Q: We send out two to three e-mail newsletters per month. There are occasions when we’d like to send out an extra one, but we wonder how many is too many. How do we strike a balance between getting the word out to our customers/readers about things happening on our site and annoying customers by sending out too many e-mails? Obviously, we don’t want to anger recipients so they’re led to cancel their subscription or otherwise think poorly of us.

A: Great question! Everyone sending e-mail struggles with frequency; it’s a balancing act. You need to send enough to meet your business goals without sending so much that your readers unsubscribe, ignore you or report your e-mail as spam.

When I work with clients, I use three factors to help determine the correct frequency:
1. What readers were told when they signed up for e-mail.
2. Why you’re sending the e-mail, also known as your business goals.
3. What you’re sending, or the content of the e-mail.

It’s a best practice to set the expectation on frequency with your subscribers when they opt in. If they signed up expecting one e-mail a month and you suddenly start sending one a week, that could be an issue — you’ve changed the terms of the relationship without telling them.

You also need to keep your business in mind. If you’re selling shoes, it’s a reasonable expectation that people will purchase a few pairs a year. If you’re selling automobiles, it’s unlikely that people will buy more than one a year. Sending a weekly (or more frequent) e-mail on the latest shoe styles might be welcome; receiving a weekly or more frequent promotional e-mail on cars might not be.

Which brings us to content; the more relevant and helpful the information in your e-mail is, the more frequently you can send without annoying your audience. If recipients get a benefit from your e-mail newsletter just from reading it, then an extra send every now and then probably isn’t a problem. But if it’s strictly promotional — if the reader has to buy something to get a benefit from the e-mail — then an extra send might begin to erode your list performance.

I would recommend that you do the extra send, but watch your metrics. If this e-mail — or the next few e-mails after it — shows lower open, clickthrough or conversion rates, it’s too much. Continuing to do this will hasten the erosion of your e-mail list, which is an asset worth protecting for the future.

Ditto if you see a rise in unsubscribes or spam complaints — those are red flags that upping your frequency is not a good idea. But if the extra send doesn’t depress your positive metrics or lift your negative ones, then I’d say it’s fine to do this once in a while.

— eM+C eExpert Jeanne Jennings

Q: Other than [pay per click], what is he best, easiest, most cost-effective way to increase the size of your list with qualified names?
— Julie Swatek, founder and president, ScrapYourTrip.com, Orlando, Fla.

A: There are many ways to build your list; which one — or ones — you choose really depends on the time and resources you have. Three that I recommend first are organics, data feeds and e-append.

E-append is quick and easy, and every company should do it often. (At least two to three times a year, but four to six is better.) With e-append, you send your housefile to a broker to append e-mail addresses to your existing records. The broker e-mails the names it matches, basically inviting the users to be on your list. If the users don’t want to be added, they have the option to unsubscribe. You only pay for the match — if the broker doesn’t have a name for a particular record, it doesn’t cost you a thing.

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