers so as not to 'cool off' the relationship?
Having both answers, we can unify them and obtain a Frequency. In most cases there may not be a coincidence between the two answers, in that case, we will have to find a balance.
RULES
- Once the Frequency is found, evaluate it for a minimum period of 5/6 months; use statistical tools, to know and analyze emails Read, Unread, Clicks on links (links).
- Keep the same shipping day fixed (we recommend between Tuesday and Thursday),
- Do not modify the Sender's name and keep a similar style in your "Subject" message.
- Do not let more than 45 days go by without communication with your readers (contacts).
- Determine your Frequency and communicate it to your company so that your shipping policy is consistent throughout your company.
- Avoid forcing a Frequency when you don't have important information to justify shipping.
Another aspect to take into account, to estimate the ideal Frequency, is to know who our contacts are: women housewives, entrepreneurial entrepreneurs, office workers, adolescents; Do I communicate to corporate emails (@company) or are they mostly personal accounts (@hotmail, @yahoo)? This will give us a perception of how much information these contacts receive.
The Frequency of sending allows us to maintain our Newsletter as RELEVANT in the perception of our reader and therefore to fulfill its objective.
You must know that the subscriber, therefore the reader, must have the time to become aware of the information received, it is necessary to leave a certain amount of time before being confronted with another newsletter. However, you should not have too much time, because to take too much of it, you will forget to read it. To avoid unsubscribing, we must find a middle ground between bombardment and radio silence and it depends precisely on the importance of the information transmitted and the ability of the site's webmasters to update it. For a site that is often updated, a weekly or even daily solution can be interesting for people who follow the various developments or fans of the site closely.
On the other hand, a monthly or biweekly newsletter is useful when the offer of services or products changes regularly, but not systematically. The truth is, there is no real rule of thumb for how often you send your newsletters. The best solution is definitely to leave the choice to everyone when they sign up. For site followers, it may be better to direct them to RSS feeds (reflects the site's real-time news), avoid sending daily emails, and then offer the service weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
To develop what could be called a web strategy, it is best to try to put yourself in the customer's shoes, even if you have to do a mini survey in a column of the site where everyone, in a single visit, can click on your proposal. The second advantage of voting is that the customer feels heard and this can even cause some to subscribe, so it is quite a benefit. Also, visiting the site may reflect the effectiveness of your newsletter, so you can base your delivery speed on it. Once the rhythm is found, it is enough to maintain it and perhaps to adapt it according to the periods. For example, during the summer, life is a little “idler”, so we prefer to be less stressed, in order to leave room for summer relaxation.
Maintaining the frequency is important, but knowing how to break it from time to time is also important. Our reader must be used to receiving our newsletter on a certain day, with a certain Design, so that the intended impact "remains in the hands" of the Content.