Too much of a good thing?

In marketing, we constantly hear “Stay Top of mind. Stay Top of mind. Stay Top of mind. Stay Top of mind. Stay Top of Mind”…Get the point?  One method of staying top of mind is by creating email blasts.  Email blasts have become a valuable and more importantly a cost effective way of mass communication. Sometimes they’re communicating relevant information and other times they are simply reminding you that today is Wednesday. (and you should consider us for your purchasing needs) A forum like Constant Contact has made the process of creating these blasts extremely user friendly. You pick a design, you choose content, you pull some contacts and you send it. Done. You just communicated with all 10,000 of your contacts and you barely lifted a finger. And better yet, you also have the ability check how many of your 10,000 contacts actually opened the email, how many clicked on an embedded link and who basically flipped you off and said never email me again, aka, unsubscribing.

The question is when does the effort of trying to stay top of mind cross over into the realm of irritating? I’ve read numerous statistics that say a good open rate on blasts is somewhere between 20%-30%. But what if that number, albeit a higher than average one, is continuously declining each time you send an email blast out? Is that enough of a measurement to indicate you should slow down the rate at which you send out these messages? What if your open rate is increasing but so is your unsubscribing rate? To unsubscribe to an email requires much greater effort than just deleting it and the consequences are far greater.

One analogy according to the Web Site, emailList.com is, “Treat the list for what they are, flesh and blood clients who deserve respect and top quality service. Finding the fine line when it comes to frequency will avoid the plague of list fatigue and go a long way towards building your business.” They go onto to say, “You also don’t want to underuse your list. Making too little use of this resource can be just as damaging as overdoing it.”

What we do know is as simple minded as creating an email blast is, it should require a serious thought process about when to send it and to who it should be sent too. Perhaps instead of a “mass blast” you create “sub” lists and “attack” each one with more relevant messages. While I’m curious why this topic is so drenched in war terminology, remember when you send an email blast, it’s not ready, fire, aim.