Sending Emails To Your List: How Often Is Too Often?

Knowing how often to send emails to your mailing list is a big dilemma that many solopreneurs face. You don't want to bombard your subscribers with emails, but neither do you want them to forget you. One of my own subscribers recently emailed me to ask me about how often you should send emails to your subscriber.

Here’s an excerpt of what she said:

"Your article piqued my interest today, and offered solid advice. It is interesting to note that I just attended a teleseminar where it was said that emailing your list daily was imperative and that every email needed to be full of outstanding content. Since I am shortly beginning my first online business, I felt overwhelmed by that directive to insure my online success.

The first thing that came to my mind was that weekly should be often enough. How would I ever come up with outstanding content on a daily basis to send my list and still have enough time in the day to do everything else?"

From my experience and working one-on-one with many clients I know that this is a big dilemma for many solo business owners – after all, you want to build a relationship with your subscribers, but you don’t want them to forget you, and neither do you want them to unsubscribe because you’re bombarding them with so much information. It’s all about striking a balance!

I honestly think that those ‘experts’ who tell you you should be emailing your list daily have nothing else to do! And how you can you put out valuable, quality content on a daily basis – it would be draining both emotionally and time-wise! Plus the flip side to that is that your subscribers are going to feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails you’re sending them and are more likely to unsubscribe.

If you’re going to publish a regular ezine (newsletter) then it’s important that the frequency fits best for you and your business. My contact with my subscribers has been gradual in it’s frequency. When I first started I emailed once a quarter, then moved across to monthly (first of every month). Then a while back I decided that I’d do twice a month (1st & 15th) and it stayed that way for about 18 months. At the start of this year I decided to publish my ezine every two weeks on a Friday, and then a couple of months ago I decided that I’d publish weekly, but rather than produce a full-blown ezine every week I would create in-between issues that simply directed my subscribers to one of my blog posts – I have such a lot of content on my blog that wasn’t being fully utilized. Therefore this strategy was two-fold, first I was staying in touch with my subscribers on a weekly basis, and secondly I was repurposing the ton of content that was readily available on my blog!

Conclusion: Create a schedule that is the best fit for you and your business, and one that works in frequency for your subscribers too!

(c) 2009 Tracey Lawton