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In email marketing, as in telemarketing, there is a key difference between persistence and pestering. One can garner customers, whereas the other will get you on a Black List in a hot second. But how do you know where to draw the line?

Persistence

Email marketing is crucial to the development of a brand. While you might hope that consumers will stumble upon your company and develop brand loyalty based on the product alone, the truth is that they might not even remember who you are unless you remind them. An oft-quoted figure is that prior to the advent of internet marketing, print ads took an average of 7.3 impacts to make a single impression on a customer. Nowadays, with the barrage of information available on the internet, the number is likely 2-3 times this. If you want to make an impression, then, it’s important to remind your customer that you’re still active and interested, and maybe even to tempt them with an offer or two.

Pestering A study found that the overposting of status updates is the most frequently cited reason that customers ‘unlike’ a brand on Facebook. The same is true of emails; if a consumer is constantly interrupted by unsolicited emails, they’re just a click away from unsubscribing or worse yet identifying you as spam. At that point, in most cases, you’ve lost the customer for good. Unsolicited? You may find yourself confused. After all, the customer ‘solicited’ these emails when they first signed up for your newsletter! While this is true, in most cases the customer did not have the option of selecting a frequency or subject of emails, and for many, repetitive imposition is a dealbreaker.

There are ways, however, to combat this problem. You can create an email preference center allowing users to choose their email options. They can pick the frequency they receive emails and the subject matter of the emails they receive. You then send out emails based on THEIR preferences rather than YOUR preferences. In fact, we found an eight percent uplift in open rates for customers that created email preferences or as we like to call it Super Opt-In programs.

Some email vendors, like Silverpop, are also creating innovative solutions to this problem. They recently introduced a new “email snooze” option. Rather than permanently unsubscribing, a customer who selects this option is not contacted for 90 days, but the emails resume after that period of time.

Another tactic is to give customers the option of selecting between individual emails or variations on a weekly “digest,” where all recent emails are presented in a collated fashion rather than being delivered individually. All of these strategies can help tame inbox clutter and make customers more willing to adhere to your brand long-term.

The Bottom Line

Give your users options. The most effective emails are the ones that are actually read. By giving your readers options you increase the likelihood that your content is read and acted upon.